Column Superhero Movie Rewatch Fourth Time’s the Charm? — The Fantastic Four: First Steps In which superheroes save the world, but can’t defeat terminal blandness… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on January 15, 2026 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios From August 2017 – January 2020, Keith R.A. DeCandido took a weekly look at every live-action movie based on a superhero comic that had been made to date in the Superhero Movie Rewatch. He’s periodically revisited the feature to look back at new releases, as well as a few he missed the first time through. The absorption of 20th Century Fox into the Disney Collective in 2019 meant that it was inevitable that both the X-Men and Fantastic Four—whose film rights were with Fox—would become part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That process started in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness by giving us an alternate Earth with Sir Patrick Stewart as Professor Charles Xavier and John Krasnicki as Reed Richards, then continued with the appearance of Kelsey Grammer as the Beast in an alternate dimension that Monica Rambeau travelled to at the end of The Marvels and in the multiversal wackiness in Deadpool & Wolverine. However, the X-Men films were much better received than the FF films. While those three movies used established Fox actors Stewart, Grammer, and Hugh Jackman—and the teases for Avengers: Doomsday indicate that Stewart, Ian McKellen, and James Marsden, at the very least, will be reprising their X-roles in that film—the FF was always going to be restarted from scratch. Jon Watts, who directed the first three Tom Holland Spider-Man films, was originally attached to direct, but he cited burnout following the exhausting COVID-19 protocols that had to be followed for the filming of No Way Home, and bowed out. He was replaced by Matt Shakman, who directed every episode of WandaVision, and who has generally carved out an impressive career as a television director (including, notably, episodes of superhero series Heroes Reborn and The Boys). The original script was by Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer, partly off a story by Kat Wood, with first Josh Friedman and then Eric Pearson (who also worked on several of Marvel Studios’ early short films, as well as Thor: Ragnarok, Black Widow, Thunderbolts*, and the TV series Agent Carter, along with uncredited rewrites on other MCU films) brought in to do rewrites. The film adapted the same comics story that was the basis of 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer, to wit, the first Galactus story in Fantastic Four #48-50 (1966) by the FF’s creators Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. The cast includes Pedro Pascal (last seen in this rewatch in Wonder Woman 1984) as Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Eben Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, Julia Garner as the Silver Surfer (taking a cue from the alternate timeline of the Earth X series by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross, & John Paul Leon, and having Shalla-Bal be the Zenn-Lavian who makes the sacrifice of becoming Galactus’ herald, rather than Norrin Radd), Ralph Ineson as Galactus, Paul Walter Hauser as the Mole Man, Sarah Niles as Lynne Nichols, who runs the FF’s Future Foundation, Mark Gatiss as the Ed Sullivan-esque TV host Ted Gilbert, Natasha Lyonne as a grammar-school teacher who serves as Grimm’s sorta-kinda-maybe love interest, and Matthew Wood as the voice of H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot. Also, the four stars of the never-officially-released 1994 FF film—Alex Hyde-White, Rebecca Staab, Jay Underwood, and Michael Bailey Smith—all make cameos, which is just sweet, and Robert Downey Jr. makes a brief appearance (with his face hidden) in a mid-credits scene as Victor von Doom. John Malkovich was cast as the Red Ghost, but his role wound up being rewritten and then cut from the film (though we do see brief footage of the FF fighting his Super Apes). Pascal, Kirby, Moss-Bachrach, Quinn, and Downey are all set to return in Doomsday. The Fantastic Four: First StepsWritten by Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer and Kat Wood and Josh FriedmanProduced by Kevin FeigeDirected by Matt ShakmanOriginal release date: July 25, 2025 “The unknown will become known, and we will protect you” Credit: Marvel Studios It’s the 1960s on Earth-828, and The Ted Gilbert Show is doing a fourth-anniversary celebration of the fateful spaceflight taken by Dr. Reed Richards, his wife Sue Storm (who kept her maiden name, which would’ve been very provocative in our Earth’s 1960s…), her brother Johnny Storm, and their good friend Ben Grimm, which resulted in their DNA being altered by cosmic rays, turning them into the Fantastic Four. We see footage of them fighting various foes, including the Mole Man (as well as a monster that looks just like the one on the cover of Fantastic Four #1) and Red Ghost’s Super Apes, along with clips from the animated Fantastic Four TV series (with the animated version of Grimm uttering the catch phrase “It’s clobberin’ time!”) and from Richards’ educational program Fantastic Science with Mister Fantastic. We also learn of the Future Foundation, run by Sue, which has worked with the UN to apparently bring about world peace, er, somehow. After recording the episode, the foursome return home to the Baxter Building. H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot prepares Sunday dinner, with Grimm kibbitzing (and adding garlic). Richards and Sue are late for dinner, as the latter took a pregnancy test and it came up positive. They had been hoping for a baby for years, and indeed had given up actively trying, and now she’s expecting. Grimm figures it out before they can actually reveal the big news, and everyone is thrilled, with Johnny declaring that Sue will make a great mother and that Richards will be totally out of his depth, but also that Grimm and he himself will make fabulous uncles. There’s lots of speculation in the press about the upcoming baby, including whether or not it will have superpowers, though all of Richards’ scans indicate that the baby is normal. (Sue also turns her tummy invisible so they can see the gestating fetus at one point.) Richards tasks H.E.R.B.I.E. with aggressively baby-proofing the Baxter Building. He also works out the locations of several criminals at large, including the Wizard, the Puppet Master, and Diablo, enabling the police to capture them. Grimm jokes that he’s also baby-proofing the city. At one point, Grimm is wandering the neighborhood where he grew up. A civilian wants him to say the catchphrase “It’s clobberin’ time!” but Grimm insists he never says that, that’s just from the cartoon. He lifts a car at the request of some schoolkids, then flirts with their teacher for a bit. A woman covered in silver and riding what looks like a silver surfboard arrives from space, declaring herself the herald of Galactus, who is coming to devour the planet. She tells everyone to prepare for their destruction. She then flies off, with Johnny flying after her into the stratosphere, grabbing onto the surfboard just as his flame goes out from lack of oxygen. The Silver Surfer says something in her native language, and then flies off, leaving Johnny to fall into the atmosphere, reignite, and fly back. Credit: Marvel Studios Richards is able to track the Surfer’s energy signature, and realizes that there are planets missing from where she’s been, lending credence to her warning. They decide that they have to confront her, so they prep their original rocket, the Excelsior, for spaceflight. All four of them (including the very pregnant Sue), as well as H.E.R.B.I.E., take off, with Richards assuring the public that they will do everything in their power to save the Earth. Using the FTL drive in orbit, they track the Surfer’s energy to a world in another star system, arriving just in time to witness Galactus consuming it. Galactus then grants them an audience, though the Surfer tells them sadly that they shouldn’t have come. Johnny also asks her what it was she said to him, and she translates it: “Die with yours.” It’s a blessing, she says. Galactus explains that his hunger is all-consuming and must be sated. However, he will spare Earth if they give him the child that Sue is carrying. The FF refuse, and manage to escape by the skin of their teeth, though the Surfer chases after them even when going faster than light. They lose her in a neutron star, with the Surfer caught in the time-dilation, and the FF only able to escape by sacrificing the FTL drive. Sue has gone into premature labor thanks to Galactus, and gives birth to the baby on the Excelsior. They finally get home months later, and the people of Earth are rather devastated to learn that they didn’t defeat Galactus, and that Earth would’ve been spared if they had given up their son (whom they’ve named Franklin). Existential despair grips the world as people try to come to terms with what’s happening. Richards is beside himself because he can’t figure out how to save the Earth without sacrificing his child. The Baxter Building computers have picked up other transmissions in the same language that the Surfer was speaking, and now that they know what one phrase means, Johnny is able to create a translation matrix to try to decipher the other signals they’ve been getting. Sue decides to confront an angry crowd outside the Baxter Building, Franklin in her arms, to explain that she won’t sacrifice her child—but they will move heaven and Earth to save the planet any way they can. That not only mitigates some of the negative public opinion, but also gives Richards an idea. He’s been working on a teleporter, which thus far has succeeded in transporting an egg across a room, though it takes out New York’s power grid in the process. The FF uses the Future Foundation and the Fantastic Science with Mister Fantastic show to rally public support behind a worldwide effort to recreate the teleporter on a massive scale, so they can move the planet to another solar system. They also need to conserve power, implementing an energy curfew every night in order to hoard the power necessary to make this work. Credit: Marvel Studios They’re all set to teleport the planet as Galactus is approaching, but then the Surfer shows up and destroys all the teleportation bridges—except the one in Times Square, and she’s only stopped from destroying that one by Johnny playing the recordings of the transmissions they’ve received, which include her giving the “Die with yours” blessing to worlds Galactus has destroyed, and also the people of Zenn-La thanking Shalla-Bal for her sacrifice. The Surfer reveals that she is indeed Shalla-Bal, and she convinced Galactus to spare her home planet of Zenn-La in exchange for becoming his herald. The Surfer departs the planet in anguish, leaving the Times Square teleportation bridge intact. Richards comes up with a new plan, and it’s one that everyone hates, but eventually agrees is necessary: use Franklin as bait to lure Galactus to the teleportation bridge in Times Square and send him to the far side of the galaxy. Grimm points out that Galactus is huge and will probably do a lot of damage to the city getting to Times Square, so they evacuate the residents of New York to the Mole Man’s subterranean city, which takes a certain amount of cajoling on Sue’s part. Galactus lands in New York Harbor and stomps his way north to Times Square (inexplicably passing by Lincoln Center, which is actually north of Times Square, but whatever). However, the switcheroo the FF attempts, replacing Franklin with an empty crib in the teleporter, doesn’t work, as Galactus senses that Franklin is in the Baxter Building. Calling them clever insects, Galactus goes to the Baxter Building and grabs Franklin. Sue manages to use her force fields to push Galactus back to Times Square, aided by Grimm taking out the buildings that Galactus is attempting to use for support. Richards is able to grab Franklin from Galactus’ grasp while Johnny activates the teleportation bridge. However, Sue has pushed herself beyond her limits getting him there and collapses to the pavement, dead, and Galactus starts to climb his way out of the teleportation matrix. Johnny is about to sacrifice himself to force Galactus back in, but then the Surfer appears out of nowhere and knocks him aside, and she pushes Galactus into the matrix, sending them both across the galaxy. The Earth is saved, as is Franklin, but Sue is not alive, despite Richards administering CPR and mouth-to-mouth. He sadly lays their infant son on her chest, and Franklin uses his nascent superpowers to revive her. The people of New York come back above-ground, and the world is saved. We cut ahead to the fifth anniversary of the FF, where their appearance on Ted Gilbert is interrupted by an alert, though they struggle with the baby’s car seat in the Fantasticar on their way to their next mission. Four years later, Sue is reading to Franklin. She finishes The Very Hungry Caterpillar and goes to get A Fly Went By—when she comes back, Victor von Doom is kneeling before Franklin… “I will not sacrifice my child for this world—but I will not sacrifice this world for my child” Credit: Marvel Studios For years, I’ve been saying that any new Fantastic Four film really needed to just blow past the origin and just show the FF as an established bunch of superheroes, and I’m very grateful that Kevin Feige, Matt Shakman, and the team of writers agree with me. The movie is much stronger for it. The FF’s origin is, in a word, awful, and one that’s (like many of early Marvel’s origin stories) aggressively tied to the early 1960s (in this case, trying to beat the Commies to space). Having the movie take place in the 1960s makes that work a little bit better, but that’s only part of why the origin is dumb, and I’m just as happy to get it over with quickly and just have the FF be established from the start of the story. Putting it on an alternate Earth—specifically the one numbered 828, in honor of Jack Kirby’s birthday of August 28th—solves the “where have they been?” problem that would arise from trying to retcon them into the mainline MCU. The movie also has the perfect visual aesthetic. It’s right out of The Venture Bros., and I mean that as a very high compliment. The retro-futuristic vibe of the set design is absolutely magnificent, plus they impressively nailed the fashions and hairstyles of the 1960s. Would that the writers had been operating on the same level. There are a number of problems with the script, starting with a fundamental misunderstanding of what this country was like six decades ago. For starters, Sue Storm kept her maiden name when she married Richards, and that would have been massively controversial at the time. Indeed, it’d be controversial now to an extent. But the biggie is this: the vast majority of mainstream America of the time would never have accepted the notion that parents should sacrifice their infant child for any reason. Sure, some people would call her selfish, and some people would respond with confusion as to why they wouldn’t consider the option. But the mainstream press that question them when they first return to Earth? They would’ve all nodded their heads and agreed with the FF’s refusal to give Franklin to the guy who eats planets. The most glaring problem with this movie, though, is that the FF themselves are remarkably uninteresting. Their personalities are muted and toned down to the point of spectacular blandness. Richards is a super-genius whose ruthless intellectualism is leavened by his love for his family, which is the only thing that keeps him from being a complete asshole. But we don’t get any of the negative aspects of Richards’ personality, except in tiny blink-and-you-miss-it doses. Mostly he’s just an eccentric goof. Pedro Pascal’s performance is aggressively toned down from what we know he’s capable of. The hotheaded Johnny Storm is a bit snarky, but Joseph Quinn doesn’t have any of the verve or charm of his comics counterpart, or of the last two guys to play the role (Chris Evans and Michael B. Jordan, who were both brilliant despite being in movies that were mediocre-to-terrible). His womanizing is toned down, though there’s enough of it there to have him sorta-kinda flirt with the Shalla-Bal iteration of the Silver Surfer, but not enough of it to actually make him interesting. Also Johnny is apparently an accomplished linguist now, because the plot won’t work otherwise, and they needed to give him something to do, I guess? Vanessa Kirby is the only one who works here, as her Sue is allowed to be both complex and powerful. She comes across as very much the heart and soul of the team, though the manufactured conflicts between her and Richards over using Franklin as bait feel very manufactured. But Kirby does right by the role. So does Eben Moss-Bachrach, but alas here is where the script really fails. Benjamin J. Grimm is one of the greatest characters in the Marvel pantheon, a tragic figure who still maintains his compassion and friendliness. He’s the best friend of everyone in the Marvel Universe, but constantly struggles with the fact that he’s an ambulatory collection of rocks. But Moss-Bachrach has precisely none of the character’s tragedy or angst, which is a big part of what makes him so compelling. Instead, he’s just a nice guy who likes to cook and show off for kids. Not only that, but after going to the trouble of actually casting a Jewish actor as the Jewish Grimm, they don’t do a single thing with it. He does walk into a synagogue at one point, but it’s expressly not for any spiritual reason, but simply to boringly flirt with Natasha Lyonne’s spectacularly uninteresting teacher. Indeed, there’s nothing in this movie to support the notion that Grimm is Jewish, and at least one line of dialogue supporting the fact that he isn’t. (He uses “Jesus” as an epithet at one point.) Oh, and the Galaxy Quest-esque running gag with him refusing to say “It’s clobberin’ time” fails utterly. The attempts to get him to say it and him refusing are cute, but the payoff at the film’s climax does not land at all. It worked with Alan Rickman’s refusal to say “By Grabthar’s hammer” in GQ because of the character’s anger at being typecast and forced to keep flogging a role he’d rather he never played, and his journey to finally embracing the part at the film’s climax. By contrast, the moment when Grimm says “It’s clobberin’ time” here is completely unearned, unnecessary, and uninteresting. The blandification extends to the entirety of Earth-828, as the citizens of this Earth are an unconvincingly monolithic bunch of people who seem to just do whatever the FF tells them to do (except for the brief period where they’re just as unconvincingly mad at them for not committing infanticide). The movie is well paced, looks amazing, and I’m so incredibly grateful that they didn’t do what the Ultimate Fantastic Four comic and Rise of the Silver Surfer did and make Galactus into a force-of-nature series of planet-consuming drones, but instead embraced the fact that he’s a fifty-foot-tall white guy with a big purple W on his head. Points to Ralph Ineson for giving the character appropriate gravitas and menace. It is, still, the best Fantastic Four movie ever made, but given the competition, that’s hardly an accomplishment. This ends the current iteration of the Superhero Movie Rewatch. The original intent was to cover two more 2025 releases, but your humble rewatcher had an unnecessarily eventful holiday season, including a foot injury, the unexpected demise of a beloved Toyota Corolla, and two killer deadlines. With all that, and the upcoming release of the first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy this week, we’re going to punt The Old Guard 2 and Red Sonja to later in the year, along with some of the 2026 releases.[end-mark] The post Fourth Time’s the Charm? — <i>The Fantastic Four: First Steps</i> appeared first on Reactor.