“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is….well…

We need to face facts: there has never been a good "Fantastic Four" movie. Although I appreciate the 2005 version, it's not a particularly good movie. It is fun and has some cool moments, but overall, it's a bit of a mess. There were other attempts to put this team on screen, but we don't discuss those for good reason. With "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," Marvel has finally done right by these characters.

The group known as The Fantastic Four has been superheroes for years. The team of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are faced with their greatest threat yet in Galactus (Ralph Ineson), a massive being who consumes planets.

One of the best things about "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is that it is not directly tied to any Marvel movie we have seen before. This movie takes place on a different Earth than the one in the MCU. It is as close to a standalone film as Marvel has given us in a very long time. It serves as a good entry point for those who have not seen every MCU movie multiple times.

The Fantastic Four is often referred to as "Marvel's First Family," and this movie finally does them justice. While the film has some great action sequences, they are not the focus. What "First Steps" gets right that the previous attempts didn't was the interplay between these four characters. Sue and Reed navigate a relationship while dealing with one crisis after another, as Johnny and Ben's near-constant teasing of one another, this team functions as a family and comes together when the world needs them. That, above anything else, is why this movie works; it understands these characters.

Putting aside the bad adaptations, there was still a lot riding on this movie. This was Marvel's first attempt at bringing these characters to the screen (20th Century Fox owned the rights until Disney bought the studio in 2019). Marvel has been struggling with consistency lately. The films they have released since "Avengers: End Game" have been either box office flops, critically panned, or "that was pretty good." No one was getting blown away like they used to. "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" seems to have steered the MCU in the right direction.

8/10

Rated PG-13 for action/violence and some language

1h 54m