With the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps last week, Marvel’s First Family has finally joined the MCU. And the film is a strong start to the concluding phase of the Multiverse Saga.
Directed by Matt Shakman, First Steps has broken the superhero franchise’s big-screen curse at last. The film earned an estimated $118 million at the North American box office over its opening weekend and another $100 million internationally, to bring its global total up to $218 million. Those figures fall well below the hauls that Marvel Studios used to rake in consistently, but by comparison, 2015’s Fantastic Four grossed $168 million worldwide over its entire theatrical run. The latest reboot’s critics score on Rotten Tomatoes stands at 87 percent, which is higher than all three of 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four movies combined (74 percent), while its A-minus rating on CinemaScore also marks a record for this superhero squad.
First Steps is the third attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to the movies in the 21st century, but it’s the first time that it’s been done under the direction of Marvel Studios. Vanessa Kirby and Pedro Pascal shine as Sue Storm and Reed Richards, respectively, with Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm and Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm rounding out the excellent leading quartet. Shakman and Co. took a risk by reusing the same pair of antagonists for the film that Fox introduced in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer—yet the gamble paid off.
Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) has a menacing on-screen presence; the planet-eating villain’s mammoth size serves as a visual spectacle in itself. Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) is even better. Galactus’s herald receives a tragic backstory that turns her into a captivating, sympathetic antagonist. But more memorably than that, she’s also the star of the second act, which features some of the film’s most thrilling moments as the silver alien surfs her way through space in pursuit of the fleeing Fantastic Four.
With a running time of 115 minutes, First Steps is one of the shortest films in the history of the MCU. Although it likely would have benefited from more narrative space to let its abundance of characters and ideas breathe, it still makes efficient use of its time to produce an entertaining, fast-paced superhero movie that captures the spirit of the comic books like few Marvel projects have in recent memory.
Now that the Fantastic Four have finally taken their rightful place in the MCU, here are my main takeaways about their long-awaited debut and the future of the franchise.
The Return of the Fantastic Four
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently praised James Gunn’s Superman and the director’s decision to forgo a typical origin movie to reboot the franchise. “I love [how] you just jump right into it,” Feige told several media outlets. “You don’t know who Mister Terrific is? Tough, you’ll figure it out. This is a fully fleshed-out world.”
It’s not surprising that Feige approved of just jumping right in: First Steps employs the same approach, and it’s similarly effective.
Rather than burning precious screen time to re-create the incident that spawned the Fantastic Four, as two other films have already done in the past 20 years, First Steps introduces the superteam well after they’ve gained their fantastic abilities. At the start of the movie, Reed picks up his costume off the floor in his and Sue’s bedroom, as if he’s done it countless times before. And soon after Sue discovers her pregnancy, the Fantastic Four are more properly introduced in an ABC special celebrating the four-year anniversary of the group’s formation.
The TV program is a clever and engaging way to quickly catch the audience up on each of the members and their capabilities, as talk show host Ted Gilbert (Mark Gatiss) recaps the Fantastic Four’s life-altering space mission before recounting their heroic achievements in the years since. With Gilbert’s exposition accompanying clips that showcase the team in action, fans are treated to a sleekly cut, bite-sized origin story that allows the rest of the movie to hit the ground running.
First Steps does a solid job of establishing each of the members of the Fantastic Four and what makes them unique beyond their powers, despite the film’s relatively short running time. Sue, in particular, gets a significant upgrade from her past depictions and serves as the heart of both the team and the film itself. In the pair of 2000s movies, Sue’s powers of invisibility are often merely used in jokes that revolve around Jessica Alba getting undressed or her character’s inability to control her emotions around Reed. In First Steps, Sue is a skilled diplomat, a powerful mother (who delivers her baby in space), and a fierce warrior who’s ultimately the key to defeating Galactus. And Kirby wonderfully embodies the matriarch’s wide range, from her kindhearted nature to her fierce and somewhat terrifying wrath. (“Kill her, Johnny,” Sue commands her brother as the Silver Surfer tries to steal her child.)
Still, the movie could have used more screen time to devote to the full squad of characters and the two antagonists. Some plotlines are left underbaked, including a fledgling romance between Ben and Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel that ends up feeling a little out of place and inconsequential. First Steps moves through its story a bit too quickly for its own good, but as the film’s title suggests, this is just the beginning for the foursome as they settle into their new home at Marvel Studios. And it’s already given fans more than enough reasons to be excited about Marvel’s First Family returning to the big screen.
Introducing: Franklin Richards
Along with the Fantastic Four, First Steps introduces another member of the storied super-family to the screen: Franklin Richards. And with the possible exception of the introduction of the cursed CGI baby in the third season of Squid Game, baby Franklin’s introduction to the world is about as absurd as you could ever imagine.
Within the span of just a few months, Franklin is born in space while traveling faster than the speed of light, becomes the target of an angry mob, is used as bait to lure a world-consuming god, is kidnapped by said planet eater, and nearly gets lost forever in a black hole. And after all of that, this baby watches his mom die and then brings her back to life.
“He’s not like us,” Sue tells Reed after being revived. “He’s more.”
As the Fantastic Four discover during their initial meeting with Galactus, Franklin has extraordinary cosmic abilities. Even before the kid leaves his mother’s womb, the colossal purple being determines that Franklin possesses the “Power Cosmic” and thus views him as a possible successor who could absorb Galactus’s insatiable planetary hunger and assume his role as the Devourer of Worlds.
The apocalyptic stakes surrounding this infant child can feel a bit silly at times, such as when the cosmic baby is riding on the massive CGI hand of a gargantuan purple man as he stomps his way across Manhattan. (Which isn’t to say that these moments weren't amusing; First Steps leans into all of this absurdity just enough to pull most of it off.) But Franklin’s powerful potential has deep roots in the comics—and Galactus is far from the only villain who’s ever kidnapped him because of his abilities.
Conceived by Fantastic Four creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Franklin first appeared in the comics in 1968. His powers are wide-ranging, from telepathy to energy projection to the ability to rearrange the molecular structure of matter itself. Franklin can alter reality and even create pocket universes:
‘Fantastic Four’ (1998) no. 574
Although he’s just a baby in First Steps, Franklin has quickly proved himself to be one of the most powerful beings in the entire MCU by resurrecting his mother. And he’s already gained the attention of another formidable villain: Doctor Doom.
In the film’s mid-credits scene, it’s revealed that four years have passed since the conclusion of the movie. Sue is reading a book to her son in the living room of their Baxter Building home, and when she leaves Franklin for a moment to grab another book, she returns to see him with a surprise guest. Doom is crouching down beside Franklin, and although the villain’s face is hidden from view and his voice is never heard, all the audience needs to see is his iconic mask and his green robe to know exactly who’s arrived in the MCU. But if this setup wasn’t clear enough, an on-screen message quickly follows the scene, confirming that the Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday.
First Steps had already alluded to Doom and his domain earlier in the film: At a Future Foundation summit, a placard for Latveria, Doctor Doom's home, can be seen among those of the member nations—but, rather suspiciously, no representative is in attendance. Victor von Doom, who will be portrayed by the returning Robert Downey Jr. in the Avengers crossover, appears to be setting his plans, whatever they may be, in motion. How the fantastic 4-year-old fits into his agenda remains to be seen, but given the limitless potential Franklin displayed before he could even walk, it seems likely that he’ll play a big role.
The MCU Returns to Stand-Alone Movies (for Now …)
When Thunderbolts* was released in early May, the film felt like a turning point for Marvel Studios from a creative perspective. It was a significant improvement on February’s Captain America: Brave New World and many of the misbegotten movies (and TV shows) that have been a part of the Multiverse Saga. The movie’s increased use of practical effects and on-location filming helped distinguish it from a visual standpoint, it avoided a third-act implosion by turning away from the typical climax of a CGI slugfest, and it had compelling character arcs. Yet Thunderbolts* underperformed at the box office, its $382 million global total making it one of the lowest-grossing titles in Marvel Studios’ 17-year history.
As Feige recently told IGN, the Marvel exec believes that the film’s connections to past Disney+ series stunted its potential to attract theatergoers. "Thunderbolts* I thought was a very, very good movie," Feige said. "But nobody knew that title and many of those characters were from a [TV] show. Some [audiences] were still feeling that notion of, 'I guess I had to have seen these other shows to understand who this is.' If you actually saw the movie, that wouldn't be the case, and we make the movie so that's not the case. But I think we still have to make sure the audience understands that."
While Thunderbolts* tells a mostly self-contained story that you could enjoy without doing all of your MCU homework in advance, it’s still a crossover movie that ties together a number of TV series and multiple films, including Black Widow. In contrast, First Steps has no relation at all to any previous MCU project.
First Steps is Marvel’s first true stand-alone film since 2021’s Eternals. And it distances itself even further from the rest of the MCU by setting its story in a new universe, Earth-828. That decision affords the film a creative freedom that very few MCU movies have ever had, and First Steps takes full advantage of it. Thanks to the retro-futuristic setting of Earth-828, First Steps has distinct aesthetics that hearken back to the vintage vibes of Shakman’s WandaVision. Technology is far more advanced on this world than in the one we’re used to seeing on-screen.
“With [WandaVision], we were recreating sitcoms,” Shakman told Marvel.com. “Here, we are building a whole new universe, Earth-828 in the ’60s. It’s very unlike our ’60s because this ’60s has Reed Richards, who is sort of like Oppenheimer meets Einstein meets Steve Jobs. By the mid-’60s in this universe, he’s invented H.E.R.B.I.E. robots and monorails and all sorts of amazing technology. So, it feels like the ’60s, but it has this layer of retro-futuristic tech on top of it.”
Even though it’s in the midst of a cinematic saga named after the multiverse, Marvel Studios has underutilized its ability to depart from Earth-626 and its main continuity, which has become cluttered with superheroes and overencumbered by lore that dates back to the Infinity Saga. The multiversal aspects of First Steps are more understated than those of previous movies that have ventured into alternate realities and dimensions, such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. The new film showcases the benefits of going back to the basics when it comes to world-building and establishing new characters. The remainder of the movies in the Multiverse Saga will be sequels, culminating in 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, but Fantastic Four may have lessons for the studio that affect whatever plans it has beyond Phase 6.
According to Feige, Secret Wars will provide a fresh start for the MCU that will pave the way for more projects to take creative liberties in the way that First Steps did. “Reset, singular timeline—we’re thinking along those lines,” Feige told the press, while adding, “X-Men is where that will happen next.”
First Steps didn’t set out to explain its connections to Doomsday or Thunderbolts*, the latter of which featured a post-credits scene that teased the Fantastic Four entering the atmosphere of Earth-626. When that stinger originally appeared in May, it seemed to suggest that the superteam would fail to save their world from Galactus in First Steps, which obviously didn’t end up being the case. Even though First Steps doesn’t reveal how or why that transdimensional journey will eventually occur, its own stinger does offer our first glimpse of Doctor Doom and his interest in Franklin Richards. And that’s really all that the film needed to do; any other attempts to forge a connection between Earth-828 and the main continuity of the MCU likely would’ve bogged down the movie or revealed too much about Doomsday.
Between Thunderbolts* and First Steps, Marvel Studios has turned a corner just in time for the final phase of the Multiverse Saga, providing blockbuster superhero entertainment in ways that don’t feel so beholden to the standard MCU formula. Of course, Marvel might not be able to produce the same kinds of results with its two new Avengers films that it did with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But considering the studio’s struggles during the Multiverse Saga and how many attempts it took to give the Fantastic Four a proper blockbuster debut, Marvel’s recent success is a promising sign that it’s back on track as it looks ahead to X-Men and beyond.
