Fantastic Four: First Steps movie review

With all the hype we’ve had recently around the new James Gunn Superman Movie this one almost risks being missed and for any comic book movie fan that would be a big mistake.

We’ve had a few iterations in the past of the Fantastic Four and although a lot of them aren’t remembered in the best light I think for their time they all had something to give to the audience. This one is the first to really deliver something new and well rounded. It doesn’t pull the punches that the previous movies did, for example when we were teased with Galactus in previous movies but never saw anything fruition with the iconic FF villain. This movie delivers a great Galactus who’s truly scary and looks like a decent world ending threat.

It’s no secret we’ve had a few years of content from Marvel Studios which most have probably found missable, years ago I needed to see everything on the opening night and it’s not true since End Game. Most of the movies felt like they were made straight for TV and made around delivering a few funny one liners to sell a trailer.

I think Fantastic Four: First Steps has broken that trend, it’s a really well made movie from start to finish that brings back a lot of the magic from phase one and two.

The movie is set in a different universe to the main MCU so we don’t have to worry about where Captain America or The Hulk are when Galactus is setting foot on Earth. It’s an interesting approach considering the previous FF movies were isolated due to them being owned by Fox, I assumed when Disney bought Fox for X-men and FF they would have wanted them to all be in the same universe. Now they can finally bring them all together they have decided not to.

It’s not a bad thing, I think the retro world they created for the FF lets them shine on their own and gives it a bit more of a fantasy setting where they don’t have to worry about previous events in the MCU.  That’s not to say we won’t see them all team up in the near future but for the first FF movie in a while it was nice to give them their own space.

One thing I loved about this movie is how well they managed to cast everyone, they are marked as Marvels first family and they get on so well, it’s great to see on screen and you get a feeling they actually care for each other and you can see the family dynamics show in each scene.

It’s not an origin story and I’m glad for that, the previous movies spent too much time on trying to spread story across a trilogy which never finished. This movie delivers everything you’d want from a FF movie and a lot more.

Without giving away too much we see them all shine in their own light, it’s not just a Mr Fantastic movie putting 90% of the screen time on Pedro Pascal to carry the movie like he has with Star Wars. If anything Sue played by Venessa Kirby comes across as the main star as she goes from being a scientist to a wife to a superhero to a mother. We get to see a lot of emotion in this movie which I think was one of the things that made Superman such a success. It’s not the superhuman side of these movies that draws us in it’s the human side, those characters we feel like we can relate to and want to see succeed.

The story has so many ups and downs it’s really amazing and so well timed. We see Reed Richards really struggle in this movie, he has all these Earthly challenges we see him clear up without much thought, then comes in Galactus and we see a few of his plans fail and you really feel for him as he almost gives up then comes up with an even more fantastic solution.

It do think Marvel have finally figured out how to use the multiverse to their advantage with this one and I’m excited to see how they make it work in the future as the FF get integrated with the wider MCU, will they keep this family in their own universe or merge them in with the Avengers, they could even have an alternative version of them in each universe like we saw with Doctor Strange.

There have been a lot of people saying we’ve hit a superhero fatigue and audiences are getting bored with comic book movies, I don’t think it’s true. We just need more movies like this to bring back the spark which dimmed with a few years of filler films and TV shows.

Overall I think this is an amazing movie and I hope Disney learn from it and manage to make the upcoming MCU movies just as good, they talk about quality of quantity but personally I don’t know why they can’t have both considering the budgets of these movies and TV shows.

Overall It’s been an amazing month for comic book movies with both Superman and Fantastic Four, I hope we see the same success in 2026 and something tells me it’s only going to get better.

Posted by Adi Mursec on July 26, 2025