Retrofuturism is a great wellspring for cinematic creativity with a high potential for joy. Just think about the squee you involuntarily released when you first became acquainted with the world of The Incredibles. It’s lovely to see mid-century ideas of what the future would look like, intermingling with the actual mid-century to give us a relentlessly colourful and hopeful vision of a tomorrow that also feels quaint. It’s a good place for any movie, and especially a superhero movie, to be.

That squee dies in your throat in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The first steps of the movie are good ones, as we get a newsreel montage of the four years that have elapsed since Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) went into outer space and came back as superheroic versions of themselves, anointing themselves Earth’s protectors. These five minutes are festooned with the production design we want from such a movie, where 1960s yellow taxis rub elbows with the pneumatic tubes and analog robots that screamed off the covers of comic books from that era.

Then First Steps becomes just another Marvel movie, and in fact, almost forgets about its design deals entirely. And while the movie’s shot-for-IMAX cinematography tends to emphasise the great height of the film’s antagonist, Galactus (Ralph Ineson), who destroys planets for reasons we don’t really understand, the fact that he destroys planets for reasons we don’t really understand just underscores how hand-wavy this whole thing is, in the style Marvel has perfected over many a movie.

Abruptness carries the day. After we learn that Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic, and his wife, a.k.a The Invisible Woman, have finally been successful in conceiving a child, we are unceremoniously introduced to the threat to their future child’s longevity on this planet, or the longevity of the planet itself. Descending from the sky amid a flurry of incoming meteors is Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), a.k.a. The Silver Surfer, who notifies the four that their planet has been chosen as the next in Galactus’ path of destruction. Because why? Your guess is as good as theirs. Guessing is also your best strategy for why the Silver Surfer becomes a sort-of love interest for Johnny Storm, except that in this movie, everyone needs a love interest – even the craggy rock creature Thing, who falls for a vastly underutilised Natasha Lyonne, playing a schoolteacher.

On meeting with Galactus – who takes meetings, apparently – the four discover that the key to saving Earth would be to give over the unborn child, growing apparently normally in Sue’s womb, who Galactus knows will one day become an all-powerful being. You’d think, one small child in exchange for a whole planet might be a deal they’d consider, especially since the child figures to be more of a partner in crime to the planet consumer than his next meal. But what parent wants to give up their child to a creature in a horned helmet that looks like a walking building?

Fantastic Four: First Steps is not the sort of movie one would hope to engage with so flippantly. While we’re considering other properties with retrofuturist leanings, there should be a gee-whiz, “To infinity and beyond!” quality to this whole movie that makes it instantly ingratiating. But Matt Shakman’s film never establishes its sense of tone, because the performers undercut any attempts to do so. They appear to be having no fun at all.

Pascal’s Reed Richards is a nervous nelly, permanently fixed with an expression of desperate concern. Is this how the comic book character is written? I wouldn’t know, but it’s the wrong choice for this movie. Quinn is about to break out, if he hasn’t already, and usually has the charisma of a young Robert Downey Jr. Here he’s a petulant brat who is totally unlikable. Our sympathies should at least lay with Grimm’s Thing, but Moss-Bachrach can make no impression with him – though it’s possible that even an inspired vocal performance couldn’t have penetrated the rocky character design. Only Kirby as Sue Storm exudes the expected star wattage, but neither does she have any instinct for the cheekiness this film requires.

One suspects Marvel could have done a lot more with this if they’d tapped someone like Taika Waititi or Peyton Reed – who have presided over multiple Thor and Ant-Man movies, respectively – to direct this Fantastic Four. Thor: Ragnarok and Ant-Man and the Wasp are among the better examples of the effortless effervescence these films hope to exude. (And yes I did just fall in love with the letter E there for a moment.)

Instead this film is directed by Matt Shakman, who is pretty much of a hack, man. The longtime TV director does have some good Marvel material on his resume, including the entirety of WandaVision, which also has its foot in the world of our mid-century memories. The film’s script problems, and there are many, may not be Shakman’s fault, but the fact that he can’t get these performers to come out of their shells, to find the inherent delight in the story of scientists who went to space and came back with elastic body parts and the spontaneous flammability, is a serious problem you can lay right at his doorstep.

It should be said, or reiterated, that whatever value there is in The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes from a potential IMAX viewing – which is sort of a hard ask when so many of the details are this uninspiring. Although you do wonder how Galactus is able to destroy planets so convincingly when he’s barely taller than your average kaiju, there’s something breathtaking about the way his height is shot in an aspect ratio that relies so much on the vertical.

Since most people probably will not see First Steps in IMAX, it calls into even greater question the movie’s intrinsic value. Fantastic gets a four alright, but that’s certainly not the sort of four anyone who made it was hoping for.

 

Fantastic Four: First Steps opens today in cinemas.