It remains an oddity that – until this weekend, anyway – two of Marvel’s most popular creations of the 1960s have singularly failed to click in stand-alone films. A brace of Hulk projects slumped. The comics giant has also struggled to make sense of The Fantastic Four. Were they a little too of their time? The happy family. Matching costumes. Clean-cut heroics. Cold War morality. They were never cool in the way the irreverent Spider-Man was cool.
The supposed solution here is to lean into the period detail. Set on an alternative Earth to our own (and that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe), The Fantastic Four: First Steps revels in a retro-futuristic version of the 1960s. Chet Baker is on the wireless. VW Beetles are on the streets. Fashions are sub-Quant. But Reed Richards, genius pater familias of the Fantastic Four, has mastered teleportation and lightspeed transportation. Similarities to the Jetsons are pitched as a feature rather than a bug.
It seems as if – see also the recent Superman reboot – origin stories have gone out of style. Mark Gatiss, enjoying himself as a variation on Ed Sullivan, introduces the heroic foursome on telly and allows a potted history of how they became so Fantastic.
In short, they went into space and weird waves mucked up their metabolisms. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) can stretch. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Richards’s wife, can turn invisible. Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is stony and strong. Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), Sue’s brother, can burst into fire.
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At least that’s the idea. The plot is so taken up with impending apocalypse that the team doesn’t get much chance to use their superpowers until the last 15 minutes. This is particularly irksome for Sue. In the comic series, the Invisible Woman (for it is she) accumulated further powers as the years progressed. Those new to the story may be puzzled as to the apparently unbounded nature of her abilities in the current entertainment’s closing conflagration.
The crisis that so escalated is essentially the same as the one that launched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Shalla-Bal, distaff Silver Surfer in the unrecognisable form of Julia Garner, visits New York to announce the Earth is being demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. I jest. I jest. She is herald to the mighty Galactus, who seems to destroy planets for fun. In this version, Ralph Ineson – best known for throwing a copper kettle over a pub in The Office – allows just the faintest hint of Leeds into the cosmic entity’s booming delivery.
Coming after the exhaustingly overstuffed Superman, First Steps rattles along with a refreshing clarity of purpose. It doesn’t exactly make sense. Pascal is a little too warm for a hero who originally came across like the clean-cut, hospital-cornered star of an Eisenhower-era cigarette commercial.
The computer-generated set pieces, by allowing anything to be possible, cause nothing to matter. So self-conscious are the period stylings that they end up reminding one more of earlier reimaginings of the pre-Beatles era than of anything actually produced in that period. As if someone attempted to construct the early 1960s by watching Mad Men rather than The Apartment.
But we are – thank heavens – free of any tangled links to previous films or TV series from the MCU. No homework is required to make sense of The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It can be enjoyed or loathed on its own uncomplicated terms. Engagement will, however, require an embrace of some sentimental values that have gone out of date. If the film does have a message it is that the greatest superpower of all is a mother’s love. Ahhh! (Or bleurgh! if you prefer.)
In cinemas from July 24th
