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برچسب: Steps

  • FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS Review: Third Time’s A Charm


    Introduction

    I know you’re worried about The Fantastic Four: First Steps. You remember the aggressively mediocre first two Fantastic Four movies featuring Jessica Alba and Chris Evans. You’ve tried to forget the atrocious reboot featuring Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordan. And you still don’t trust that the MCU has truly turned the corner back into must-watch territory. But if you saw Thunderbolts*, you’ll have more confidence that Marvel has corrected itself. You did see Thunderbolts*, right?

    Honest Trailers once joked that a good Fantastic Four movie did exist – Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004). If that’s funny, it’s because it’s true. However, now, The Incredibles has competition with an official Fantastic Four film. The Fantastic Four: First Steps finally gives us a film that might just be fantastic.

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Pedro Pascal stars in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

    Synopsis

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps starts exactly how it should – by not showing us a thirty-minute first act featuring how the Fantastic Four got their powers. Thank you, director Matt Shakman. Instead, we’re thrust into a world where the Fantastic Four are beloved and considered Earth-828’s protectors. That number is important because the primary MCU Earth is 616. Don’t worry, the multiverse isn’t a focus in this movie. Because of that, bonus, you don’t have to know anything about the rest of the MCU for this movie. You’re welcome.

    In New York City on Earth-828, it’s the 1960s and looks like if Disneyland’s Tomorrowland was right. The Fantastic Four live together in their very own tower in the city, and everyone knows them by their actual names. Their superhero names are never mentioned during the film.

    Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and his wife, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), have learned that Sue is pregnant. They share this news with Sue’s brother, Johnny (Joseph Quinn), and their family friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) over their weekly Sunday dinner. If this sounds a lot like Disney’s Carousel of Progress ride to you, you’ll know what I mean by – like the ride – this idyllic scene is interrupted.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAsmrKyMqaA

    Near the end of Sue’s pregnancy, a cosmic being called the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives at Earth to inform humanity that her master, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), is on his way to eat Earth. Yes, I said eat Earth. In an attempt to save Earth, the Fantastic Four locate Galactus’ current location in the galaxy, then fly there to negotiate with him. Galactus demands Sue’s baby in exchange for not eating Earth. They politely decline. Just kidding – fight scene.

    Analysis

    What I love about this plot is that it’s a form of the famous Trolley Problem. Doom one life to save everyone else or doom everyone else to save one? Because the film focuses much more on family and community than on punching bad guys, the dilemma has real heft. And not just for the four superheroes, but for the people initially angry at what they perceive as the obvious choice.

    Once Sue explains to them why they couldn’t just sacrifice their child, they actually listen. I know, right? After living on our Earth these past few years, especially these last few months, the idea of people listening to reason sounds utterly preposterous.

    There’s a lot more to like about this film than just the moral dilemma. After the casting and writing disaster of 2015’s Fantastic Four, Marvel Studios did what they do best: creating a bunch of well-written characters and finding quite possibly the best possible choices of actors for all of the main characters (and even the minor ones).

    The Cast

    Ineson portrays a very menacing Galactus, even sprinkling in some nuance that has us feeling the tiniest bit of sympathy for him. Garner is even better as the Silver Surfer, powering her emotions and expressions throughout Surfer’s character arc, as well as through the CGI liquid metal covering her entire body.

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps

    Quinn and Moss-Bachrach both tone down the cartoonishness of their characters and play up qualities not emphasized in previous film versions of their characters. Ben isn’t just a rock-covered strongman. He’s caring and soft-hearted to friends and strangers alike. Johnny is no longer a cocky, dumb playboy, but a mildly subdued, intelligent man eager to help out.

    Then there are Kirby and Pascal, shining much more as the heads of the family than the heads of a superhero team. Reed is still the familiar scientific genius, but he’s also every dad trying to figure out fatherhood on the fly. He just uses checklists and robots to help. Sue is still the familiar protector and loving wife, but with an undertone of don’t-fuck-with me-now-that-I’m- a-mom. You all know what I’m talking about.

    Conclusion

    So, breathe a sigh of relief. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the Fantastic Four movie we’ve been demanding for decades. You can finally forgive 20th Century Fox Studios for mangling the franchise. You can also forgive Marvel Studios for the flood of forgettable and subpar content they fire-hosed at us after Avengers: Endgame (2019).

    Now, you can look forward to the next MCU movie, since that trust has once again been restored. And you can also go watch Thunderbolts* because the box office sure looks like many of you didn’t see it.

    Rating: Worth every penny, even if you’re still mad at Carousel of Progress always breaking down.

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  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps + Ralph Ineson | What Does That Nature Say To You | The Green Ray (1986)

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps + Ralph Ineson | What Does That Nature Say To You | The Green Ray (1986)


    Orange background with white text "TRUTH & MOVIES" podcast logo. Three film stills below: woman in kitchen, man by lake, person in red jacket with flowers.

    On Truth & Movies this week, we discuss The Fanastic Four: First Steps and spoke to its star Ralph Ineson. We then review the latest Hong Sang-Soo film, What Does That Nature Say To You and finally, for film club, revisit The Green Ray.

    Joining host Leila Latif are David Jenkins and Kambole Campbell.

     

    Truth & Movies is the podcast from the film experts at Little White Lies, where along with selected colleagues and friends, they discuss the latest movie releases. Truth & Movies has all your film needs covered, reviewing the latest releases big and small, talking to some of the most exciting filmmakers, keeping you across important industry news, and reassessing great films from days gone by with the Truth & Movies Film Club.

     

    Email: truthandmovies@tcolondon.com

    BlueSky and Instagram: @LWLies

     

    Produced by TCO



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  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – hard not…

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – hard not…



    In 1968’s ​‘Fantastic Four Annual #6’, Reed Richards and Sue Storm await the birth of their first child, Franklin, but the issue takes Reed away from the hospital on a desperate trip across dimensions to rescue his wife and child from a complicated birth. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lay out an exciting and visually dazzling adventure outside of space and time with the most human stakes possible: a man moving heaven and earth for the love of his family. 

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps similarly foregrounds approaching parenthood against a background of cosmic wonder, and runs with it in a loose adaptation of Lee & Kirby’s Galactus Trilogy – first touched on Tim Story’s (awful) 2007 sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer. Shakman’s effort compresses the Four’s origin story into a TV documentary, recapping the story of four brave astronauts who were forever changed by cosmic rays, then became celebrities and ambassadors as well as scientists and superheroes. A quick and snappy montage through battles with classic foes brushes aside the Saturday Morning Cartoon villains for one more insurmountable: Galactus, a gigantic being who has to feed on planets to satisfy his insatiable hunger. To its credit, even amidst this cosmic scale, family is at the forefront of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, from its understated opening to the film’s MacGuffin being the arrival of Reed and Sue’s firstborn.

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    Not to mention this it’s the first Marvel film in a while that seems to actually strive for an individual visual identity. Particularly at home in the Baxter Building, the retrofuturistic production design is an easy highlight. It’s perhaps more Jetsons than Jack Kirby, full of beautiful analogue gizmos set amidst bold mid-century décor; the robot housekeeper H.E.R.B.I.E. with his tape deck face is one example of space age imagination. 

    Even the costume designs feel like a refreshing alternative to what’s become the norm: instead of leathery militaristic getup, the Four dress in what looks like the inner layer of an astronaut suit — a visual reminder that these are explorers and even ambassadors, not super cops. Just as the production design begins to lift First Steps out of Marvel Studios anonymity, Michael Giacchino’s score also feels full of character – appropriately grandiose in its choral refrain, lifting the action up with it.

    But as pretty as this design looks and as good as the score sounds, Shakman’s direction at times seems like it’s shying away from the pulpy sci-fi style which it apparently wants to embody. It’s hard not to think about Down With Love director Peyton Reed, who had suggested a retro take in a now decades-old pitch for a Fantastic Four adaptation. (His Ant-Man films felt like a layup for an eventual crack at this, too). Down With Love crackled with life in every aspect, an emulation of Rock Hudson flicks which both fully embraced the tone of its inspirations, leaning into whimsical visual tricks and playful banter characteristic of the time. First Steps by comparison feels like it’s missing that extra step: while the world The Fantastic Four inhabit is bright and tactile, the camerawork which captures it is decidedly less adventurous, the performances within are muted.

    Classically weird and colourful characters like Mole Man are rendered with disappointing normalcy (he’s just a guy in a suit and tie!), even if Paul Walter Hauser breathes cartoonish life into the minor role. The big bad Galactus’s design work fits in a little too neatly with the presentation of Marvel’s cosmic side as seen so far, better than the anonymous cloud of other adaptations but still not popping off the screen like he does on the page (that said, Ineson’s growling voice performance does well to carry the apocalyptic dread). Even Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s performance as The Thing feels a bit too reigned in, even if it conceptually makes sense that Shakman wishes to present his characters as a completely regular family.

    Even in the best moments of First Steps, it’s hard to feel hopeful or even positive about the Marvel movies when even their creative successes herald the arrival of more creatively bankrupt money-making exercises: we’re duly reminded that ​“The Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday”. You could almost extrapolate Galactus as a stand in for the encroachments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – aware of what it’s doing and yet constantly caving to its hunger, a force which can only be delayed rather than destroyed. In this case, it’s at least put off until the post credits, the story here standing on its own until it’s time to be called up for Avengers duty.

    In isolation, First Steps is a pretty good time, even if it feels as though it could push its aesthetic into more daring territory. This makes that inevitable interference all the more frustrating: when Marvel even shows a glimpse of any kind of visual ambition, we’re told not to expect that from these characters again. Two steps forward, one step back. 





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  • First Steps — Every Movie Has a Lesson

    First Steps — Every Movie Has a Lesson







    MOVIE REVIEW: The Fantastic Four: First Steps — Every Movie Has a Lesson























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