Fantastic Four: First Steps is the fourth attempt at a Fantastic Four movie in my lifetime, but the first in which the team is portrayed as a functional family.

I grew up watching the 20th Century Fox mid-2000s Fantastic Four films on repeat, and I remember them being really fun. But I was a child at the time, so I think the low Rotten Tomatoes scores are probably a more accurate representation of their quality.

The 2015 Fan4stic is possibly the worst movie created despite featuring the loves of my life, Michael B Jordan and Miles Teller.

So, the track record is significantly less than fantastic, but 2025 decided to give us a new one for some reason.

This movie does something none before it have achieved – it functions as a film.

Where most of the previous iterations, and most superhero films, focus on their characters being douchebags – this is a collection of kind, smart people trying to make the world a better place.

It’s kind of a mum story, which I didn’t expect but really liked. The story follows the group as they take on planet-eating-entity Galactus – who thankfully isn’t a cloud in this version – and who offers the Fantastic Four an impossible choice to save their world.

Some elements of this story have a Star Trek feel to them, and there was a very good robot buddy.

There is a lot of hope and simplicity in this world, and the masses listen and respond well to heroic-speech reason, which is always nice.

This, a little like Superman, skips over the origin story. Instead, we open with a quiet scene with Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) telling Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) she is pregnant.

The dynamic between Kirby and Pascal is very sweet; the pair have great chemistry.

While Richards leads the team, Storm leads the movie with conviction.

The other half of the Fantastic Four includes a non-misogynistic womaniser and circumstantial linguist Johnny Storm, and The Thing/Ben Grimm, who doubles as a chef and midwife when required. Both Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are fun to watch as “the best uncles ever”.

The team has heaps of opportunities to show how they are essential to the group, like in the event of a space birth, and each member has good chemistry and chances to interact. They do feel like a family.

The grounded baby-on-the-way story is set in this fantastical 60s setting, with a dose of holograms, futuristic cars and this world’s equivalent of apple watches. It feels like stepping into the original Fantastic Four comics, with old-timey television broadcasts and excellent costumes.

There were only two times the CGI baby reminded me of the nightmare Renesme from the horror movie Twilight: Breaking Dawn part 2, so Hollywood is improving in the CGI baby department.

The runtime on this film is on the shorter side at less than two hours, and some plotlines felt like they were missing scenes.

I noticed there was one piece of dialogue significant in the trailers that did not make the final cut of the film.  

That said, it works, and the slower, more conversational pace feels like a wholesome breather in the endless waves of content.

The score is very good, and some of the more predictable beats are really lifted by it.

It doesn’t push the Marvel Cinematic Universe forward; in fact it seems quite disconnected from it. Instead, this movie focuses on establishing characters who can we actually want to see again down the line.

There are two end-credit scenes, but you can skip the second one.

I thought it was all right, maybe not quite fantastic. The audience I was with burst into applause at the end. One guy yelled out “the best Fantastic Four movie ever!”.

You know what? It’s not exactly a high bar, but he wasn’t wrong. 7/10