Fantastic Four: First Steps marks film number 37 (!!!) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the opener of Phase 6, and the fourth attempt to bring Marvel’s First Family to the screen. The previous attempts were remarkable failures—more memorable for the chaos surrounding them than for anything onscreen. And now, under the Marvel Studios banner, while the approach might be different, the results aren’t much better: it fixes some of the franchise’s past mistakes, but in turn, falls squarely into the MCU’s more recent ones.
One common thread in the team’s live-action history is how each version seemed born out of Fox’s desperate attempts to retain the rights—without ever truly understanding what made the comics special. The dysfunctional-but-loving family dynamic, the spirit of exploration over city-level crime-fighting, and the bold, weird, wildly imaginative tone—all of that was lost. (Pixar’s The Incredibles remains the best adaptation of the FF spirit, and frankly, I doubt anything will ever come close.) What we got instead were films that ranged from unintentionally hilarious to painfully dull, often the result of studio interference. And while First Steps doesn’t feel actively sabotaged, it still bears the marks of creative limitation—it never fully comes alive.
To its credit, there’s a real effort here to channel the comics’ energy. The film is colorful, bathed in a bright blue that gives it a stronger visual identity than most MCU entries (even if the flat, TV-like cinematography rarely strays from its overused medium shots). The production design is terrific, with practical sets that evoke the retro-futuristic aesthetic far better than any previous incarnation. And there’s Michael Giacchino’s score—by far the film’s best asset. Drawing from his past work (The Incredibles, Tomorrowland), he combines soaring themes, choral dread, and a cheerful undercurrent that tells a more compelling story than the film itself—giving emotional weight to Galactus, pathos to the Silver Surfer, and a sense of heroism to the team that the screenplay can’t quite match. It makes you leave the film singing “Fan-tas-tic Four!” with more feeling than anything that happens in the final act.
But for all its shiny packaging, the film is as hollow and weightless as a stretched Mr. Fantastic. This is a movie about two parents being forced to choose between their newborn son and the survival of the whole Earth, threatened by a literal planet-eating cosmic entity—and yet it lands with no emotional weight, no suspense, no real sense of consequence. There are life-altering events happening onscreen, but none of it sticks, because the film never gives a moment to breathe. Scenes are cut too tightly, emotions are declared instead of felt, and there’s no build-up, no tension, no rhythm. Like many modern blockbusters, a lot of things happen, yet they quickly evaporate. Take, for example, the destruction of an entire planet during the group’s search for Galactus, portrayed with not even a flicker of tragedy. Or the film’s big emotional turning point for a major character, handled in the most obvious, telegraphed way possible—draining it of any real impact. Added to that, the film’s special effects are wildly inconsistent (special effects artists surely have a thing against babies), and the fact that it was later trimmed down, cutting subplots, is deeply felt.
It’s tempting to blame the director—yet another TV veteran thrust into a blockbuster without the tools or freedom to make it their own. But the problem runs deeper. This is another installment in the MCU’s TV-director era, where filmmakers are chosen less for vision than for compliance. After the interesting but conflicting swings of 2021–2022 (with auteurs like Sam Raimi and Chloé Zhao), Marvel settled into a phase of safety-first hiring. Consistency wins over creativity, and the result is a flattening of tone, structure, and stakes.
For all its cosmic scale, First Steps feels inexplicably small—limited to a handful of sets, populated by maybe 30 people, and emotionally contained to the size of a sitcom pilot. The Earth is at risk, galaxies are collapsing, and yet the drama feels muted, the danger sanitized. The tired humor returns. The Fantastic Four may be in a new universe, and the whole universe itself is a Marvel alternate one, but they’re still stuck in Marvel’s same-old formula.
The cast struggles under these conditions. Joseph Quinn tries too hard to be funny, Pedro Pascal seems disengaged, and both Julia Garner and Ebon Moss-Bachrach leave little impression. Vanessa Kirby fares best, grounding the film with some emotional honesty, but even her performance feels boxed in by a script unwilling to challenge its characters in meaningful ways. And it’s hard not to notice how irrelevant the team’s actual powers feel to the plot. Each gets their obligatory moment to show off, but none of it feels integral. The 2005 Fantastic Four and its sequel may be dull, but at least their powers mattered to the story.
What remains is yet another piece of MCU fluff—glossy, fast-paced, and quickly forgettable. A movie that looks like one of those chrome-finished collector Silver Surfer figures—sleek and polished in its packaging, but featherlight the moment you pick it up. It may be more polished than past attempts, but it still fails to capture the heart, wonder, or spirit that made the Fantastic Four iconic in the first place—or the thrilling sense of adventure that the superhero genre seems to have forgotten how to deliver.