Starring: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Mass-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Ralph Ineson

Directed by Matt Shakman

Disney, out now

Forced to balance their roles as heroes with the strength of their family bond, the Fantastic Four must defend Earth from a ravenous space god and his enigmatic herald. 

After a run of underwhelming (and underachieving) movies, Marvel gets its magic back at last with this breezy re-introduction of one of its biggest assets, which serves as an easy jumping on point for new audiences.

One of the many problems with Thunderbolts* was its proliferation of minor league characters, many of whom had only been on TV; it felt like you were watching the B team. Not so here with Matt Shakman’s (WandaVision) movie, which boasts a top cast and makes you feel like you’re experiencing a cinematic event.

Set in the alt-retro late 1960s of Earth 828 (not the Earth we live on) where there are no other superheroes than the Fantastic Four (though plenty of villains), this serves as a palette cleanser for those who want to watch and understand a movie without having to do their homework beforehand. As with the recent Superman, the movie is not interested in retelling the origin story, which has already been covered in Tim Story’s 2005 Fantastic Four and Josh Trank’s 2015 Fant4stic.

That’s not to say we don’t get a reminder of how the team get their powers, we just don’t have to relive it in detail. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby unleashed their three-issue 1966 story, The Galactus Trilogy, the comic book was four years old, and that’s the same timeframe we’re working to here. The F4 have been saving the planet for four years and their moment of familial happiness (Sue is pregnant) is ruined by the arrival of the Silver Surfer (Ozark’s Jennifer Garner), herald of the cosmic being and devourer of worlds Galactus (Ralph Ineson).

The team journey into space to meet Galactus, who agrees to spare Earth, but at a price. Cue lots of clever plans to save the planet without having to make an unacceptable sacrifice. And it’s a lot of fun, with the team – Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Richards (Vanessa Kirby) Ben Grimm (Ebon Mass-Bachrach) and Johhny Storm (Joseph Quinn) all leaning in to their super powers.

Michael Giacchino’s score propels things along nicely, helping to cement the retro-future look of the movie. And at under two hours it doesn’t outstay it welcome. But I wonder if this at the expense of some characters who seem to go nowhere or just get the briefest of screen time.

Hang around for the obligatory mid-credits scene – we already know that we’ll be seeing the team next Christmas in Avengers: Doomsday – and just revel in the joy of a Marvel movie that feels fun rather than a chore.

Verdict: A long overdue return to form for Marvel. Perfect summer popcorn fare. 8/10

Nick Joy

The greatest sin a film can commit, for me at least, is to be boring. Schlock, trash, stupid, ambitious, all of these do not necessarily stop a film being hugely entertaining.

The Fantastic Four, as a film, was boring to me. As a piece of work it’s layered and interesting although, perhaps, not for good reasons which we’ll tackle below.

I think it was boring because it never really felt like there was anything actually happening that mattered. Right from the beginning the story didn’t really do a good job of building up a sense of risk nor of consequence.

I can understand part of this – the film opens with a cosy vibe, giving us some of its best moments as it builds a world in which the Fantastic Four are the heroes, beloved and, effectively kings and queens. It’s reminiscent of Narnia with the four children in charge of the whole world and sitting on their thrones – or in this case in a huge apartment at the top of the largest building in New York.

But as we move past this extended montage of how amazing the Fantastic Four are, with its throwback appeal to a world that for many people represents a well of nostalgia to be mined for good feeling, the film falters with enemies whose motivations are poorly demonstrated and set pieces that are beautiful but empty.

The second half of the film is markedly poorer in almost every respect – the CGI is terrible, especially around the baby. The politics of Sue Storm’s character painful, the flexibility of superpowers to be what is needed for the plot rather than consistent is dismal. And best not to talk about the paper thin characterisation of the Silver Surfer, the only other woman of note in the story whose only defining character trait is to do as the plot requires.

Look, FF is moderately funny, winsome and lovely to look at on the whole part but it’s built on an edifice it’s taken me a few days of thinking through to understand.

The Fantastic Four is written and builds a world where there are no bad people. Everyone is reasonable. When people do terrible things, like march as a mob to kill a baby, they can be talked down because, they are at heart, just reasonable people with ‘legitimate concerns’.

I look at the world around me and think this story belong in another time and place, one where the concerns of minorities were irrelevant, where Jim Crow was still extant and where most White people in the US felt like they owned the world and certainly owned their immediate slice of it.

Before I get too far into this analysis I need to say that I don’t think this film is racist (although it’s certainly the Whitest Marvel film in a while). I think the problem is different. I think this film is radically centrist.

Some people might be longing for a world in which everyone can talk out their problems. Hell, I’m one of them. But that hope is just that – a hope. I’ve faced too many people who see my life as one to be snuffed out or, at best, stymied, because of the colour of my skin. I’ve met too many men who think women are inferior because they don’t have penises. I’ve met too many people who think they have a right to control the sexuality and gender of others. There is no reasoning our way out of that.

In a time when a genocide is ongoing and being facilitated by powers who should damn well know better, presenting us a scene in which a mother can talk down a murderous crowd doesn’t just work from a suspension of disbelief basis but it also fails the basic litmus test of actually meaning anything.

Having nothing to say is one of the big reasons why FF is boring. Retreating behind the idea that everyone is reasonable is absolutely playing to the extremist crowd who was to be portrayed as ‘reasonable people with legitimate concerns’. Instead of yeeting extremists into the sun, this film portrays the ugliest behaviour as legitimate and worthy of debate.

When you hide from reality it becomes really very hard for you to say anything consequential.

Alongside this, the drive towards centrism that equates abhorrent behaviours as legitimate expressions of extremist grievance, the film has a really odd view of women, motherhood and worth.

Setting aside the baffling establishing exposition where we learn that Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm are apparently world leading scientists against the rest of the film where they struggle to put two scientific words together unless the plot demands it, Sue Storm is the strangest characterisation of all.

Sue is only really powerful when she’s a mother. Her womanhood contingent on being a mother. Her power fluctuating in direct proportion to how much danger her son is in. Sue’s only agency is to act to protect her child – even when the entire world is in danger – she’d rather let the world burn than give up her child. She’s quite happy for other people to be sacrificed on her behalf and Reed ends up being a man with no moral backbone at all.

The political statement this is making not only about women but about motherhood is startling because in real contrast, Reed, as father, is given freedom to act according to the needs of the situation in a way Sue isn’t.

The way the story is written leaves us with a group of four superheroes who are actually unelected dictators willing to let the world die for their own benefit. They are the perfect billionaires and I don’t say that as a compliment.

And so we come back to the political heart of The Fantastic Four – centrism – by which I mean a vote for the status quo. The Fantastic Four wants the world to stay the same, for the powerful to remain powerful, for the poor and powerless to give up what they have for the sake of the powerful.

The only actual hero in the story is Moleman (and possibly Ben Grimm for similar reasons), a working class leader of a mining community who is the only one who actually works to save people who aren’t like him. I’d watch a film about his struggles with the powerful and why he resents the rich and still does the right thing anyway.

Instead he’s portrayed as slightly dumb, easily swayed and in need of someone else’s leadership. Because working class people can’t be seen to have agency of their own – such a setoff circumstances threatens the political status quo.

The film isn’t hateful except in as much as it’s a paean to centrism; a yearning for a world which never existed, nostalgia as poison for everyone except those who were served by a past in which they were structurally and legally more powerful and entitled.

Unlike Superman, which tells us kindness to strangers is the core of goodness, The Fantastic Four suggests that looking after the rich and powerful to our own detriment is what makes for a happy society. The feedback of such a centrist position is, of course, that it’s men who are privileged above others and that women exist to be mothers to and for those men.

I don’t know the original material well enough to say whether this was a political subtext all along, but the film, as presented, is one that loves the myth of centrism, gives space for extremists to be seen as reasonable and thinks women only really exist in relation to their families.

It is not a film for me.

5 powers cosmic out of 10

Stewart Hotston