A lot of people have had really high hopes for The Fantastic Four: First Steps in the build-up to its release. I have been feeling more cautious – even as someone who rates Avengers: Endgame as one of the few movies I'd give five stars to – but in principle it definitely looked set to deliver what I'd want from it. Charismatic cast, cool retro-futurist production design, a very giant man – that kind of thing.
Sadly, when the credits rolled, the first words I used to describe it were "aggressively fine". Somehow, despite succeeding in giving me everything I mentioned above, I found it bland and formless.
[Spoilers for both Fantastic Four and Superman from here!]
Everything seems to come incredibly easily to Marvel's first family. Reed happens to have already been working on the technology they need to win the day. Johnny translates and learns a whole alien language in a couple of months (I assume? The timeline of events is also pretty slippery). Sue is exactly powerful enough for whatever needs to happen at the time.
I felt basically nothing about any of it. It wasn't thrilling, it wasn't exciting. Even the characters and the world they live in seem to feel the same way as me – everyone seems so flat and bored, inside the Baxter Building and outside it. I'd have assumed the America of Earth 828 is in a great depression or war, if the movie hadn't made clear that the Fantastic Four created a techno-utopia.
Obviously, I don't expect to go into a superhero movie and feel any genuine worry that a lead character is going to die, or that the world might end. Instead, these movies are supposed to leave you wondering 'How are they going to get out of this one?' and then surprise you with a cool result. First Steps tells you exactly how they're going to get out of this one in advance, and then they get out of this one in essentially the exact way they promised.
I can even get on board with that, if a movie is interesting along the way, thematically. If it does daring things with its character interactions and motivations, if it's exploring meaty themes, or if it least makes me think about something these movies haven't really tackled before.
Thunderbolts* has a good dose of this, and is Marvel's best movie in years as a result. First Steps can't get any theme beyond first gear, so there's nothing for me to chew on here.
But still, I found it to be a diverting one hour 55 minutes, even if it was disappointing as the hopeful 'Don't worry, Marvel's turning a corner' movie I'd expected it to be.
But then I went straight into my second viewing of Superman, and the contrast between them makes FF look even worse in my eyes, and Superman look even more impressive.
Tales from the Krypto keeper
Superman manages a more engaging character dynamic in its first three minutes than Fantastic Four manages in its entire run-time, and only one of the characters involved can speak.
Krypto's lack of obedience in the opening sets up that this movie will have the exact opposite to FF's problem, where everything comes too easy: in Superman, being the most powerful metahuman in the world doesn't stop things being really damn hard.
(In general, I think the writing around Krypto is genius. Having an obedient dog who's as strong as Superman basically means you have two Supermans. Supermen? In any case, that would be a lot for the first movie narrative to handle. Making Krypto a force of uncontrolled, chaotic good solves that problem.)
Where Fantastic Four travels inexorably from plot point to plot point on rails, Superman swings between surprises. Lex has a pocket universe! Superman and Lois have a tense journalistic sparring! Now there's a kaiju! This one dude turns into kryptonite!
Why are all these things happening? Because it's a comic book movie, partly, and this is like flicking through a comics run where different issues have vastly different stuff going on. But it's partly also because this movie has a lot on its mind.
Without getting bogged down in taking any metaphor so seriously that it becomes a full-on allegory, Superman asks questions about the morals of intervening in the conflicts of other countries, of the motives of people who have the resources to manipulate the world in the background (okay, creating a literal rift between people might be leaning more towards allegory), and of how immigrants find their personal identity, among others.
These create a world where Superman's principles and morals make him a nuanced and interesting character. When fighting the kaiju, the recklessness of the Justice Gang (we'll assume they've settled on that name for now…) means he has to spend all of his energy not fighting the monster, and trying to persuade people he can't fight to be cool about it.
One of my favorite moments in the movie is when he tells Lois he's going to turn himself in to the government, but it's not because he's a Boy Scout who respects the process and the law – he casually throws out that it's the only way to find Krypto. Turning himself in is required to satisfy his morals, but not in the way we might've seen in the past.
Despite being a mile-a-minute movie that bounces through all kind of bonkers comic-book scenarios, it still finds the time to give you something to chew on when you leave the screen. It was worth watching a second time to dig into the themes I picked up the first time, and to see more seething nuance from Nicholas Hoult's fantastic performance as Lex Luthor, especially. It seems like it must be a three-hour movie, yet it's only 130 minutes.
Fantastic Four, by contrast, I can't believe filled 115 minutes. Events just slipped by me, like I was drifting down a lazy river in a floating ring. As someone who mostly goes hard for the idea that movies generally need to be shorter, maybe this one needed more time for there to actually be some friction in it. But maybe that wouldn't have helped either…
Is there any juice left to squeeze
Marvel has been down for a while, but I've hoped that with the right course correction we could see a return to form. A slower schedule, a willingness to be more daring, a narrower focus on the story of each movie… the one-two punch of Thunderbolts* and First Steps seemed like they should be the chance to showcase that, and build towards Doomsday being genuinely exciting.
Unfortunately, they've mostly convinced me that Marvel has lost its juice in a way that's maybe irretrievable.
I think Thunderbolts* is a good movie, and yet despite being built around this heavy metaphor for mental health (which I think it delivers really well), it left me with no impression after I left the cinema. Even though it's a more thinky film, I didn't really think about it. It said what it has to say about its themes, and asks no questions beyond them.
Fantastic Four doesn't even manage that. It has all the ingredients, but is totally unexciting and only just qualifies as charming. The Incredibles is 21 years old and does everything better than this movie, despite being a barely-concealed Fantastic Four rip-off.
Superman left me with things to talk about and think about – character motivations, themes, clever writing.
I don't particularly care if DC successfully launches its new cinematic universe off the back of Superman. I won't be excited just by the thought that a movie will tie into Superman. I'll get the thrill of anticipation if I trust a movie's going to be good.
I'm excited to see the next movie that comes from the DC creative team. I don't feel that way about Marvel any more, and First Steps is the final nail in that coffin.
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