Review - The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
Kidults Zone Editorial · about 5 hours ago
A beautiful retro future with a villain problem
Rating: 6/10
Director: Matt Shakman | Screenplay: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer | Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Julia Garner, Ralph Ineson, Natasha Lyonne, Paul Walter Hauser | Cinematography: Jess Hall | Music: Michael Giacchino | Runtime: 115 min | Rated: PG-13
The best thing about The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the world it's set in. The retro-futuristic 1960s vibe, paired with the cinematography and the production design, is genuinely stunning. Jess Hall shoots it beautifully, and Michael Giacchino's score leans into the optimism instead of undercutting it. For once, a Marvel film looks like something rather than nothing. That counts for a lot, and it carries the movie further than the script deserves.
The cast is doing good work
The cast is great across the board, and two of them are doing something more than that.
Vanessa Kirby is the standout as Sue Storm. She plays her with authority rather than warmth, which is the correct read on the character and one adaptations keep missing. She's the person actually holding this family together, and Kirby never has to announce it.
Julia Garner is the other. Her Silver Surfer is eerie and mournful and genuinely alien, and every scene she's in has a different gravity to it. Casting her was a risk and it pays off completely.
I kind of wish we got more of the Thing. But hey, at least this is the first time he isn't portrayed as chronically depressed about being a rock. Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays Ben Grimm as someone who's made peace with what happened to him, and it's a small change that makes a big difference.
Same goes for Natasha Lyonne's character. There's no real role here for her, but it feels less like a waste and more like they're holding her, and the Thing, in reserve for something bigger down the line.
Galactus got nerfed
Ralph Ineson's voice as Galactus is very cool. That is a voice built for a planet-eating god, and every time it comes out of the speakers the film gets bigger.
Galactus himself, though, felt nerfed. He's supposed to be a cosmic-level threat, orders of magnitude beyond Thanos, an entity that consumes worlds as a biological necessity. He never really registers as that dangerous. He looks the part and sounds the part, but the film doesn't stage him like an extinction event.
I miss when villains were written with actual weight. Not just scale, weight. Something that changes the temperature of a room when it walks in.
The story plays out exactly as expected
Story-wise, it's limited and a bit too predictable. I really don't enjoy it when a film unfolds exactly the way it did in my head on the way to the cinema. The dilemma is set up, resolved the obvious way, and the family emerges intact.
Where's the surprise? A film this confident about its own look should be willing to take one swing you don't see coming.
The verdict
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is gorgeous, well-cast and pleasant to sit through, and it never takes a real risk. Go for the design, the aesthetic, Kirby and Garner. Don't expect the story to catch you off guard, because it won't.
6/10