Marvel’s First Family is finally returning to the big screen after almost a decade away. This weekend marks the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the first installment in Phase Six of the MCU, and the first adaptation of the characters since Marvel regained the rights. It’s safe to say the property has had a rocky road to the big screen. Since 1994, it has been adapted three times, each attempt seemingly worse than the last.
The laws of chance suggest that it’s entirely possible to make a good Fantastic Four film, and yet the characters have maybe had the worst luck of any comic book property. It hardly mattered who directed, who starred, or what tonal approach was taken. Fans have been left high and dry on a shockingly consistent basis. Luckily, based on early reviews, First Steps seems to be the first official adaptation to nail the team dynamic, but the question still stands: why has Hollywood never gotten The Fantastic Four right?
Fantastic Four Films Have Never Gone Full Sci-Fi
As Stan Lee’s first official Marvel property, created in partnership with Jack Kirby, The Fantastic Four was admittedly a product of its time. Whereas DC heroes were written as gods and figures for readers to look up to, Lee envisioned the Marvel brand as focusing on relatable, everyday people as heroes. So the once-fresh family dynamic that set The Fantastic Four apart has become familiar material for most audiences today.
Nonetheless, the comics stood out thanks to their unabashed love of sci-fi. Each Marvel comic property at the time took influence from a specific genre: the Incredible Hulk paid homage to classic monster movies, while Spider-Man was reminiscent of high-school hangout comedies. Fantastic Four was similarly intended as a tribute to 1950s sci-fi B-movies, with individual issues paying homage to Fantastic Voyage, Forbidden Planet, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
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Yet maybe the biggest tonal mistake all the previous film adaptations made is that they never fully embraced the sci-fi elements. The 2005 Fantastic Four played the premise as a typical superhero origin story. While it proved a big box office hit, that approach made the on-screen material feel barebones and cookie-cutter. Meanwhile, while the 2015 film did embrace the sci-fi elements, it went completely in the wrong direction, leaning into Cronenbergian body horror that felt laughably misplaced.
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of First Steps‘ marketing is that it appears to be finally embracing full science fiction. The 1960s-set retro-futuristic designs look to feel right at home in the worlds Jack Kirby envisioned, and the trailers sell a film that sees science in an optimistic light and centers on the joys of discovery and cosmic exploration.
The Fantastic Four Is About Family, Not Superheroics
However, what has always set The Fantastic Four apart from other popular Marvel properties is that the comics have consistently focused more on the team dynamic than on superheroism. As previously mentioned, Stan Lee wanted to make his heroes relatable, everyday people, and the key to Marvel’s First Family has always been that they’re exactly as advertised: a family. Reed Richards and Sue Storm stood for the paternal figures, Johnny Storm represented the mischievous younger sibling, and while Ben Grimm wasn’t literally family, he functioned as a sort of wacky uncle.
What’s most baffling about the prior films is that they’ve either downplayed this dynamic or outright ignored it. While the “family unit” is technically present in the 2005 film (and Rise of the Silver Surfer is an improvement, if for no other reason than it embraces that dynamic more), it felt strangely tertiary. The emphasis was more on wacky hijinks you’d expect to see on an above-average sitcom, and many of the individual character arcs, namely Ben Grimm’s, felt too disconnected from those of his teammates. 2015’s dire Fantastic Four only emphasized family in the sense that Sue and Johnny Storm were adopted siblings, and did little else to develop that theme.
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In some sense, maybe these approaches were inevitable. Both the 2005 and 2015 films were released during a boom in comic-book movies, following the success of Sam Raimi’s Spider–Man and The Avengers. In the wake of these successes, Fox sought a more straightforward superhero origin story. However, emphasizing the spectacle detracted from the true strength of The Fantastic Four: its heart. People often joke about The Incredibles being the best adaptation of the characters, and yet there’s some truth to the claim, in that the title characters were a family first and heroes second.
If early word can be trusted, First Steps may be the first cinematic adaptation to fully embrace that fact. Early reactions have thus far praised the chemistry between the cast and confirmed that it’s a film about family first and foremost. Nonetheless, it’s frankly baffling that it’s taken Hollywood this long to fully crack the code and that the previous films have been unanimously guilty of overthinking the characters out of a fear that they’re too “goofy”. But they are goofy; that’s what makes them so special, and it’s why we’re excited to see if First Steps can finally do them justice on the big screen. The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters on July 25.