REVIEW: The Fantastic 4

REVIEW: The Fantastic 4 - First Steps

I'm going on the record to say that, even with the devastation wrought upon Wanda's character in "Multiverse of Madness," WandaVision is one of the best things we've gotten from any stage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that has to be the main reason why Marvel enlisted Matt Shakman to pilot their premiere Fantastic 4 film (stealing him away from Star Trek 4 ...), the film that was going to rescue the studio from their post-"Endgame" stupor. There are probably all sorts of soundbites about this being the first real version of the story to get the machine to work, and I wouldn't disagree.

But in the context of Marvel's larger rehabilitation, The Fantastic 4: First Steps reads less like the great MCU reset and more like an elaborate gymnastics routine, an attempt to splice Marvel's Thanos era with its Not-Iron-Man era. Graciously, this works better than it sounds on paper, but it does kind of purchase this at the expense of real personality.

The movie, for example, falls back on humor that probably tested well with the focus groups. Johnny has to remark to himself that of course the first girl he's interested in is heralding the destruction of his planet. Reed wants the school kids to get excited about space travel but has to acquiesce that they're only here to see stuff blow up.

Even the movie's bids for gravity and emotional impact end up feeling like a sum average. Sue delivers the movie's treatise at the precipice of Act III, that being a part of a family means fighting for something bigger than yourself, a thesis that could have been outsourced from any one of a dozen MCU projects.

The film's most unique ingredients are the optic factors stemming from the design of its retro-future universe. (This was no doubt detailed in Shakman's contract.) I wouldn't mind getting to see Earth 828 again at some point. But I couldn't overlook that after dazzling you with its alternate-timeline New York, the movie actually spends most of its time trying to convince you that it's not that different from the other Marvel flicks.

The camaraderie is strong between Marvel's first family. Of the squad, Pedro Pascal feels the most equipped for his character. He brings the optimal measure of insecurity for a science nerd who stumbled into superhero-dom as well as an anxious first-time father.

Edon Moss-Bachrach winds up feeling the most underused here. I don't fault the actor, or even the CGI rock dressing over his face. But his character winds up with the least to do. Where the other players get articulated character arcs, his big culminating moment I think had something to do with the tagline of his in-universe cartoon show.

Julia Garner's Silver Surfer probably has to walk the finest line. The film very clearly announces her early on as the emissary for the big bad guy, and so we're not surprised that her line delivery emerges very sterile, very impartial. It's hard to bring your heart with you as you're announcing the annihilation of a planet. The big test comes during critical character junctions when the team forces her to reckon with her complicity in Galactus' planet genocides. (This is what Johnny's major arc feeds into.) And Garner is able to stick the landing.

Had this been released leading up to "Infinity War," it would likely join the ranks of perfectly fine offerings like Doctor Strange or Ant-Man in the Marvel pantheon. I've enjoyed the players of those movies when they've shown up in the ensemble pieces more than I ever did in their native films. Perhaps that will be the fate of this team of superheroes. Thunderbolts* earlier this summer gave me more active hope for the future of the MCU, though this placeholder certainly didn't do anything to dash those hopes.

--The Professor

Comments

REVIEW: WICKED - For Good

I'm conflicted about how to approach this review. I know everyone has their own yellow brick road to the myth of The Wizard of Oz as a whole and the specific Broadway adaptation that brought us all here. I don't want to write this only for others who are familiar with the source material. Even so, I can't help but review this from the perspective of a fan of the Broadway show--someone who has been tracking the potential for a film adaptation since before Jon M. Chu's participation was announced for the ambitious undertaking of translating one of Broadway's most electric shows onto film. I can't help but view this from the vantage point of someone who knew just how many opportunities this had to go wrong. And it's from that vantage point that I now profess such profound relief that the gambit paid off. We truly have the " Lord of the Rings of musicals ." I'll give last year's movie the edge for having a slightly...

REVIEW: ZOOTOPIA 2

Any follow-up to the 2016 masterpiece, Zootopia , is going to be disadvantaged. Cinema was still a year ahead of Jordan Peele's "Get Out" when Disney released one of the most articulate explanations of race, allyship, and accountability ever put to film. Now that everyone knows how good, even "timely," a Disney pic can be, how do you surprise everyone a second time? The insights in this sequel won't spur any new chapters in your sociology 101 textbook. Though honestly, neither was the deflection of white saviourship that novel back in 2016. We more or less knew how racial profiling and biases played out in the landscape. What surprised many of us (and validated the rest of us) was the idea that these ideas could be articulated so eloquently in a children's film. It seems that the studio tried the same thing here with Zootopia 2 that it did with Frozen II six years ago. I think a lot of people wanted that m...

Elemental: Savoring Pixar's Fading Light

I’ve only been doing this writing thing for a short while. But in that space, I have been surprised at many of the developments I’ve gotten to witness unfolding in the popular film landscape. It was only five years ago, for example, that superhero movies were still thought to be unstoppable. Here in 2025, though, we know better. But the wheels coming off the Marvel machine accompanied a shift in their whole method of production and distribution, and it didn’t take long for the natural consequences to catch up with them as verifiable issues started appearing in their films. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) No. The development that has most surprised me has been critics and their slow-motion break-up with Pixar. The only way I know how to describe what I’ve seen over the last five years … imagine that your roommate has been stuck for a long time dating a girl who was obviously bad for him, and after he finally breaks up with her he gets back into the dating ring. All the girls he takes out ...

REVIEW: Mufasa - The Lion King

To get to the point, Disney's new origin story for The Lion King 's Mufasa fails at the ultimate directive of all prequels. By the end of the adventure, you don't actually feel like you know these guys any better. Such has been the curse for nearly Disney's live-action spin-offs/remakes of the 2010s on. Disney supposes it's enough to learn more facts or anecdotes about your favorite characters, but the interview has always been more intricate than all that. There is no catharsis nor identification for the audience during Mufasa's culminating moment of uniting the animals of The Pridelands because the momentum pushing us here has been carried by cliche, not archetype. Director Barry Jenkins' not-so-secret weapon has always been his ability to derive pathos from lyrical imagery, and he does great things with the African landscape without stepping into literal fantasy. This is much more aesthetically interestin...

The Apartment: What Makes Us Human

Earlier this year, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and this summer's Superman movie, James Gunn, attributed the chaos of modern Hollywood to one simple factor. Speaking with Rolling Stone, he said , “I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.” Without the insider knowledge that a Hollywood director has, I’m still inclined to agree. While the artistic and corporative threads of filmmaking have always been in competition, watching many tentpole films of the last fifteen years or so has felt more analogous to a dentist appointment than anything I'd call entertainment, and I can almost always trace the problem to something that should have been taken care of before the cameras ever started rolling. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) ...

REVIEW: AVATAR - Fire and Ash

The "Avatar" chapters have generally renewed their interest to the masses based on which exciting new locale and each new culture whichever film opts to explore. Following that dance, "Fire and Ash" introduces yet another Na'Vi clan, this one hailing from the scorched plains under the shadow of an erupted volcano. But their biome is decidedly less spectacular than the lush jungles of the Omaticaya or the rich coral reefs where the Metkayina dive. Between the ashen grounds of the volcano clan and the metallic fortress of the humans, this is comfortably the most monochromatic of the three Avatar films. And yet, Avatar: Fire and Ash is no less gripping for it. And this is where the internet really starts to reckon with what us fans of the franchise have always kind of known: that the many screensavers offered by the Avatar world ... they have been nice . But these films would have never made the impact they have if the...

REVIEW: Wake Up Dead Man

Last week when I reviewed WICKED: For Good , I mentioned that I couldn't help but analyze the film specifically from the lens of a lifelong fan of the Broadway phenomenon. I find myself in a similar position here examining the new "Knives Out" movie and its meditation on faith and religion. I can't help but view the film through my own experiences as a practicing believer. But first, some notes on the filmmaking itself. The third installment in the Knives Out saga sees Benoit Blanc investigating the murder of a tyrannical priest, Monsignor Wicks, presiding over a smalltown flock. The prime suspect is none other than the young, idealistic Father Jud, the new priest who found Wicks' approach to spirituality repulsive and completely counter to Christ's teachings. Thus, this mystery is a contest between two representations of Christianity, each desperate to define the function of religion in the mod...

Fine, I Will Review The Percy Jackson Show

The YA scene in the late 2000s and early 2010s was stuffed full of failed book-to-movie adaptations, desperate attempts to ride the Harry Potter train. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was not the first book to receive this treatment. Yet it somehow became the most infamous. We can speculate as to why it is that Percy Jackson never really exited the discourse the way properties like Eragon or Inkheart did. Perhaps it's because Rick Riordan continued to add to the lore with two follow-up sagas set in the same universe. (As of this writing, Riordan is preparing a whole additional Percy Jackson trilogy.) Perhaps it's because, while those other movie adaptations merely tried to replicate the Harry Potter effect , Percy Jackson admittedly borrowed generously from the Harry Potter story template. Whatever the reason, young millennials have never really been allowed to forget the crimes committed by FOX back in 2010 ...

An Earnest Defense of Passengers

Recall with me, if you will, the scene in Hollywood December 2016. We were less than a year away from #MeToo, and the internet was keenly aware of Hollywood’s suffocating influence on women on and off screen but not yet sure what to do about it. Enter Morten Tyldum’s film Passengers , a movie which, despite featuring the two hottest stars in Hollywood at the apex of their fame, was mangled by internet critics immediately after take-off. A key piece of Passengers ’ plot revolves around the main character, Jim Preston, a passenger onboard a spaceship, who prematurely awakens from a century-long hibernation and faces a lifetime of solitude adrift in outer space; rather than suffer through a life of loneliness, he eventually decides to deliberately awaken another passenger, Aurora Lane, condemning her to his same fate. So this is obviously a film with a moral dilemma at its center. Morten Tyldum, director of...

Wicked vs Maleficent

“Witch” has historically been used as a pejorative for a non-conformist woman, someone who does not obey the expectations of her culture. It’s little wonder, then, that a society with more progressive mores would commandeer the witch archetype into a warrior for social justice, or that the most famous witch of them all would spearhead this retyping. Yes, I am thinking of a certain Broadway musical and a fiery, green-skinned, justice-bent rebel-rouser. Wicked is a stage musical that follows the infamous Wicked Witch of the West as featured in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz . By shedding light on what happened before Dorothy dropped into Oz, Wicked recasts the witch as not a villain, but a misunderstood heroine. The show has been defying gravity on Broadway for coming on twenty years now, and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. When Disney’s Maleficen t came along a little over ten years later, the shorthand description of the film was basic...

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog