Marvel wants to fool you. They’ve thrown a fun new retro-futuristic sheen and some new faces on top of the same episode you’ve seen a hundred times already and are expecting you to treat it like it’s not. If I had to dilute The Fantastic Four: First Steps into one word I'd go with “serviceable”. I would’ve written “fine” but I (and the rest of the population) should be done throwing around a word so close to “good” because this film isn’t close enough to good. This film is more like a plumber that comes to your house late, barely speaks and doesn’t use the air freshener. Do you have some feedback? Sure. If you brought them up would they be taken on board? Nope. We all sort of figure this is how this plumber’s gonna go about his work so we shrug and say, ‘at least the pipe isn’t clogged anymore.’

 

There is no desire for the Marvel machine to elevate their stale formulaic films. It is comfortable and easy for them to continually give big or emerging stars truckfuls of cash to stand in front of a green screen and deliver enough lines for their overworked editing and VFX teams to sculpt a story around. And that’s exactly what they’ve done here but with more cracks showing than pre-Endgame.

 

Director, Matt Shackman, in an interview with Variety acknowledged that he knew the film’s narrative would be tinkered with by the higher-ups at the studio. Ebon Moss-Bachrach even admitted that the script wasn’t fully finished when they started production. To me, that sure seems like they’re trying to get ahead of the fact that there are blatant issues with the film. Sort of calling out the criticism before they can be affected by it. Which is really disappointing, especially when you consider that the film cost $200 million. This is supposed to be a tentpole film that brings millions to theatres internationally but the people behind it are inadvertently telling the world it has problems.

 

Ironically the narrative itself isn’t the problem. There are a few character arcs that aren’t defined that well and of course it has an eyeroll doomsday ending with everything but a blue sky laser destroying the Earth’s core. But still the actual contents of the narrative are not the issue - it is how they are told. 

 

The most blatant moment to me is when The Fantastic Four’s ship is abducted into Galactus’ by a red array of light. It’s essentially an alien abduction scene but with a spaceship being abducted instead of a cow. Think of a typical abduction scene like that - a cow grazes by itself on a quiet night, then strange electronic sounds and a green spotlight shoot out from above -the audience is startled by what’s happening, it was all so fast- the cow looks up and sees the mesmerising giant UFO with its thousands of flashing lights and central green eye about to take the cow from its farm, the audience sees the fear on the cow’s face and then watches it slowly ascend unsure of its fate. That was a rushed and bland version of that scene but it at least has some build up. In the film a red beam appears, we get an ADR line announcing they can’t move and before we can process what’s happening the main characters are about to meet Galactus.

 

It reeks of not having the appropriate footage and producers leaning on editors to solve their issue. It’s not just this one moment either, that is just the most emblematic, almost every scene has a twinge like that.

 

When Shackman tells us that he knew this would happen I still believe him because the film is shot preparing for re-edits. Shackman and Marvel’s connection began with the T.V. show WandaVision and it seems to have taught Shackman the value of coverage. I would argue there isn’t a single pronounced shot. Not one where a directorial vision inspired the blocking to evoke something or one that utilises symbolism or even one that’s just interesting. Every shot is close-up, a wide, a medium close-up, a two shot a blah blah blah. I’m getting bored thinking about it.

 

There was all this preparation for failure before, during and after the production of The Fantastic Four: First Steps that it is no shock that the film is milktoast. They can slap their retro-futurism all over the thing and put together a nice marketing campaign but it won’t hide the fact that they produced an uneven product. 

The thing is, The Fantastic Four was Marvel’s last trump card. Their hail mary to reignite the spark they had in 2019 and it hasn’t gone off because they haven’t adapted or evolved. Most worrying for them is Superman coming out just two weeks prior - that film isn’t perfect but it has let audiences know what a fresh take can feel like just in time for Marvel to deliver the equivalent of a microwavable meal.