When a movie earns over $500 million globally and sits at 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, questioning its quality feels almost contrarian. But here’s the thing about Fantastic Four: First Steps—commercial success and critical acclaim don’t always tell the complete story. After multiple viewings, a troubling pattern emerges beneath the retro-futuristic sheen and charismatic performances: Marvel’s First Family doesn’t actually grow or change in their own movie.
This disconnect matters more than box office receipts suggest. The film’s theatrical run has been remarkable by most measures—it became the first MCU movie of 2025 to cross the $500 million milestone and earned Disney’s coveted “A-” CinemaScore. Yet scratch beneath that glossy surface, and what you find is a movie so reverent toward its source material that it forgot to give its characters the one thing that makes the Fantastic Four compelling in the first place: their humanity.
The Jack Kirby-inspired visuals are gorgeous. Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach embody these characters with pitch-perfect chemistry. But somewhere between honoring the comics and delivering a crowd-pleasing spectacle, director Matt Shakman and his team of writers made a critical miscalculation. They gave us a coloring book when what we needed was the messy, imperfect sketch that shows the work in progress.
The Static Character Problem: Perfection From Frame One
Here’s a test: Can you identify a single character arc in First Steps? Not a plot event—an actual emotional journey where someone begins the film one way and emerges fundamentally changed by the end?
Reed Richards starts as a brilliant, somewhat controlling scientist who worries about protecting the world. By the finale, he’s… still a brilliant, controlling scientist who worries about protecting the world. Except now he’s been proven right—Galactus literally tried to devour Earth, validating every anxious instinct Reed possessed. The movie doesn’t challenge his worldview; it reinforces it.
Sue Storm enters as a diplomatic genius who loves her family. She exits as a diplomatic genius who successfully negotiated asylum for New Yorkers and then died protecting her family. That’s plot movement, not character development. Ben Grimm’s journey? He goes from being a lovable, self-actualized Thing to being a lovable, self-actualized Thing with facial hair. Johnny Storm overcomes his womanizing tendencies by… already having overcome them before the movie starts, making him responsibly punctual for family dinners.
The frustrating part is that the character growth actually happened—we just didn’t get to see it. There’s a fleeting moment where Ben watches his old human self on television, and when the screen flickers off, his monstrous reflection briefly saddens him. It’s gone in seconds. Reed starts apologizing to Ben for what happened during their cosmic ray accident, but Ben cuts him off. Unless you’re intimately familiar with Fantastic Four comics, you probably missed the significance entirely.
In Lee and Kirby’s original runs, Ben Grimm spent years grappling with his transformation. The early issues show him erupting in self-loathing, storming away from the team, questioning whether he deserved to exist. That internal struggle defined the character and gave readers someone to root for—not despite his appearance, but because of his battle to accept himself. This movie glosses over all that complexity and presents Ben as already zen about his condition. It’s dramatically inert.
The same applies to Reed’s guilt. In the comics, Reed’s anguish over transforming his best friend into a rock monster drives decades of storylines. His desperate attempts to cure Ben, his obsessive need to fix everything, his tendency to prioritize science over relationships—these flaws make Reed Richards interesting. First Steps gestures vaguely at this guilt but never lets it create real friction or force Reed to confront his failings.
A Retro-Future That Never Confronts Its Own Era
Setting First Steps in an alternate 1960s should have been a masterstroke. The decade that gave us the space race, the Cold War’s peak tensions, and seismic social upheaval—what better backdrop for introducing Marvel’s First Family?
Instead, the film’s 1960s bears zero resemblance to our actual 1960s. By the time we meet the Fantastic Four, they’ve already transformed their world into a retro-futuristic utopia. The Cold War? Resolved. Nuclear tensions? Disarmed. Social unrest? Nowhere to be found. The setting becomes pure aesthetic—a coat of mid-century modern paint slapped onto what could have easily been a contemporary story.
Think about what the movie could have done with this setting. Imagine the Fantastic Four appearing during the actual Cuban Missile Crisis, trying to broker peace while governments teeter on nuclear war. Then Galactus arrives, and suddenly the U.S. and Soviet Union must choose: maintain their mistrust or unite against an extinction-level threat. That’s Arrival-level tension, and Denis Villeneuve proved audiences will show up for cerebral sci-fi drama wrapped in spectacle.
Or consider the social implications. A super-team emerging in 1963 would have caused massive upheaval, particularly in a nation grappling with civil rights struggles and Cold War paranoia. The Soviets would’ve been terrified of American superhumans. There would’ve been protests, debates about government control, ethical questions about genetic enhancement. Instead, First Steps waves all this away in a montage. The U.S. and Russia are already buddies. World peace: achieved. Moving on.
Even shows like Mad Men and For All Mankind understand that period settings only work when you engage with the era’s actual tensions and contradictions. First Steps uses the ’60s as window dressing, which makes you wonder why they bothered. The film could’ve been set in 2025 without changing a single beat.
The Origin Story Debate: Why Skipping First Steps Was a Mistake
I understand the impulse to skip the origin story. We’ve seen three previous Fantastic Four films—even if two were critical disasters and one barely qualifies as a movie. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man proved you can successfully bypass an origin when you’re the third actor to play a character in 15 years.
But here’s the difference: Spider-Man: Homecoming came just two years after Andrew Garfield’s version. Fantastic Four: First Steps arrived 20 years after the 2005 film. An entire generation has grown up without seeing the team’s origin story. People born after that movie can now vote.
More importantly, origin stories aren’t about how heroes get their powers—they’re about showing how powers change people. Tony Stark’s arc from weapons manufacturer to self-sacrificing hero. Peter Parker learning that with great power comes great responsibility. Bruce Banner coming to terms with the monster inside him. These transformations are what give superhero stories their emotional weight.
By starting First Steps with a fully formed, perfectly functional team, the movie sacrifices the very foundation that makes the Fantastic Four work. We don’t see Reed grappling with the guilt of transforming his friends. We don’t watch Ben’s journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance. We miss Sue and Reed navigating how their relationship changes under cosmic-powered stress. We don’t experience Johnny learning to be a responsible team member.
All that character development—the good stuff, the messy human drama that makes these four people interesting—happened off-screen before the opening credits. What we get instead is the equivalent of starting Iron Man with Tony already reformed and wearing the Mark VII armor. Sure, the action would still be impressive, but you’d lose the heart of why we care about Tony Stark in the first place.
The filmmakers clearly chose this approach to differentiate from previous attempts. But in trying to avoid repetition, they eliminated what makes origin stories valuable: watching ordinary (or in this case, already extraordinary) people become legends. The Fantastic Four comics work because Lee and Kirby showed us flawed individuals learning to become a family while dealing with cosmic threats. This movie shows us a family that’s already perfect at being a family, which raises the question: what’s left to learn?
When the Movie Finally Finds Its Heartbeat
Let’s be clear—First Steps isn’t without merit. The Silver Surfer chase sequence alone justifies the price of admission. Watching Sue Storm, visibly pregnant, invisible-shielding her way through a cosmic obstacle course while her husband stretches across impossible distances to protect her, culminating in Franklin Richards‘ mid-space-flight birth—it’s genuinely thrilling because in that moment, the stakes feel real and personal.
That sequence works because it strips away all the world-building and cosmic mythology and focuses on something primal: parents protecting their unborn child. You don’t need to understand Negative Zone physics or Galactus’s hunger. You just need to recognize the universal terror and determination of two people trying to bring their baby safely into the world under impossible circumstances. It’s visceral, emotional, and completely relatable—everything the rest of the movie needed more of.
The cast deserves substantial credit for making this material work as well as it does. Pascal brings wounded intelligence to Reed without tipping into insufferable genius territory. Kirby radiates strength and compassion as Sue, making her the emotional anchor the script requires. Quinn finds playful charm in Johnny even when the script denies him the immaturity that would give him room to grow. And Moss-Bachrach’s mo-cap work as Ben creates genuine warmth and humor.
The retro-futuristic design, whatever its narrative shortcomings, is genuinely inspired. Production designer Sarah Greenwood (who worked on Barbie and multiple Paddington films) creates a world that feels tactile and lived-in rather than purely CGI-generated. Michael Giacchino’s score captures that soaring, optimistic quality that defined Silver Age comics. When the movie leans into its pulp adventure roots—and crucially, when it lets its characters be vulnerable—it absolutely sings.
And yes, getting Galactus as an actual planet-devouring cosmic entity rather than a cloud (looking at you, 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer) matters to longtime fans. The film respects its source material’s cosmic scope in ways previous adaptations never attempted.
What This Reveals About Marvel’s Current Struggles
Fantastic Four: First Steps didn’t underperform—it’s actually one of 2025’s biggest earners. But its tepid second-weekend drop (67%, among the franchise’s worst) and its struggles to match Superman at the domestic box office suggest audiences aren’t connecting as strongly as Marvel hoped.
The film epitomizes Marvel’s current challenge: how to relaunch beloved properties while managing risk. After Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts both struggled (earning $415 million and $382 million worldwide respectively), the studio clearly wanted a safe win. They got one—First Steps is profitable and well-reviewed. But “safe” often means “forgettable.”
The MCU built its empire on movies willing to let heroes fail spectacularly before earning their triumphs. Tony Stark was an arms dealer. Steve Rogers was a man out of time. Thor was an arrogant god who needed humbling. Watching these characters earn their heroism through painful growth is what made audiences invest emotionally for 23 films and $32 billion in box office receipts.
First Steps wants to have it both ways—introduce new characters while skipping the messy work of showing them evolve. It’s a movie drenched in “flop sweat,” as the critique notes, desperate to please everyone while offending no one. The result is technically proficient, occasionally thrilling, but ultimately lacking the emotional complexity that defines the best superhero storytelling.
The next time we see these characters—likely in Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars—Marvel needs to take the gloves off. Let Reed’s control issues cause real problems. Force Sue to make impossible choices that strain the family bond. Give Johnny actual immaturity to overcome. Make Ben confront whether being the Thing means he’s lost his humanity. These characters deserve to struggle, fail, and earn their victories through genuine growth.
What Comes Next for Marvel’s First Family
Despite its narrative shortcomings, Fantastic Four: First Steps accomplishes something crucial: it makes the property viable again. After the 2015 disaster left the franchise radioactive, many wondered if these characters could ever work on screen. This movie proves they can, provided the cast and creative vision align.
The 87% Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t a fluke—critics genuinely responded to the film’s heart and aesthetic choices. Audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore, suggesting positive word-of-mouth even if repeat viewings haven’t materialized. The film overtook Ant-Man on Disney’s all-time theatrical releases chart, a symbolic victory for a franchise many wrote off as cursed.
More importantly, it established these four actors as the definitive screen versions of these characters. Pascal, Kirby, Quinn, and Moss-Bachrach have the chemistry and charisma to carry multiple films. Marvel reportedly already has a sequel in development, with Shakman expected to return.
What that sequel needs is simple: conflict. Real, messy, uncomfortable conflict that forces these characters to change. Let the family fight. Let them make mistakes with consequences that can’t be solved in a montage. Let them fail so their eventual triumph feels earned rather than inevitable.
The template already exists—Guardians of the Galaxy worked because James Gunn let his found family be genuinely dysfunctional before they became heroes. The ragtag team of Thunderbolts succeeded critically (if not commercially) by leaning into its antiheroes’ moral ambiguity. Even WandaVision, directed by Shakman himself, worked because it forced Wanda to confront her grief and guilt.
First Steps takes the safe route, giving us aspirational heroes who’ve already done their growing off-screen. It’s a serviceable introduction—a good movie, even—but not a great one. For the Fantastic Four to truly matter in the MCU’s future, Marvel needs to remember what made them icons in the first place: they’re not perfect heroes. They’re flawed people learning to be a family while saving the world.
And sometimes, the hardest step isn’t the first one. It’s admitting you need to take a few steps backward before you can truly move forward.