The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the first Fantastic Four movie made by Marvel Studios, the fourth cinematic iteration of Marvel’s First Family, and the fifth Fantastic Four movie overall following the unreleased, low-budget 1994 adaptation, Fox’s mid-2000s duology, and a 2015 reboot that wasn’t “Fant4stic.” Previous versions told the same general story: a group of astronauts/scientists embark on a fateful scientific expedition, are transformed by cosmic radiation, and then return to Earth with superpowers they use to battle Doctor Doom, a rival of Reed Richards who is either a metal-masked monarch (Joseph Culp), a metallic-skinned CEO (Julian McMahon), or an electro-powered computer programmer (Toby Kebbell).
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Unlike past cinematic iterations, The Fantastic Four: First Steps isn’t an origin story. The Matt Shakman-directed film begins with the Fab Four already established by 1965, and the quartet celebrating four years as a team. In another distinction from previous takes, the film is set in a “retro-futuristic” version of 1960s New York City that exists in its own universe, Earth-828, and introduces Franklin Richards, the super-powered first-born son of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby).
“Much like when we started making Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies, we looked much more at what had never been done before than what had been done,” The Fantastic Four: First Steps producer Kevin Feige told press during a round table attended by ComicBook. “And the testament to the Marvel comics being so rich, and the storylines being so deep, [is] that you can, even after four Fantastic Four movies, whatever there had been, seven Spidey movies at that point, [there’s] so much more to tap into.”
“So that’s what we focused on, which is why Franklin came [about] and why the notion of that world, its own world, came about,” Feige continued.
While the Spider-Man movies avoided reusing villains from past movies, opting instead for foes like Vulture and Mysterio, Marvel’s Fantastic Four reboot brings to the big screen a comic-accurate Galactus (Ralph Ineson) in all his planet-eating glory. The character had made his feature debut in 2007’s Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver, although as a featureless cosmic cloud — not the giant humanoid from the comics — whose arrival to Earth was preceded by the chrome Silver Surfer (Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne).
This time, instead of Norrin Radd as the sentinel of the spaceways, the herald of Galactus is Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), traditionally Norrin’s romantic interest whose exposure to the Power Cosmic transformed her into the Silver Surfer in an alternate reality (in Jim Krueger and Alex Ross’ Earth X).
The film embraced the art style of Fantastic Four co-creator Jack Kirby, particularly for the comic-accurate Galactus. “We literally sat with our amazing production designer and then, all through post [production] and the effects passes, talking about the Kirby lines and getting more Kirby designs into shots and into backgrounds,” Feige said. “For instance, being able to think that Galactus can be a great, cool, iconic thing [on screen] — because Galactus has been a great, cool, iconic thing for decades and decades — and not being scared of the Kirby lines, of the Kirby helmet, of the Kirby antlers that come off him. And as Ralph and Matt have spoken about seeing Ralph in that helmet for the first time, even before it was colored, you go, ‘Yeah, there’s a reason this design works. It’s because it’s super cool.’”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps, starring Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch, and Ebon Boss-Machrach as Ben Grimm/the Thing, with Julia Garner as Silver Surfer, Paul Walter Hauser as Harvey Elder/Mole Man, and Ralph Ineson as Galactus, is only in theaters July 25.
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