2025 - FANTASTIC FOUR FIRST STEPS, try try again

Marvel still trying to reclaim their box office glory comes up with another underachiever.  Fantastic Four First Steps isn't the film that is going to bring them back from the precipice.  As the critics and box office analysts have been saying for a while the superhero genre has just plain exhausted the viewer.

Still holding on to that meta universe verse stuff, we're on Earth 828 mostly because Marvel still insists on dragging all of their films together under one umbrella.  We are introduced to the Fantastic Four the prime members of the Marvel comic books.  Right away we are plunged into a confusing mess of storytelling with mentions of mole men and super apes which the team has apparently defeated. We are also dragged into a bewildering recap of their origin story.  After what seems like an eternity the Silver Surfer (who apparently had a sex change) shows up to announce the that the big and I mean literally big supervillain Galactus is coming to eat up Earth 828.  Will the Fantastic Four be able to defeat Galactus?  

 

For a film that was supposed to reinvent or restart the Marvel Universe Fantastic Four First Steps seems mighty derivative.  There are call outs to scenes from Star Wars ( a cute little robot, space ships flying around), that huggy feely stuff that we had to put up with in Marvel's Thunderbolts and oddly a North Korean monster movie called Pulgasari which featured another stiff stone faced giant stomping around.  Frankly the film seemed a little slow moving until the big battle at the end with the inevitable ending triumph.

 

What's good about this movie?  Well it looks cool with its blend of a mid 1960's look combined with some futuristic buildings.  The cast seems kind of game although in the back of my mind I couldn't help thinking that all of these rather mature adults dressed up as superheroes looked kind of silly.  I believe this film broke even financially but it's not the blockbuster success Disney and Marvel were apparently looking for. 

The film has four writers, Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer, a lot of writers is always a very bad sign.  The running time is 114 minutes