By tapping into the inherent optimism of Jack Kirby’s 1960s comics, the latest from Marvel Studios provides a glimpse into how to carry yourself in troubling times.
As a series, Fantastic Four has always been a bit of a black sheep in the world of superheroes. It is most culturally significant not unto itself, but because of what it represents. Launched as a comic book series by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1961, the Fantastic Four represented a new approach to adventure comic books. A mixture of superheroics, outlandish science fiction and a healthy dosage of soap opera melodrama, the series immediately felt like something different that elevated the scrappy Marvel Comics to become a counter-cultural phenomenon.
The thing about the Fantastic Four is that there is always a sense of fearlessness that fueled it. Kirby and Lee were redefining the bounds of what precisely a superhero comic could look, both visually with Kirby’s unbridled imagination as an illustrator and Lee’s undeniable sense of showmanship and entertainer. It felt unlike anything else on the market, and led to the explosion of the Marvel Universe we know today.
But as characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk and Wolverine would overtime overshadow the original four, there has always been a certain reverence for the original Marvel family. But with no disrespect to other Fantastic Four scribes, nothing really comes close to those original Kirby and Lee Fantastic Four comics. This is especially true for most adaptations outside of the comics; there have been three previous theatrical Fantastic Four films (four if you include the ashcanned Roger Corman cult classic), and all of them failed to capture the wild imagination of the Kirby/Lee run on the comics. The longstanding jokes amongst Marvel fans was that the best Fantastic Four movie was called The Incredibles.
So the stakes for Marvel’s latest Marvel Studios outing, bringing Marvel’s first family into the fold, feels like it has especially high emotional stakes. That isn’t taking into account the wandering, seemingly erratic identity crisis that the MCU over all has been facing since Endgame. So it makes sense that tackling the property head on requires a careful touch, and takes the most reasonable response one might expect: simply play homage to the Kirby/Lee original.
Despite appearances, Fantastic Four: First Steps doesn’t take place in the 1960s. Or rather, it doesn’t necessarily take place in the 1960s. We are never really given a firm timeline for when the story takes place, but rather told that the story is set in Earth 828, a new neighborhood in the seemingly endless Marvel Studios multiverse. But the aesthetic of the film definitely draw from mid-century modern sensibilities, which makes it feel distinct and honoring the series’ Camelot-era roots.
Which also bleeds into the film’s emotional identity. Director Matt Shakman taps into a sense of star-eyed optimism that feels hellbent on offering an unabashedly earnest window into a better world. That isn’t to say the film is precisely conservative, harkening back to the early 1960s as some sort of lost halcyon age. But rather it uses this charming ambiance to gesture towards something that never quite was: a world of harmony, understanding and curiosity. It lives in a post-war glow of boundless opportunity, and welcomes you to imagine a better world.
We are told in quick succession that we are approximately four years into the famous origin of the Fantastic Four: Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal, magnificent) led a crew of astronauts that included his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), his best friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Sue’s younger brother Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) in a bout of space exploration. But the crew was soon exposed to “cosmic waves” that caused unpredictable mutations that gave them their amazing abilities: Reed becomes a living Stretch Armstong, Sue is able to create forcefields that can cause her to become invisible, Johnny can become engulfed in flames, and Ben is now the massive, rock-like Thing.
Rather than allowing themselves to wallow in their failure, the Four soon become public heroes, facing down strange challenges and becoming cultural icons. They are the subject of cartoon shows and figures of political and culture significance. They even form the Future Foundation, a seeming stand-in for the UN that hopes to achieve world peace through open dialogue. The world appears to be at peace under the guidance and model of the Fantastic Four.
But there are two major events that threaten to up-end the very peaceful fabric of Earth 828. First, Sue Storm discovers she is pregnant, which while celebrated does lead to Reed catastrophizing about what it could mean for two super-beings to create new life. But more concerning is the coming of Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), herself merely a herald for the next threat: the world-consuming Galactus, a force of nature that the Surfer assures the people of Earth is inevitable.
It becomes clear quickly to the Four that Galactus is unlike any threat they have faced before, a festering force in the universe that has laid waste to entire other worlds, and now has set its sights on Earth. But the great power of the Four, as indicated in First Steps, is not their amazing powers, but rather their preternatural ability to always face problems head-on, pushing past cynicism or nihilism. They see a problem, and then they get to work on how to solve it.
It is this unerring sense of possibility that defines the spirit of the film. The Fantastic Four continuously face an issue, work through to a solution, end up either failing or only partially succeeding, and rather than being thrown into despair they turn to solve their new problem. This makes the film feel less propulsive than other modern superhero films, though it certainly has its fair share of thrilling set pieces of CGI eye candy. But the heart of the film is procedural, with a relatively small cast of characters determining how to respond to seemingly impossible challenges.
Perhaps this is why of the core cast, Pascal’s Reed feels the most well drawn. The film identifies the central identity of Reed as the man who considers all the angles, meaning that his fast-tracked mind often will lead him down dark alleyways so he can determine how to avoid them. This can lead to friction between Reed and the rest of the team, who have to serve as the heart to his endless mental gymnastics. The interplay between Pascal and Kirby drive at this split, where Reed is the big picture dreamer and Sue is the pragmatic but passionate orator. Their chemistry is winning, but it also creates explosions of tension that play directly into the Greek tragedy and melodrama that fueled the Kirby/Lee original.
And like the original comics, that is the magic trick that truly sets Fantastic Four apart. It is a movie that revels and celebrates boundless imagination, but also doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities that having the weight of the world on your shoulders can bring about. We see Ben both jovial about his identity as a public figure of admiration, but also silent resentful about being forever stuck inside an inhuman shell. We see Reed question his fitness for parenthood, both of his own child and as steward of humanity’s future. Sue likewise weighs her responsibilities as a public figure and matriarch of a family. And Johnny…well Johnny is mostly worried about convincing people he isn’t a dummy who happens to also be there.
It doesn’t hurt that the film is visually beautiful, feeling more confident in lingering in its Kirby-like visuals, hewing close to the original language of the comics across almost every possible moment. Shakman and cinematographer Jess Hall (along with an army of SFX houses) give the film a painterly look and composition that blends well with it’s mythic tone. For the first time, Reed’s powers look accurate in live-action, and the scale of Galactus makes him feel like an otherworldly threat. Like James Gunn’s Superman, First Steps isn’t ashamed of its comic book roots. It embraces the absurdity of its setting as a strength rather than a thing to work around. It goes big, often quite literally, but keeps the heart at the center recognizable and ultimately inspiring.
Which is precisely what made the Four feel so fantastic way back in 1961. For as outsized as the ultimate conflict becomes, the center remains profoundly human. And the end result is a film that shows that there is always a path forward, no matter how colossal the challenges may appear.
