It has certainly been a summer of hope in the superhero box office. Gone are the days of smug wisecracks and winking at the camera. James Gunn’s Superman told us that kindness is a revolutionary action. Thunderbolts* showed us that any random group can become friends if they confide in each other. And now Fantastic Four: First Steps shows us that family can conquer everything. It’s honestly a little refreshing to have such saccharine messaging in what are, with no uncertainty, children’s movies.

Like the other superhero films this summer, Fantastic Four: First Steps also makes the choice to not run through the origin story. This is a different Earth, so it is blessedly not bogged down at all by the weight of anything that’s happened in any Avengers movie. Showing us a dazzling world of the 1960s that resembles a world’s fair’s look into the future makes everything feel fresh and new. And in that new world Reed Richards AKA Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Susan Storm AKA The Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm AKA The Thing (Ebon Moss Bachrach), and Johnny Storm AKA The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) are the world’s greatest heroes.

Adored and loved as they are they are faced with a truly horrible decision when the Devourer of Worlds, Galactus, decides that he’s gotten peckish and Earth seems as fine a snack as any. Given the choice between saving the Earth, or offering the giant man in a silly hat their first born child, the team decides to fight for their planet and their family. Leaning on each other as the world unites to defeat this threat.

It’s a movie that oozes earnestness, and rightly so. The issue with it’s earnestness is that it’s particular brand feels dated. Superman was earnest in a way that felt new and exciting. And while this is something we haven’t seen in a while, Fantastic Four feels like a film plucked out of the 1960s. The former watches as something unique, even as it’s telling a story we’ve heard before. The latter feels like nostalgia for a bygone era, a desire to go back to the 60s where everything was magical and clean. Nostalgia is a lie after all, one that presupposes the world used to be better when it was not. And while Fantastic Four is cute, and fun, and looks sharp, it lacks the left hook of the other hopeful superhero films of 2025.

Everything is taken very seriously, and while the lack of sassiness is nice it would also be nice if it felt like anyone was having fun. Even the duo of The Thing and Human Torch are tepid in their humor. Hard to land a few good zingers when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) foretells of the entire planets destruction. Beyond that complaint the film also has a dullness to its plotting. Not a lot happens, their adventures of defeating an army of super gorillas are talked about in the past, their battle with the Moleman only mentioned in passing. On screen the movie watches closer to an old episode of Lost in Space than a summer blockbuster. Even their relationships are never really put into question, always staying together as a family unit means a lack of drama or worry over how the characters will respond to the threats facing them.

Fantastic Four: First Steps is just that. An excellent first step away from the machine that is Kevin Feige’s MCU. It’s certainly a direction I’m happy to see, but not a movie I was sold on as it exists. I’m hopeful it represents a place where there’s more variation in the stories told as opposed to the unending need to have each film reference the last. But even as I feel that I hope I know that I am doomed. As the film tries to toddle away with it’s own story, rest assured the mid credits teaser is still pointing at what’s to come next. Even as we wrestle against the chains of the tangled web of a connected storyline, we find the link holding us to all that came before, and all that is yet to come.

3/5