Weekend Superhero: FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEP’S Fantastic Characters

Weekend Superhero: Fantastic Four’s Fantastic Characters

Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) is less than a month away, and, considering the winning streak the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been on with Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* (or New Avengers, if you prefer), I’m extremely excited for it. As a comic book nerd and Marvel fanatic, seeing what seems like a version of these classic characters that’s faithful to the original vision of them finally, finally, finally make it to the big screen is almost like a dream come true. As such, I want to talk about the characters and motifs that we’ve seen revealed, and how all these things will likely impact the MCU going forward.

First off, lets address the retro-futurist motif (as Disney World’s Tomorrowland park refers to it). Channeling Ray Bradbury’s outdated futurist aesthetic of what the world of the 1950’s might look like, we see rockets that look like they’re taken right out of such old properties as Buck Rogers, with multiple rockets and sleek, jagged designs that have jumped right off the page. Reed Richards is served coffee by H.E.R.B.I.E., who originated in the 1978 cartoon as a replacement for the Human Torch. The robot has visible cassette tapes that rotate as he thinks and speaks, since that’s clearly where his memory is. The televisions and cars are all ripped right from the memories of classic ads and other Americana, as if the past seventy years of our history had just gone a slightly different way. This naïve, fun setting will establish a unique sensibility for these heroes, who will be lacking the cynicism that pervades a lot of characters throughout modern media, opening the door to a fun-loving, hopeful, idealistic Fantastic Four who will stand as a sharp contrast to all the dour, world-weary heroes of the MCU.

Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, is the patriarch of the family, and is played by Pedro Pascal this time around. He has the power to stretch and distort his body into any shape imaginable, and we see him doing so throughout all of the trailers, dodging debris and stepping over tall buildings with a single stretch. His real superpower, however, and what separates him from every other stretchy-guy (there are a lot of them!) is his genius intellect. All of the advanced tech we see are the result of his tinkering, including but not limited to the flying cars, space ships, and robots we see running amok. Of course, we saw another Reed Richards in Dr Strange: The Multiverse of Madness briefly, played by John Krasinski, but considering this was a cameo and an alternate universe, it’s safe to say that appearance will have little effect on this version.

He’s married to Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, played by Vanessa Kirby, whose powers are to turn invisible and to project forcefields. Readers of the Fantastic Four comics will know that she’s no joke, and can suffocate characters as strong as the Hulk, and block even Thor’s hammer. She’s also a mother here, a clear and aggressive departure from the other three movie versions, which is a first for the MCU.

Her little brother, Johnny Storm, played here by Joseph Quinn, is the Human Torch, and is the team’s resident firebrand, pun intended. His portrayal here seems to be infused with more heart than the other three versions, with his cocky attitude seemingly pared down to feuding with Ben Grimm and good-natured humor. When activating his powers, his body is engulfed in flames, and he can fly and project those flames. I suspect he’s the character most likely to come to blows with Tom Holland’s Spider-man or the new Ironheart character, but we’ll see. You’ll rarely see him without Ben Grimm by his side.

And speaking of, Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, is played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who is Jewish, just like the character’s comic book counterpart. Whether or not that detail is part of this movie, this seems like, judging from the trailers, the most accurate version of the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing yet. He’s gruff, gentle, and looks like a hulking rock monster, and we see his friendly  nature when a New Yorker asks him to yell his catch phrase. “Only in the cartoons, pal,” he says, wearing regular clothes and shaking his head sadly. The Thing has a history of fighting not just against characters like the Hulk, but with him alongside the Avengers, and seeing him come home to Marvel proper is cause for celebration.

Finally, there’s the Silver Surfer, played by the wonderful Julia Garner as the female version of Norrin Radd, Shalla-Bal, who is the herald to the planet eater, Galactus. Too lame for the Ultimate Fantastic Four comic of the early 2000s and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), where he was a fleet of autonomous spaceships and a CGI cloud, respectively, Galactus is here in all his retro, purple and blue armored glory, played by Ralph Ineson. We see the world-eater’s massive feet stomping through Manhattan, and I’m reminded of Ineson’s heavy footsteps in The Green Knight (2021). This movie seems to be set in a different universe than the MCU, but assuming all these characters make the jump, Galactus can be the looming threat for an entire cycle of movies; the Silver Surfer tends to go native, betraying his master as he gets his memories back, and it can be interesting to see how this version stacks up against Captain Marvel or Hemsworth’s Thor. Maybe all of this will lead to a new paradigm for a future Guardians of the Galaxy movie?

Only time will tell, but we’re looking forward to Fantastic Four: First Steps. You know what they say, fourth time’s the charm!

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