So, I finally saw The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a movie that might have done better in its opening weekend if Marvel hadn’t opened it at exactly the same time as San Diego Comic-Con, where roughly 160,000 of its target demographic were too busy to go find a movie theater anywhere closeby. I was at more than one Marvel panel that weekend where someone on stage would ask, “Hey, who’s seen Fantastic Four? Oh, huh, less than half the room,” as if it was a surprise. Sometimes, I think people forget that there’s a limit to pop culture obsession even for people spending thousands of dollars on a convention weekend away.
Anyway, First Steps was… fine, I guess? I couldn’t help but feel as if it had the bad luck to open two weeks after Superman, a movie that was far more charming, coherent, and successful at convincing the audience that it was hopeful and optimistic and sincere — in a world where this had been the first superhero movie anyone had seen after, say, Thunderbolts or Deadpool and Wolverine, I’m sure it would’ve played differently for a lot of people, me included.
There’s one line in the movie that hit such a sour note that it’s still in my head days later: Reed Richards explaining how hard it is to be him by saying that his genius allows him to identify threats and work out “ways to hurt them before they hurt us.” I heard that and I just thought, nope, that’s not a hero, that’s the entire basis of this being a more optimistic story/world down the drain. It was one line that immediately made everything surrounding it feel more cynical and cold, and also made me feel somewhat sad about the movie and everyone involved in its creation: This is what a selfless, old-school hero looks like to you? This is what you got from all the Reed Richards in all the comics? Really?
What I love about the best Fantastic Four comics is the sense of adventure, discovery, and potential that’s on display — and, honestly, there’s little of that on display in the actual movie, with what’s there basically being a surface-level step back from outright cynicism and a muddy aesthetic. Superman made me believe in Superman; The Fantastic Four: First Steps made me believe that Marvel Studios is going to work out how to keep being Marvel Studios no matter the project.