THE RIGHT STUFF: The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) and the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) greet their public in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. (Marvel Studios)
Review by Curt Holman
“The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” was emblazoned above the title of Fantastic Four comics for decades. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee launched the superhero line of Marvel Comics with Fantastic Four in 1961, and for years the book vied with The Amazing Spider-Man as the company’s flagship title.
When I was a kid discovering comics in the 1970s, Fantastic Four became my fast favorite and I took the “World’s Greatest” label at face value, and not as part of the company’s signature hype. The sci-fi-inflected adventures of Marvel’s “first family” of mutated heroes, anchored by the wisecracking rock monster Ben Grimm, made the title a perfect piece of dynamic escapism and a showcase for how comics can put flights of fancy to paper.
Hollywood eventually embraced superheroes for big-budget adaptations, but the Fantastic Four posed a challenge as one of the most fanciful, least-grounded properties. Multiple filmmakers over the decades strained to bring the team to the big screen, frequently foundering with misguided efforts to make the material more “realistic” and in the process losing its goofy, phantasmagoric spirit.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps triumphs where the likes of Tim Story and Josh Trank struggled, showing genuine love for and confidence in the comic’s blend of gee-whiz optimism and anything-goes imagination. Rather than diminish the team to better belong in the “real” world, First Steps heightens their setting, placing them in a retro-futuristic version of 1960s New York. Continue reading →
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