The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

[Edgy MD]

You all might have done well to take me up on my recommendation of Rental Family, because here is a film that explores themes of family from a Marvel perspective, and it is different-like.

Fun Fact: Our own Ben Grimm appears!

[Edgy MD]

Nobody?

Gosh, lucky you.

[Edgy MD]

Some films have holes in the plot, but you really don't mind, because they do a really good job developing and commenting on the themes.

This film has massive and ridiculous plot holes — which it takes its time opening, because it spends a lot of time on back story.  Then they really think they cover those holes over with thematic development as noted above because they bring those themes hammering down on you over and over.

But it doesn't seem to understand what it is selling at all.  Some vague endorsement of family.  This is the most ongoing theme in the FF comic books, but the film makers don't really understand the nuances of why that is important to the book's fans, and seem to be working from a third-hand explanation.  That ignorance left bare, what you are left with is the silliness of the cosmic aspect of the Marvel universe.

The real star here is the future modern design/style and the analog-based technology of the early-to-mid sixties, p placing this in a version of New York on an alternative planet.  This should make a Mets fan/1964 World's Fair fan like me plotz.  But even surrendering to that look requires that you check your mind and your soul.  The color treatment makes money shots look two-dimensional.  The obvious plastic surgery on the female stars' faces and the CGI manipulation of the baby's face is unsettling.  Everybody talks about the four team members being geniuses, and Reed Richards being an uber-genius, but ... everything they do seems to be the dumbest possible choice, with the only exception being the dumb choice my wife and I made in sitting through the whole thing.

The film was originally teased at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home and the again in Dr. Strange and the Multi-Verse of Madness, but the powers that be kept the film itself from intersecting in any way with the rest of MCU so it's stink wouldn't stick to other properties.

Go give another watch to The Incredibles, which was everything this movie set out to be, and everything this movie failed to be.