The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Director: Matt Shakman
Writers: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan
The 1960s, new and improved!
I saw The Fantastic Four: First Steps yesterday, 26-July-2025, on an IMAX screen. The Fantastic Four occupy a special place in the Marvel world. There have been several attempts to bring FF to big and small screens, and until now none has been very successful.
I knew going in that Shakman set FF in a retrofuturistic 1960s, Earth-828. I was born in 1955 and I have many memories of the 1960s, so I was curious how much nostalgia I would experience. The answer was, “not a lot.” Earth-828 is not like the 1960s as they actually happened here on Earth-1218. Earth-828 is like the 1960s with many of the rough edges sanded down. (And there were a lot of rough edges to the 1960s—don’t let anyone tell you different!) Some of the visual and auditory cues were familiar. The enormous cars were familiar. Television on Earth-828 looked much as TV did in the late 1960s and 70s, it even has a newscaster who sounds much like Walter Cronkite. But rather than looking like the actual 1960s, Earth-828 looks more like 1960s science fiction. (That, presumably, is the “futuristic” part of “retrofuturistic.”)
Much like James Gunn’s recent Superman, Shakman’s FF mostly elides the origin story. The film begins four years after the failed space voyage that conferred their powers on the FF. We get a brief version of the story in the form of a celebratory TV show, so if you’re not familiar with FF, don’t worry: Shakman has your back.
The original Marvel comics had a problem with female super heroes. They were there mostly to look pretty and to get into trouble that the male superheroes could rescue them from. This of course was the almost universal role of women in Science Fiction of the 1960s. Lee and Kirby were aware that their treatment of female superheroes (and women in general) was problematic, but they were apparently too stuck in the old ways of thinking to imagine a woman with real strength and agency.
Shakman, Friedman, Pearson, and Kaplan very obviously decided they were going to do something about this. What they did was center Sue Storm. She’s the strongest character and the real plot driver. While Reed, Johnny, and Ben all show up well, Sue is the star.
This was good. Marvel has caught my interest, and I look forward to the sequals.