KWIF: The Fantastic Four: First Steps (+1)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film.

This Week:
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025, d. Matt Shankman - in theatre)
Miller's Crossing (1990, d. Joel Coen - dvd)

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There was a lot of promises around the latest big screen interpretation of The Fantastic Four: that it would be a return to form for the Marvel Cinematic Universe; that it would stand on its own two feet, no homework required; that it would be super-retro and fun, fun, fun; that it would be a fresh start for Marvel's "phase six"... among other promises either made or inferred.

The film measures up to a few of these promises and struggles to do so with others, which is not to say it's a bad film, but it isn't quite the experience it needed to be and there's one reason, and one reason only for it: Superman.

I hate to review one movie by comparing it to another (lies, I actually love doing that) but I noted at the end of my Superman review that it felt very experimental, that it was pushing the form of superhero movies forward. The Fantastic Four: First Steps, for all its trying to do different, still feels like same old, same old in comparison to the James Gunn film that came two weeks before. My feelings about Superman were positive, but hesitant in coming out of that film, but my esteem for the film has grown and grown in the two weeks since. I find myself thinking about it, and all it does so very, very well, and I have had an ever-present urge to go back and relive it again. There hasn't been an inkling of that with The Fantastic Four. Where I'm holding onto the memories of scenes and characters in Superman tightly, I'm letting memories of The Fantastic Four slip away without a fuss, and after watching First Steps my affection for Superman has only gotten bigger. Unfortunately this movie's biggest mistake was coming out after Superman, and not realizing that the rules of the game have officially changed.

(I'm struggling with whether to lean into the Superman comparisons, or attempt to approach TFF:FS on its own merit, and I'm going to try for the latter but the former is potentially going to sneak in. Let's get back to those promises.)

When we think about the MCU in its prime, it was all about growth. Every film was a gateway to the possibility of other films. It was what made it so fresh and exciting. At times it was like it was a riddle to solve, and so many of us would look at the clues and try to tease out what was to come. Part of the game was the MCU's penchant for defying expectations. But we had a decade of that which culminated in Avengers:Endgame, a literal endgame for everything it started with Iron Man. So trying to replicate that in the 5 years since has been a wildly mixed bag. During peak MCU, countless other studios tried to replicate Marvel's successes and failed, and then Marvel phase 4 (and more specifically phase 5) started to feel like just another imitator. The Marvel machine couldn't get away from being a machine, they had set up their formula and didn't really want to tinker with it because it had been so successful. First Steps carries with it the promise of tinkering, and while the formula may have changed somewhat, the base of it is still too recognizable as the formula, and that's a problem.

The first act of The Fantastic Four introduces us to this superhero family, to Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Reed's best friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) who have already become champions of this parallel Earth that seems to have never escaped the aesthetic of the 1960s. A "helpful" newsreel breezes through four years of the Fantastic Four's history, from origin to how their presence has reshaped the world for the better and garnered them the adoration of practically everyone. It's an intense infodump that unfortunately is what passes for world building here. It does carry with it that naivete of America that shattered after Kennedy's assassination, where idols were heroes and vice-versa. The early tone that there's been this half-century age of innocence is inferred but not really reinforced. The arrival of Shalla-Bal, the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), herald of Galactus, should be the inflection point of the age of innocence, as she tells of the world's impending end. The world looks to the Fantastic Four for a solution to their doom.

In between the newsreel and the Silver Surfer's arrival, we gets some moments that sort of establish character and dynamics. It gives us Reed's logical and pragmatic mind, not entirely devoid of emotion, but emotion is hard for him to render. Sue is the diplomatic one, the peacekeeper, and discovers she is pregnant, although apparently it was supposed to be an impossibility. Ben, transformed into a man of rocks, is making the best out of living a life as a man of rocks... and you'd almost think he liked it if he didn't feel so isolated inside his rock body. And Johnny is...energetic, I guess. The film does a really good job of establishing their family dynamic, how they each engage with one another, but it succeeds less in defining them each as individuals within that dynamic. 

The second act finds the team racing off into space to confront Galactus, and besides the unnecessarily laborious takeoff sequence, the space venture and meeting Galactus sequence is the film's most stimulating (if only the trailers and the merchandise and promotional materials didn't spoil the visual for Galactus already). The encounter with Galactus goes poorly, and the realization is that this is perhaps the worst adversary to debut the team against as he's impervious to fire, the rock-man's punching would have no effect, Reed's super smarts can't really match that of a celestial (and his stretchy powers are of little use), and Sue doesn't quite know how to use her powers maliciously (like putting a bubble in Galactus' head and expanding it...even if that wouldn't work on a celestial, worth trying maybe?).

That opening newsreel tells us who these characters are and sort of breezes past their abilities, but the film really needed an opening sequence that showed us their abilities both in full action and being effective. Otherwise Reed stretches to grab things, Johnny flies around, Ben lifts a car to impress children and Sue turns invisible to avoid an awkward political encounter. Not really scintillating stuff.

I really wanted to luxuriate in the aesthetic of the film, but it so quickly becomes background, and the filter put over the film kind of muddies it all. I think it's trying to be gauzy but instead comes across more like AI slop. Superman proved you could have a vibrant, comic-booky world, and The Fantastic Four somehow, despite having the Mole Man and Galactus, still seems to fear bright colours and embracing the spirit of 60's comic books. It's a film that really wants you to feel the weight of the world ending and understand how the burden of solving this problem sits on the shoulders of these characters so heavily. It loses what sense of fun it had in the process. It feels like the Marvel machine in action. It feels like a film-by-committee with no personal flair or flavour. You can sense the producers in the background putting such pressure on "getting the Fantastic Four right" that they don't let the filmmakers play at all. This feels like work for them, if not necessarily homework for us.

But at the same time, the third act couldn't help but constantly trigger me into thinking about the rest of the MCU from which I this is supposed to be divested from. Reed's various solutions to the Galactus problem all feel like triggering points for the Fantastic Four's entry in the MCU proper, and I found that distracting. Again, part of the Marvel machine has taught us to exprect teases of "what comes next" and I think if we were having more fun we wouldn't be so distracted by it. I mean, we get a scene of a Kaiju-sized Galactus tromping through New York City...why are we not having fun with this?

Much of the film's plot centers around Sue's pregnancy and the fate of baby Franklin Richards. My wife wisely pointed out that Franklin becoming such a focal point pulls focus away from everyone else to their detriment. Perhaps it's because some of us comic nerds know what Franklin is, a living deus ex machina machine that unmake and remake reality, and rather than Franklin being the next step in this family, he feels like both a maguffin and a plot device seeded for the future.

The casting is really good, and it's a very small, contained cast. Beyond the main four, the Silver Surfer and Galactus (Ralph Ineson), there's FF's press agent Lynn Nichols (Sarah Niles), a talk show host (Mark Gatiss), a potential love interest for Ben (Natasha Lyonne) and the Mole Man Harvey Elder (Paul Walker Houser absolutely destroying his one big scene... this film should have opened with the classic first issue battle between the subterrans and the FF just so we could get more of Houser). That's pretty much it, besides Herbie, perhaps the best bleep-bloopy robot in cinema outside of Star Wars?

Michael Giacchino's score is brilliant, sweeping and bombastic, with it's main theme heightened by choral chanting that is both epic and kind of cheesy in a fittingly 60's vibe way. In a film where you have a near-comics-accurate Galactus, it's effusive praise to say it's the best part of the film. 

If this review sounds pretty negative, it's primarily because I'm slightly disappointed by the film. I wanted this Fantastic Four to be a blast, a rollicking good comic-booky time (like Superman was) and instead I got a good-not-great coldly impersonal Marvel movie that, while full of spectacle and the best representation of Marvel's first family so far, didn't deliver on what I felt it promised.

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My viewing of the films of the Coen Brothers continues with the Coen's first venture into period filmmaking, taking us back to prohibition era America (city unnamed). Of course Miller's Crossing is a film about crime, but where the Coens usual strength is in small-scale crime with perpetrators who rapidly get in over their head and frantically try to dig their way out, here they put their spin on organized crime.  

The usual sense of organized crime in cinema is grandiosity, making it feels epic in scale, and important. The Coens, though, make it small in focus, as we follow Tom (Gabriel Bryne), the right-hand to an Irish gangster, as he tries to avert a mob war, and then survive it when it starts. While a mob war may sound like an epic backdrop, the Coens mostly only show it from Tom's perspective, and he's manipulating the fringes, both trying stay out of it while being the eye of the storm.

Tom is, in true Coens fashion, a flawed protagonist. He seems to have a moral compass (for a gangster) and a fierce sense of loyalty to Leo (Albert Finney), and his advice always seems to be in Leo's best interest. But he's also a gambling addict, dedicated to paying off his own debts, but incapable of constantly incurring more. He's also sleeping with Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), and probably loves her, even though she's dating Leo and he knows she's bad news.

The Italian mobster Johnny Caspar (the incredible Joe Polito) asks Leo to whack Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) a problematic actor in his fight fixing scheme, but Leo refuses primarily because he's Verna's brother. Tom tries to convince Leo that Bernie is bad news and Verna's only keeping time with him to keep Bernie safe, but it falls on deaf ears. As tensions escalate between the Italians and the Irish, Tom does the only thing he can do to try and get Leo to listen, which is be 100% honest with him. It winds up backfiring and Tom is excommunicated. 

More than anything Tom seems to want to avert war on the city's streets, so he starts working for Johnny Caspar, which doesn't sit well with Johnny's right hand, and soon honest and loyal Tom starts spinning a web of lies that even he might get trapped in. It's a Coen Brothers specialty, making a mess and swirling it around and around watching the fragments scatter and collide. If it seems like Tom has a plan, it's a highly improvisational one.

I can't think of a move Miller's Crossing makes that is a wrong one. It's simultaneously tense but breezy, moving along fluidly without any stray motions. Byrne, Finney, Turturro, Harden, Polito and J.E. Freeman are all in top form in these fully realized characters, each seems to have their own inner monologue driving them that is telegraphed so readily in their performance without needing to externalize it. There's a lot of the comedic Coen Brothers touches to them which only serves to ground them as human rather than archetypes.

Barry Sonnenfeld as D.P. makes this film look phenomenal, and the whole picture is about having room to breathe, about space. So many sequences highlight the space between people or the distance one has to cross to bridge the gap. Sonnenfeld uses a lot of wide shots, and he holds the frame rather than cutting between the wide and the action shot. Miller's Crossing is patient in that regard, it's not quick to move, it lets the moments sit and play out. This is Sonnenfeld's last film with the Coens before he starts his own directorial career, but he, along with master composer Carter Burwell, are key components to the Coens early success. (Next up is Barton Fink with Roger Deakins providing cinematography, so there's going to be no degredation in the visual department, that's for sure, and Burwell's with the Coens for the long haul).