When I saw the DVD of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) at the library this morning, I was really excited and grabbed it immediately. That’s not because I thought it was going to be a great film and I was looking forward to seeing it. Actually, from everything I’d heard, it was a terrible film and I wanted to watch it so I could pan it.

I know. That’s a horrible attitude to have if you’re going to review a film, but that’s what popped into my head.

Actually, the film did have little moments that I liked. Little ones.

Spoiler Alert! This review is full of them. You have been warned.

When Sue (Vanessa Kirby) told Reed (Pedro Pascal) she was pregnant.

Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) going into a synagogue right before the final battle with Galactus. They didn’t forget that he’s Jewish and Jack Kirby always saw him that way. They did forget that at times, he’s religious, but then modern entertainment disdains anyone, especially heroes, having faith.

Oddly enough, Reed depicted as a sort of neurodivergent genius whose moral centers often gives way to what he considers a practical solution.

Now I know why the Surfer had to be Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner) and not the original Norrin Radd but I’ll get to that.

I know what the filmmakers were going for with the retro-futuristic 1960s look. But it was stupid. It made a live action film look more cartoonish. That was one of my beefs with Superman (2025) which I reviewed a month ago.

Making something “comic book accurate” isn’t always the way to go with a live action film. I’ll compare this to The Avengers (2012) which, for a Marvel super-team movie, hit the ball out of the park. I mean, it was a total homerun.

If Marvel Studios could do that, why couldn’t they make an equally amazing Fantastic Four movie?

In fact, all three previous attempts (I’m not counting the 1994 train wreck which I haven’t seen), haven’t at all brought the “real” FF to life. For reference, they are: Fantastic Four (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), and Fantastic Four (2015).

Neither did this one. Kevin Feige should be disemboweled for even trying.

By definition, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) couldn’t have been a teenager when he went up in the rocket ship with the rest of them and got their powers, but who or what is he? He’s still a young punk. In fact, the British (of course) actor turns 31 in two days as I write this.

He’s able to translate a totally alien language so he’s definitely very intelligent, although he acts like a goofy kid most of the time.

But that’s not all that’s different. According to IMDb’s trivia for the film:

Johnny Storm’s reputation for womanizing – a big part of Chris Evans’ portrayal of the character in the two Tim Story directed Fantastic Four movies – was dramatically toned down for this version as it was felt to be too inappropriate for this day and age.

So Johnny’s not supposed to like girls, except he’s attracted to the Silver Surfer. Well, at least the writers didn’t retcon him as gay (it’s been done before).

There were long sections of the film that really dragged including the beginning which showed the “ordinary lives” of the FF and how they were generally loved and revered.

Also, some sections between the space battle with Galactus and the final battle where extemporary dialog slowed the movie to a virtual halt.

I know this is a comic book movie where people can stretch, turn invisible, flame on and fly, and a big rock guy is really strong but hey, science matters.

Speaking of, when Johnny follows the Surfer to the edge of space, without air, his flame goes out just as he reaches out and touches the surfboard. Shalla-Bal says something to him that he can hear. If there’s no air for his flame (let alone breathing), how can he hear her? After that, the scene cuts back to the Baxter Building and Johnny is fine. No dramatic re-entry, no passing out, no nearly falling to his death before being able to flame on again. A missed classic moment.

Another trivia point:

When travelling home, the team needs to reach .88 the speed of light to be able to move through the wormhole.

The FF’s spaceship had to jettison its faster-than-light drive and have it destroyed by the close proximity to a neutron star in order to lure the Surfer close enough to become trapped (temporarily) in the gravity well. That means the ship was stranded untold lightyears from Earth.

Supposedly there’s a convenient wormhole they can use that is aimed right at home. Problem is, they have to achieve a velocity of 0.88 of lightspeed to use it.

Just because you’re traveling less than the speed of light, doesn’t mean there aren’t problems with physics. Here’s where the science comes in. The faster you want to go, the more energy you need. To achieve the desired velocity, you have to use lots of energy, probably more fuel than the ship could possibly carry. Also, the faster you go, the more mass you gain, so you have to be able to push the increased mass. If your ship achieved the speed of light in conventional space, your ship’s mass would be impossible to move.

That’s why Star Trek invented the fictional warp bubble, putting spaceships in an area of subspace where Einsteinian limits don’t apply.

On top of that, the ship would probably have disintegrated under the stress.

I thought it was stupid that A: everyone just assumed that the FF could beat anything (though the FF themselves gave the world that expectation), B: that the public became so disappointed and frankly, so hateful when Reed admitted they didn’t, and C: that Reed idiotically told the public at a press conference that all they needed to do to get Galactus to lay off Earth was surrender their newborn son Franklin (Ada Scott).

Of course, the world would instantly turn bloodthirsty and gladly hand over one baby (it’s always easy when it’s someone else’s child) to save their own skins. That’s human nature.

Or to put it another way:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. -Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) from the 1997 film Men in Black

I said before I understood why the Silver Surfer had to be a woman. It was obvious that the film used Sue’s love for her son Franklin and her desire to protect him and Earth and Shalla-Bal’s desire to protect both her own planet and daughter from Galactus by agreeing to become his herald (in the comic books, Norrin Radd made a similar sacrifice). It was the reason for the Surfer’s last minute save during the film’s climax, turning on Galactus to save Sue’s son.

Although he had a few good moments, in general, I hated the casting of Pedro Pascal as Reed. The rest of the casting I could take or leave really although none of it “wowed” me.

I’m writing this part from memory, but I believe the robot character H.E.R.B.I.E. (voiced by Matthew Wood) was originally created when Marvel temporarily lost broadcast rights for the Human Torch. The Torch was supposed to have been the main character in a television show that never sold. While those rights were held elsewhere, a Fantastic Four cartoon could only have three of the original characters. The robot was manufactured as the fourth. I preferred to consider it non-canon, but apparently Feige, Director Matt Shakman, and writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, and Jeff Kaplan had other plans. It sucked or at least reduced the age of the target audience to about 8 to 10 years.

At one point, I thought Reed’s plan to move their Earth (identified as Earth 828 in the movie) to another solar system to keep Galactus from finding them would transport it to the same universe where most of the MCU takes place. That would put the Fantastic Four in with mainstream cinematic Marvel (give or take). Such was not the case, which I suppose was good. After all, a planet suddenly disappearing (it wasn’t clear if the Moon was going along for the ride) would have significant gravitational effects on the inner solar system and who knows how it would screw up the solar system where it reappeared. Also, there’s have to be a really nice, convenient space in that system’s “Goldilocks Zone” for Earth to fill.

Like I said, “science.”

At one point, Ben is thrown into the air by Galactus and Johnny catches him and then flies with him. Ben must weigh a literal ton so how is Johnny strong enough to do this?

Sue seems to be the most powerful member of the FF in that she’s able to use her force field to push Galactus (remember, he eats planets) into the center of Times Square where Reed’s trap to send him to the other end of space is waiting. It actually kills her to do it, but Galactus should have swatted her powers aside as easily as he did Reed, Johnny, and Ben.

Yeah, she died. That didn’t make any sense, but then Reed put the baby on her chest and something happened. She revived abruptly with some strange light in her eyes. No one except the audience realized that Franklin has powers, which is why Galactus wanted him in the first place.

I expected, after Johnny’s confrontation with the Surfer and the realization of who and what she really is, that she would come back to challenge Galactus. In a very different way, that’s what the male Surfer did in Fantastic Four issue 50 (cover image above), but for an entirely different reason.

However, when Galactus was banished in the movie, the Surfer went with him rather than having her time-space powers removed and being exiled on Earth. She might have been a great addition to the MCU (Captain Marvel played by Bree Larson wouldn’t be the most powerful hero girl boss anymore).

Oh, taking a woman nearly nine months pregnant on a space flight in order to battle a huge cosmic planet eater and his incredibly powerful herald was a terrible, terrible idea:

Space travel could pose significant risks to a Sue’s pregnancy, mainly due to microgravity, increased exposure to cosmic radiation, and altered environmental factors unique to space. Emergency care and neonatal support would be also extremely limited, raising the risk of severe complications for mother and child.

I’ve been a Fantastic Four fan since I was a kid in the early to mid-1960s and specifically a Jack Kirby and Stan Lee FF fan. I’ve been waiting almost all my life for a really good FF movie, one to blow me away while simultaneously taking me back in my memory sixty years.

I’m still waiting.

Like most Marvel movies, this one had a mid-credits and end-credits scene.

The end-credits scene was throwaway fluff, basically a TV cartoon of the FF styled after the movie. Who cares?

However:

The Russo brothers directed the post-credits scene, with Robert Downey Jr. playing Doctor Doom.

Four years after the events in the main part of the movie, Sue is reading to four-year-old Franklin. She goes into the other room to get another book and comes back to find Doctor Doom kneeling over Franklin. You only see the back of Doom’s green hood but he does have his mask off since he’s holding it in one hand. Yikes.

And that’s the setup for Avengers: Doomsday (2026)

Guess I’ll be sticking with the old comic books whenever I need a “Fantastic Four” fix.

The DVD goes back to the library and I’m really glad I didn’t spend money seeing this movie in the theater.