Fantastic Four: First Steps babyproofs the MCU

Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set in a world where the eponymous superheroes are beloved celebrities with their own animated TV show, which is used as a way to get Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) to say “Flame on!” and “It’s clobbering time!” without actually taking their traditional comics catchphrases seriously. That narrative conceit seems pointless, given that everything in the film feels just as morally tidy and simplistic as Hanna-Barbera’s 1967 cartoon The Fantastic Four. First Steps’ writers should have just let the heroes be equally silly.

Fantastic Four: First Steps might be the MCU’s simplest movie to date: The studio is kicking off Phase Six of the beleaguered Marvel Cinematic Universe by providing a jumping-on point that requires no previous franchise knowledge. The Fantastic Four exist in a different universe than the mainline MCU story: the retro-futuristic Earth 838. Both Tim Story’s 2005 Fantastic Four films and Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot told the story of how the group gained their superpowers, Matt Shakman’s 2025 version neatly compresses the origin story into an intro for an in-world TV special to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Fantastic Four’s fateful trip to space. 

That intro isn’t as tight as the opening titles laying similar groundwork in James Gunn’s Superman, but the conceit allows Shakman to provide a quick summary of who the heroes are and what this version of Earth is like. The Fantastic Four have not only battled classic Silver Age villains like Red Ghost (John Malkovich, cut from the movie), Diablo, and Mole Man (Paul Walter Hause), they’ve also brokered world peace. With Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby) expecting their first child, the biggest challenge the group faces is babyproofing their home/headquarters. That is, until Shalla-Bal/Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) shows up to let Earth know that they’re the next planet on the meal plan for Galactus (Ralph Ineson).

Apocalyptic stakes are nothing new for the MCU, though this film can at least milk some tension from the fact that since its setting is an alternate Earth, it doesn’t actually need to survive for the franchise to continue. The bigger problem is the tonal disconnect of inserting a galaxy-spanning threat into a movie that’s ats its best as an intimate story about family bonds.

The film includes a lot of bland gags about parenting. Reed, the smartest man on Earth, still winds up with some spare screws when assembling a crib. There’s a bit about the trickiness of getting a car seat properly seated in the Fantastic Four’s flying car that goes on for far too long. More compelling are the serious moments when Reed explains that he’s not a dreamer, but a pessimist, constantly thinking about the worst things that can happen, then trying to invent his way out of those scenarios. When he worries that his child will be like him, it’s clear that he’s just as concerned about passing on his bleak worldview as his cosmically mutated DNA.

First Steps hints at the larger impact this perspective could have as Reed “babyproofs the world,” in Ben’s words, by tracking all possible criminal activity, exhibiting a paternalism very similar to what led Tony Stark to create the killer robot Ultron. But Reed’s calculating nature is mostly just a source of friction with his wife. The filmmakers aim to get away from the sexism of earlier versions of the Fantastic Four by making Sue very powerful, but she’s still primarily defined by being both an actual mother and a figurative mother figure to the world. Even more impressive than her ability to turn a whole spaceship invisible is how she can use an impassioned speech to get the entire planet to work together.

The cast manage to make the Fantastic Four feel like a tight-knit family that would do anything for each other. It’s a togetherness that shines both in smaller moments, like Ben teasing Reed about his anxieties, and in the splashy scenes when they fight together, always looking out for each other while giving each other openings to use their strengths. The battles are far too reliant on CGI, but at least having a four-person team with highly distinct powers allows for some fun scenarios as they try to burn, blind, push, and climb Galactus. Narratively and thematically, First Steps winds up feeling a lot like Pixar’s The Incredibles, but with a less developed villain.

While Shakman and First Steps’ screenwriting team tidily present the Fantastic Four’s backstory, Galactus and Shalla-Bal are explained through exposition dumps that are narratively clumsy and leave far too little explained. The film might have worked better if Galactus had been purely presented as a force of nature like a cosmic Godzilla, but the attempts to personalize him and make him somewhat sympathetic feel hollow, because they’re so clearly focused on setting up future films. You might not need to do any homework to watch First Steps, but it still suffers from the MCU’s world-building problems.

First Steps mostly coasts by on wholesome utopian vibes, with Shakman demonstrating the same ability to create a highly stylized retro world that he used to great effect in WandaVision. But while that MCU show uses its featherweight sitcom world to hint at something sinister below the surface, First Steps plays the story entirely straight. The same is true for its take on the superhero genre, which skips all the modern handwringing about how superheroes should consider the repercussions of using their power, and just takes for granted that they know what’s best, and that the world will be a better place with them looking after humanity.

Maybe that’s OK. Two decades into the MCU, audiences don’t need origin stories, and they also don’t need every blockbuster movie based on a comic book to be a deconstruction of the superhero genre. Viewers might debate about what the Boravia war in Superman really means, or get upset about the film’s politics, and First Steps dodges that sort of conflict by not meaning anything at all. It has the simple morality, goofy humor, and challenge level of a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s a silly family-friendly story that stands on its own, without expecting its audience knows what came before or cares much about what comes after.

Fantastic Four: First Steps premieres in theaters on July 25.