Marvel has been in a pretty weird spot in the public’s eye lately. It seems they’ve been teetering on the edge of losing a lot of fans due to poorly written scripts, last minute reshoots, and overwhelming budgets that don’t have much of a chance at making the profit they want it to.
The public started to show Marvel that they won’t throw money at every single project thrown at them, and that they prefer quality over an overwhelming quantity. Marvel in very recent years finally seemed to pick up on it and decided to steer the ship in an entirely different course. The company pulled back significantly on the amount of projects pumped out per year, and changed a lot of the projects in production at the time to give it more of a focus on the story and characters. We’re now at a point where we have seen some of the “first steps” towards those changes with the new Fantastic Four: First Steps. The film stars Marvel’s first family back on the big screen. I say Marvel’s “first” family because this is the first group of characters created by Marvel comics. In the eyes of comic history, the Fantastic Four predate the Avengers, the X Men, or just about any group of Marvel Heroes. The Fantastic Four were the first family of heroes for Marvel, something that has been pushed a lot in this film’s marketing. However family is also the biggest theme for the film as well. So without spoilers, is Fantastic Four: First Steps Marvel’s “first steps” to getting back on good graces with fans? Or is it more of the same with projects of recent years?
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I could make a multitude of puns throughout this article about the film, but I asked myself what kind of journalist would riddle their in depth review of one of the biggest blockbusters of 2025 with lazy wordplay? … A fun one would, that’s who, so get ready for more low hanging puns than you can likely withstand.
I went into this film practically holding my breath. Like I said, a lot was riding on this movie for Marvel after recent projects have left a sour taste in fan’s mouths. Marvel banked a lot on this film generating that last bit of hype before we get into the new Avengers film next year. After having seen the movie, I have to say, it was pretty “fantastic”.
THE GOOD
Going into this movie, I was pretty skeptical about how Marvel would characterize the characters and write the story in a way that felt fresh and compelling to audiences. After all, this is the third iteration of the Fantastic Four in 20 years, so bringing these characters to life again in a new way was going to be a challenge. One of the easiest ways people have countered this opinion was saying that Spider-Man is also on his third iteration in roughly 20 years and the latest iteration is thriving. However I feel it’s a lot easier to characterize Spider-Man than the Fantastic Four. Spider-Man is so recognizable to the general public that everybody knows who he is and why he does what he does. The Fantastic Four however has been seen in several tones and iterations throughout comic and film history, that if you asked 50 different people about who they are, you’ll get 50 variations of answers, and a lot of them may be “I don’t know much about them”. I feel Marvel however stuck the landing on this take of the team incredibly well.
One of the best parts is that casual fans will enjoy this movie as much as a casual fan could nowadays. The film is set in its own universe, away from The Avengers or anything we’ve seen from Marvel in the past 20 years. No fan will have to do any homework to understand what’s going on, and who’s who. I think Marvel made the best possible choice here at such a low point in the franchise, because if you’re trying to gain fans again, the last thing they’ll want to do is have to watch other movies to understand what’s going on.
You’re transported into a 1960’s retro futuristic aesthetics that will have you both in awe and surprise at how well it looks. It sets the stage for a Fantastic Four who’s been active for about 4 years at the time. A team that you very quickly fall in love with. Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben are all characterized really well in this movie, which is something I was really afraid of Marvel getting wrong. The cast worked their butts off to breathe life into these characters and it really shows. In my personal opinion, I was deathly afraid of the casting choice to make Pedro Pascal the new Mr. Fantastic. Pascal has been seen in so many mainstream films and T.V shows lately, that a lot of people (myself included) have grown tired of seeing his name at the forefront of every project. However I keep getting reminded that there’s a reason why he is plastered everywhere, because Pascal is a talented actor who will never cease to disappoint. He plays Reed Richards so incredibly well in this film, that I bought into the portrayal of his character, something I knew was going to be the hardest part of the cast. In fact, every casting choice for the team was so “fantastic” that I don’t even think there’s even an iota of bad characterization in this film. Reed and Sue’s chemistry is very well portrayed in this story, something that has never been done so well in Fantastic Four films. I wanted to like this new version of the team so badly walking into it, and I came out loving them.
The special effects are also stunning. I was initially very worried after seeing the first trailer for this movie, and was another reason I went into this film holding my breath. However I was able to breathe a sigh of relief after seeing that the CG looks amazing in this film. Marvel really went through the effort of polishing this movie to a tee, leaving no room for criticism on the art and cinematography.
The story is the next thing I wanted to praise. It focuses on the theme of family so much that it would put Dom Toretto to shame. Without knowing these characters very well, you can tell just how much of a bond they have with each other. I was actually surprised at how well the characters got me to care about them, their world, and understand their bond so well without ever having seen them before. So many recent Marvel projects almost expect you to blindly care for the main characters simply because they’re just the main characters and that’s what you’re supposed to do. I cannot stress this enough that if you just expect me to care for the main characters for that reason alone, you have already lost me on 90 percent of the film. However, Fantastic Four delivers on strong and compelling characters, and setting the stage for a strong and compelling world that I don’t want to see die by the main villain. One thing Marvel does in a lot of their films is give the whole “the fate of the world is at stake” schtick in the story. It becomes so tiresome if the story and the writing don’t support such a high stake. However if done correctly, I feel you can really understand the magnitude of the situation. It’s something that I think this movie does insanely well. Without spoilers, after the team learns of the impending threat, there’s a wild tonal shift in the story that makes it feel very serious, almost like the whole team has the weight of the world on their shoulders… because they do. Every threat shown in this movie has a very serious impact and amount of weight to it, and I believe that impact and weight.
Overall, there’s so much praise that I could give this movie, but at the same time, there’s a couple of things that I feel could have been done differently.
THE BAD
I definitely have a lot of criticisms of this movie, however many of the ones I do have revolve around heavy spoilers. I want to get into them, but I can’t do it here because I don’t want to give anything away.
But for the spoiler free criticisms I do have…
Like I said, the film writes these characters really well and gets you to care about them pretty early on in the story. However I think it does this so well that it never really gives much downtime to really get one on one interactions with the characters themselves. The film has to speedrun the story to try and get you to care about them, but never do you really get much unique interactions with them that give the film its own identity. I will always praise the 2005 Fantastic Four film for giving us such original interactions between the team that it’s recognized for that very aspect. This film gives us that as well, but it only gives me so much that I feel starved for more dynamics between the members of the team. I craved more dialogue between Sue and Johnny, or Ben and Reed. These relationships should be fairly straightforward for a brother and sister, and two best friends, but I feel they are in the movie so little that it’s definitely noticeable.
That’s about all I can get without spoiling anything. If this article gets enough attention, maybe I can give a spoiler review in a bit of time.
THE FINANCIALS
As of now, this film has grossed about $118 million domestically, and over $200 million worldwide in its opening weekend, something no Fantastic Four movie has ever done. I think that’s great for the film, however Marvel might still be holding its breath. The film has an alleged budget of about $200 million. Factoring in costs for marketing, it has to make a little over double that just to break even. This has been Marvel’s downfall in recent years, having projects with insane budgets, expecting every single project to make Avengers Endgame level profits. While there’s still so much time left for the film to cross that threshold of profit, I think right now it’s still a waiting game on which way the film’s profits will go.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, I think this film does what it needs to do very well. This is Marvel’s last film of 2025, and two films away from Avengers: Doomsday. It sets up the family very well, and gets across the theme of family even better. I walked into the movie very worried about what’s in store for Marvel… because recently things have “Ben Grimm” for the company. However I came out not only having a newfound love for Marvel’s first family, but I think this is definitely the company’s “first steps” towards a “Fantastic” slate of movies to come.