Ebon Moss-Bachrach Rocks as The Thing in Retro Marvel Flick

Marvel’s latest entry in the superhero sweepstakes, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is a visually appetizing, retro romp through one of the publisher’s first teams. It’s chock-full of strong performances (Pedro Pascal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are standouts) and boasts a terrific turn at embracing its 60s-flavored comic roots. For all of its charms and competent craftsmanship, however, First Steps never manages to gain much in the way of steam, suspense, or stakes. It’s slick, but often a bit soft.

Producer Kevin Feige wasn’t kidding when he called the film “a no-homework-required” Marvel movie. Marvel’s continued integration into the broader cinematic landscape has often made its films almost forbiddingly dense with content, information, and inscrutable interconnections that can be essential to following what’s going on. Marvel Studios’ business model has been predicated on audience familiarity across its films and properties, to the point that you sometimes need to know about last year’s cameos, this year’s spin-offs, next year’s multiverses, and so on. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a welcome correction to that trend, as it relaunches Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm in a form that, again, requires zero prior knowledge of past films or continuity decisions. The movie spends most of its time establishing the group as a family (literally, in the case of Sue and Reed), and doesn’t bother to weigh itself down with specific hangovers from previous adaptations.

The setup is established in a talk show hosted by Mark Gatiss, which is a bit of a cheat, but the right move considering his character conveniently summarizes how the Fantastic Four came to be. Four years earlier, a quartet of astronauts was sent on a space mission. The mission, and their return, were beset by radiation that altered their DNA, imbuing them with powers. Reed (thoughtfully and with great dry humor played by Pedro Pascal) was able to elongate the elasticity of his body, and Sue (Vanessa Kirby) learned to turn invisible and project force fields. Joseph Quinn’s Johnny can now ignite and fly as the Human Torch, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm became The Thing, a permanently rock-covered behemoth with the strength to match.

The team lives together in a space compound that, you guessed it, looks like it could be a mid-century modern design magazine shoot: a family house with flying cars, chalkboard equations, and a tiny robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. to assist with the household chores. First Steps’ version of the world is pure retro-futurism: boxy television sets, an absence of modern smartphones, and an almost cartoonishly earnest optimism in its design sensibilities. One imagines that a mash-up of the original Jetsons and Lost in Space that was also somehow filtered through a Marvel comic book.

The aesthetic is agreeable, but the story never quite gains any traction. The film takes a while to get going after the initial pitch, and most of that time is taken up by establishing the bonds between the four main players. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is very much a family movie. Sue, in particular, learns in the opening stretch that she is pregnant. Reed’s reaction to the news is jittery and affecting: in a comedy bit, he has H.E.R.B.I.E. child-proof both their home and their shared space lab. Johnny and Ben, meanwhile, dote on Sue in their familiar brothers-and-brothers-in-law dynamic, delivering on sib-level sniping and comic relief even as their uncle status is evident to them all. It’s played straight and is wholly adorable.

But of course, this being a Marvel superhero movie, this family moment can’t last too long. A cosmic menace is on the horizon, and everyone’s favorite world-devourer, Galactus, is on the move with Earth in his sights. Galactus, a hulking, armored alien with glowing eyes, will need to eat the planet to survive, but before he can get there, he sends his herald (Julia Garner, in motion capture) to warn the four of them. This silver-skinned hero, the Silver Surfer, is all sleek menace and a bit of backstory that I won’t spoil here, but she’s also the target of much fawning and flirtation from Johnny, who is not immune to her charms despite her cosmic mission.

This all sets up some stakes and a moderate amount of action. The team goes after Galactus in space and has to dodge the Silver Surfer’s attacks (also space-based). Visually, the action remains within the retro mold: explosions are obvious, bright bursts of light and fire and color. Galactus is heavy on these and other visuals, but is a bit toothless in the superhero stakes. Sue winds up going into labor mid-mission (why not?), but again, this climax has a dreamlike logic to it that prioritizes style over suspense. So many beautiful colors: birth and planetary annihilation.

That’s the film’s big problem in a nutshell: sincerity buried under silliness. There are sincere emotional beats, particularly between the characters that we come to know and care about, before the action breaks open. But these are also somehow overwhelmed by the candy-colored softness that surrounds them. It’s never clear that the characters’ lives are in danger, or why anyone should care that Earth is in peril. That’s no fun, and also not very Marvel.

It’s good, though: expertly performed, retrograde to a fault, and has some genuine warmth to it. But it’s nothing to get worked up over in the end. If you want something a bit more whimsical than world-ending, then this may be for you. If you want your Marvel to pack a punch, this is no hill to die on.