(courtesy IMP Awards)
Most superhero movies, if you look beyond the bangs and the booms and the epic struggles for curdely painted yet titanic struggles between god and evil, are about connection.
Friendship, camaraderies, even family figure strongly, even with figures like Batman or Iron Man who might otehrwise be regarded as lone wolves crusading for justice and truth, and often, let’s be honest, the survival of the Earth itself (which frankly, has a less than sensible habit of ending up in the line of supervillain fire).
So, it will come as no surprise then to the casual observer that The Fantastic Four: First Steps leads heavily into heartwarming themes of family and deep-seated connection, expressed, as you might expect through emotionally charged and extraordinarilu intimate moments but also with the kind of affectionate wisecracking and gentle ribbing that comes from people who feel entirely at home with each other.
Who, in fact, are each other’s home.
While The Fantastic Four: First Steps does feature a Big Bad – though one who is nuanced in uncharacteristic, for Marvel at least, shades of grey; a being who acts, not out of active malice or evil but simply to satiate an endless and eternal hunger – and there is a battle to end all battles in which New York City, once again, comes out second best, the film cleaves very heard into the idea that while might and right matter, it is the deep and enduring bonds of family that will ultimately see you through.
We meet the titular four by way of a retrospective put together by a TV show on which the beloved four are appearing – the team of astronauts are international heroes and very much adored – and it soon becomes clear that Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm / Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), her younger brother Johnny Storm / Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Reed’s best friend Ben grimm / The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are a FAMILY.
Not simply because they are deeply and forever connected by bonds that go beyond lived experience and ongoing lived proximity – they share a deluxe penthouse apartment at the top of the Future Foundation, which looks very much like a private enterprise United Nations – but because they matter to each other far beyond simply long-held connections and deep emotional ties.
Their True North is each other and when the engimatic Silver Surfer / Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) glides enigmatically yet menacingly into the skies above Times Square and announces with a horrifying solemnity that Earth is “marked for death”, her appearance heralding the arrival of the Big Bad, Galactus (Ralph Ineson) who devours planets and their inhabitants with a ruthless and ceaseless amorality, what guides their fight back is not only their values of decency and care for others but a deep respect and love for each other.
These bonds only deepen when it’s announced that Sue is pregnant, and when it emerges that ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———– Galactus will spare Earth if they hand over their son Franklin, who may or may not be a super being with powers greater than the four themselves, who you will recall were transformed during an exploratory trip in space into superheroes.
While some of the people of Earth decide that’s the only path forward – amazing how fast people turn when their lives are in danger; impressively, even when the crowds are baying for the blood of Franklin, demanding he be handed over to save the planet, the Fantastic Four, and Sue in particular, take a higher road – and even Reed agonisingly wonders if that’s their only option, the family at the heart of this enrapturingly heartfelt story know there must be another way to fix this without sacrificing one of their own.
So, while, yes, you see Mister Fantastic do his bendy thing and Sue make things invisible at crucial moments, Ben use his super strength (while also falling in love with Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel Rozman which is cutely adorable) and the Human Touch go up in flames, and Earth is often in real peril, what comes to the fore again and again, and keeps you emotionally invested, is how much the Fantastic Four love, highly regard and will do anything for each other.
Set on Earth 828 and styled with retro-futuristic trappings which included a tape-driven robotic assistant called H.E.R.B.I.E. (Humanoid Experimental Robot B-Type Integrated Electronics)/voiced by Matthew Wood) and which gives the film a lushly different visual point of reference, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is one of those superhero movies that is really worth watching for far more than its big, impressive, and almost Marvel obligatory big titanic battle (which, it must be said, is executed with high emotion and almost balletic explosiveness).
The screenplay by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer doesn’t for a moment feel like a story put together by committee, moving seamlessly from big epic moments where fates are sealed (well, not ultimately but you know, it feels like that at the time) to smaller, intimate, humour laced – and don’t forget, for all the fraught punctuative narrative notes, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a very funny movie with quips and oneliners flying around merrily) – scenes where some pretty big issues are dealt with.
While Earth’s future may be on the line, so is that of the Fantastic Four, and while they invariably always act for the greater good, they are driven too by their closeness and the fact that, at the end of the day when the Galactis dust settles, they are there to love, fight for and care for each other.
It’s this dynamic that drives the visually distinctive, funny, intense and cohesively rich and beautiful intensity of The Fantastic Four: First Steps which might be leading to another of Marvel’s HUGE group movies, The Avengers: Doomsday, and which has all the epic trappings to match, but which is, at its core, and yes, its every present heart, a story of family and how you will do anything to ensure it endures, even staring down a “humongous, 14-billion-year-old, planet-devouring cosmic vampire” (as director Matt Shakman amusingly but accurately describes the Big Bad of the piece).
Are you like me and needing more info about The Fantastic Four? Watch this and catch up …