After decades of false starts and franchise misfires, Marvel’s First Family receives its finest treatment to date under the guidance of Matt Shakman, the “WandaVision” architect who brings his keen understanding of retro-futuristic aesthetics and family dynamics to the MCU along with the long awaited debut of legendary comic villain Galactus.
The film’s greatest strengths lie in its extraordinary below-the-line achievements—particularly Michael Giacchino’s soaring score, Kasra Farahani’s stunning production design, and Jess Hall’s evocative cinematography.
The star power of Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Vanessa Kirby and Ebon Moss-Bachrach also aides in the appeal to longtime and new MCU viewers. Before going into spoilers, let’s check out the trailer.
In 1964, on Earth-828, the world celebrates the fourth anniversary of astronauts Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) becoming the superhero team known as the Fantastic Four after gaining superhuman abilities from exposure to cosmic rays during a space mission. In lieu of an origin story, the script chooses to use a television special to recap the necessary backstory and family dynamics.
It works to accelerate the story and allows us to get previews of their various supervillains, like Paul Walter Hauser’s Mole Man (who has a fun little part to play in the climax).
Reed Richards’ brilliance as a scientist, strategist, and inventor is on full display here, far more than ever before in the previous films. There’s incredible depth and texture to Sue Storm, thanks to rising star Vanessa Kirby, who is heavily involved in diplomacy via the Future Foundation.
The plot revolves around the newly announced pregnancy of Sue Storm, and it’s a hard to sustain the entire film with a pregnancy.
The question as to the potential powers of the child is answered quickly once the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives at Earth to declare that it has been marked for destruction by Galactus (Ralph Ineson).
The Fantastic Four use their technology to track the planet-devouring cosmic being to a planet many lightyears away. Using faster-than-light travel, they arrive to a foreign planet just as it is destroyed (or ingested) by Galactus’s ship.
Their ship is captured and brought into Galactus’ ship. The chemistry between Johnny Storm and the Silver Surfer is furthere hinted at here (at least from Johnny’s perspective). Reed tries to barter with Galactus, who seated is still 100 times taller than the humans.
Galactus senses that Reed and Sue’s unborn child possesses immense cosmic power, which could potentially free him from his hunger. He offers to spare Earth in exchange for the child. They instantly flee to their ship in the hopes of outrunning him and the Silver Surfer.
During an intense pursuit that coincides with Sue’s childbirth, the Fantastic Four uses the gravity from a neutron star / black hole propel themselves back to Earth and halt the Silver Surfer for at least a month (somehow knowing the time it would take for the cosmic being to escape… a big stretch to get some much needed breathing room script-wise).
The film’s climax involves Reed devising a plan to build large teleportation bridges across Earth to transport the entire planet to another solar system where Galactus cannot reach them. This plan takes up a solid fifteen minutes, only to be destroyed by the return of the Silver Surfer. Johnny forces her to listen to the voices of her own people by hacking into long distance space signals and putting them in speakers across the city.
The surfer flees before destroying the last teleportation unit. Now, the plan shifts to lure Galactus onto the transporter pad and send him away. It’s a very poorly devised plan and lacks an real intensity in stakes and execution. It’s at this point that the film really struggles with both script and script logic.
Galactus makes his way through the city to capture Franklin, and he realizes the baby is a bait and switch. He avoids the portal pad and walks toward their tower/home to steal the baby. Instead of Johnny Storm flying ahead and grabbing the baby to save it, they waste their time fighting Galactus when they never stood a chance.
After Galactus grabs the newborn child, Sue uses all of her power to push him towards the portal. It’s a compelling sequence and the score adds to the emotional weight, but Sue should have been standing behind Galactus on his walk up to the teleporter pad, then given him a shove from the initial plan. The four Fantastic Four members all standing on the pad was an awful plan — especially from the genius Reed Richards.
Back to the moment at hand, as Sue seems to be faltering with her powers — Johnny attempts to sacrifice himself to give Galactus a final push into the portal — his self-sacrificing flight path is interrupted as Silver Surfer Shalla-Bal as she elbows him off course and uses her board and its power to shove Galactus into the portal. It closes behind them.
The ending is far less enjoyable than the trip through space to face Galactus in the first hour. The film is primarily filled with dread for its last hour as an unstoppable evil slowly approaches, which is far less engaging to watch than other MCU films with active protagonists.
Michael Giacchino delivers some of his finest work yet, creating a dream-like blend of choir that captures futuristic-optimism, along with elements that echo his range. The main Fantastic Four theme feels perfectly suited for Marvel’s First Family.
Jess Hall’s cinematography brilliantly supports the retro world-building, though his work varies in quality, sometimes brilliantly supporting the retro world-building, yet at other moments assembling shots that feel jarringly disconnected from the aesthetic the film wants to emulate.
Kasra Farahani’s production design represents some of the best in the last decade of the MCU. This is a production design. The Baxter Building penthouse feels like both a home and a showcase of retro-futuristic design, with warm-toned wooden paneling, a cozy fireplace, and a sunken conversation pit and cute R2-D2 style droid that runs on something akin to VHS tape. Alexandra Byrne’s costume design also brilliantly captures the retro-futuristic aesthetic, and underscores once again the incredible talent that Shakman collected for the film.
The climax involving Sue’s sacrifice as a mother and then young Franklin resurrecting her was cool and emotional thanks to the accompanying music. It is a shame the climax couldn’t have had a layer of Mission Impossible thinking where half the team tried to hijack Galactus’ ship and take it away – since it’s the machinery needed to ingest a planet.
The subplot with Ben Grimm and Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel Rozman, a teacher who seems to be a potential love interest, but that storyline was cut down to the point that it makes no real sense to even be included in the final cut.
While an engaging film overall, it’s certainly less entertaining and more dread filled than I had imagined when enter the theater. A worthwhile watch, but one with very limited re-watch value.
Letter Grade: B