As a superhero movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps has a stale feeling that gets less and less interesting as it progresses before winding up as the usual superhero routine despite the best efforts of its talented cast, notes Mayur Sanap.
As a brand new chapter in the next phase of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the welcoming aspect of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is that it is aware of the Marvel fatigue.
There’s no multi-verse hubbub here.
No unnecessary cameos.
It’s not that 'all rolled into one' fan-service exercise. And it doesn’t alienate anyone who hasn't seen many MCU films (or shows).
The cast is all new, characters are same old, and the story is a recycled version of the Jessica Alba, Chris Evans-starrer Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) that comes with the same snazzy makeover as DC Universe’s Superman.
If the James Gunn movie put up a radically different approach to the franchise, this one is a frustratingly basic superhero saga, where you have nothing new other than its spiritless look-how-cool-this-new-visual-style-is approach.
Sure, First Steps has a distinct visual identity and the fresh coats of blue and white are elegant to look at. Even the camaraderie that the dynamic cast shares with each other has an easy charm.
This is an extension of what Marvel achieved in the earlier outing, Thunderbolts (which was re-titled as The New Avengers in a playful gimmick).
But the bad news is that it still isn't any good.
As a superhero movie, First Steps has a stale feeling that gets less and less interesting as it progresses before winding up as the usual superhero routine despite the best efforts of its talented cast.
The story kicks off with the four protagonists being already known to the world as the Fantastic Four.
Pedro Pascal’s Reed is Mister Fantastic.
Venessa Kirby’s Sue is Invisible Woman.
Joseph Quinn’s Johnny is Human Torch.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben is The Thing.
The world is overjoyed as Reed and Sue are expecting a child.
Their happiness is short-lived when a humanoid alien called Silver Surfer (Ozark’s Julia Garner under heavy prosthetics) announces to the people of Earth that their planet has been marked for destruction by Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the enormous cosmic entity that gobbles planets.
It is now up to the heroic quartet to save the Earth from doomsday.
The story is straight-forward and treads along the predictable way.
What Director Matt Shakman and his team of writers do differently is the way they make Sue and Reed the emotional focal point of the story with themes of love and family thrown into the mix.
Shakman, whose wonderful Marvel show WandaVision gave pop culture a bittersweet line in ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?’, nails the dynamic between Reed and Sue as a couple in love.
This track could have easily been turned into something sappy and clichéd, but Shakman and both the actors, Pascal and Kirby, make this a beating heart of First Steps.
But this also a shortcoming of the film.
The focus is so much on Reed and Sue’s dynamic that other two protagonists, Johnny and Ben, are almost shuffled off due to very little personality to their characters.
As the flame-controlling and airborne superhuman, Johnny gets a couple of interesting set pieces, notably while chasing down the Silver Surfer and during an intergalactic action stretch.
Ben, on the other hand, remains uniformly vanilla as a talking pile of stones who mouths sitcom-level dialogue with no real personality.
It’s also surprising how action deficient First Steps is, and whatever little action we see is mostly lacklustre because the special effects simply aren't that special.
The creative design for Silver Surfer, for example, looks far inferior to its 2007 counterpart.
Galactus as this outsized villain, who is presented as a Thanos-like figure, is also devoid of any wonder and whimsy.
A few interesting steps are being taken with a sense of rebound for Marvel, but the seen-it-all-before feeling still looms large.
The two vacuous post-credits scenes confirm that we will be seeing it all again.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps Review Rediff Rating: 
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