– Joseph Stalin
I must have missed something. I watched the entirety of Marvel’s The Infinity Saga. I didn’t see all the movies when they came out, but I eventually caught up before watching Endgame. I watched all but one movie from Phase Four (missed The Eternals which looked less like a movie than a presumptuous comic book approach to theology) and saw only Deadpool & Wolverine and Captain America: Civil War from Phase Five.
After watching WandaVision and Loki: Season 1, I chose not to spend any more of my time on the multitude of TV series. I never quite got the point of those TV series. If the character was popular, they would get a two-hour movie. So why are the more obscure characters getting two-to-three times as much screen time in a TV series? Who asked for six hours of Hawkeye?
And something must have occurred in those many hours of obscure television because The Fantastic Four: First Steps appears to take place in an alternate dimension. Now, I know about the whole multiverse thing, but I figured the Marvel movies would remain essentially in that one Infinity Saga universe. After all, that is the universe which supposedly aligns with our own existence.
(I for one think it was a grave mistake to ever give the impression that the events of the Infinity Saga were of so little importance in the greater scheme of things. Marvel essentially threw a decade’s worth of narrative development onto the trashheap for the service of a throw-away joke in Loki Season 1. Infinity stones as paperweights? Really?)
But we are told at the beginning of this movie that this is Earth 848. We aren't told the year, but it looks like a different version of the early 1960s. It must be because had the events that take place in this movie occurred before Iron Man (2008), we would have heard about it in Phases 1-3. So, this must be an alternate dimension. I have no idea why this is Earth 848 as opposed to Earth 2 when Marvel only has the capacity to tell us stories from a few of these dimensions and the audience's ability to care about what happens in any single universe decreases inverse proportion to how many universes there are in total. See Stalin’s epigram above.
Still, one can intuit the reason for the reboot. My best guess is that the original comics took place in the 1960s and likely had a distinctive style to them. Is this style worth starting a whole new universe for? Yes, I would think so. The best thing about this movie is the production value. The look melds 1950s-1960s modernism with anachronistic superhero technologies, sort of like a real-life Jetsons episode but much better. The Fantastic Four are a quartet of astronauts (think Apollo missions) that were exposed to cosmic rays in space and gained superpowers. Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal) can stretch his body and write math equations on chalkboards. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) can turn invisible and create a magic force-field thing. Those two seemingly separate powers appear to be connected though I am not sure how. The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) can light himself on fire and fly. The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is made of rocks.
I don’t know anything about this particular quartet of superheroes. I never read the comics (I’ve only read a handful of X-Men comic books. It's not my thing) and I haven't seen the movies from twenty years ago. I’ve heard they are like a superhero family, meaning that they live together and complain about each other’s cooking. Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm are husband and wife and, as of the beginning of the movie, are expecting a child. The Human Torch is Sue Storm’s brother. The Thing is made of rocks.
This quartet appears to be very famous and wildly popular, so much so it would seem they have replaced the government. I believe their giant mansion/tower exists on the east side of Midtown-Manhattan where the United Nations building is supposed to be. During the exposition, we learn that Sue Storm negotiated a treaty with a foreign power named Subterranea, which is led by Mole Man (played by Paul Walter Hauser). Putting aside the strange resemblance of MoleMan with that of the Underminer in the Pixar Incredibles franchise, why is a superhero negotiating treaties with foreign powers at all unless the Fantastic Four are essentially the representatives of the people. Is this quartet the government? How does that work? And if they are, how are they so popular? Isn’t it natural for at least half the population to hate whoever happens to be in charge.
I think the movie takes for granted that I know something about these comics when I don’t. The plot develops when a silver woman on a silver surfboard flies down from outer space to announce that the Earth has been chosen for destruction by the hand of Galactus. First, what’s with the surfboard? Second, if you were going to destroy a planet, why would you announce your intentions? The importance of those questions are not necessarily in that order.
The Fantastic Four head to Galactus to try to negotiate the non-destruction of the planet. To do this, they utilize faster-than-light-speed travel through a wormhole, which apparently is so commonplace in this alternate dimension that no-one bothers to explain how it works or how it was invented. The quartet reach Galactus just in time to see it devour a helpless planet, for fun I think. Galactus, a giant robot looking ancient super-god thing, scans the contents of the spaceship (magically, I think) and draws the quartet’s spaceship into his alien lava lair with a tractor beam (or whatever) whereupon he offers an ultimatum. From the information gleaned from his magic eye-beam, Galactus comes to the conclusion that Sue Storm’s unborn child has god-like superpowers. He is willing to trade The World for the child straight up. Give him the child and he won’t destroy The World, he says.
This proffer is not seriously considered by the quartet. Their dismissive attitude towards The World reminded me of a previous movie, also starring Vanessa Kirby, called Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, where a similar tradeoff was proffered: one person for The World, which was also dismissed out of hand. This seems to be a Hollywood thing. You see, movies are about headliners. It is the fate of movie stars that drive the plot and set the budget. The World is just a bunch of nameless extras. See Stalin’s epigram above.
When The World finds out that the quartet haven’t chosen the easy and obvious solution, their reaction is distinctly tepid. They seem more disappointed than angry. And when Sue Storm meets a perturbed but otherwise well-behaved crowd outside her fantastic mansion/tower, she explains that the quartet and The World will meet this challenge as a family. An odd choice of words given that The World is in danger because Sue wouldn’t sacrifice a member of her actual family to save The World. And here she is asking The World to potentially die for her son in the name of family. You’d think she would have the good taste to not insult The World’s intelligence by so blatantly invoking a double-standard.
Is there an alternative? After all, we just saw Galactus eat a planet. It is a thing he can definitely do. Mr. Fantastic comes up with a solution. Earlier in the movie, he utilized his superpower of writing math on chalkboards to conduct an experiment. He successfully teleported an egg ten feet across the room. Having proven to himself that teleportation is scientifically possible, he proposes to avoid Galactus by TELEPORTING THE WORLD TO AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT GALAXY.
Yes, you heard that right. Now, I know what you are saying. Hey, this is a comic-book superhero story that takes place in an alternate dimension. Chalkboards full of math have enabled faster-than-light travel. The Human Torch can fly. The Thing is made of rocks. Sure, you can teleport The World to a different galaxy using technology that enabled the teleportation of an egg ten feet.
No. No. No. No. No. No. That is stupid. That is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard proposed in any movie, and definitely the stupidest thing I have heard proposed in a Marvel movie (Remember, I didn’t see The Eternals). That is stupid. I cannot suspend my disbelief that far. I won't do it.
Movies have always been fantastical, but there is such a thing as diminishing returns as it concerns impossible things. You want to introduce something that shouldn’t be possible, say a giant robot named Galactus with a spaceship big enough to eat a planet, then this thing needs to at least follow its own rules. So, it matters just how large Galactus and his world destroying spaceship is. Is he as big as the Earth, or is he much smaller but still large enough to cast a shadow over the length of Manhattan, or is he much smaller than that and able to walk down Broadway between the skyscrapers a la Godzilla. Pick one and stick with it. Every time the movie changes its mind, it breaches that movie-audience understanding of the suspension of disbelief.
It is strange to such large problems with internal logic in a movie that looks this good, is basically well-acted, and is generally witty. Marvel is usually better than this. Without spoiling anything, since you know there is going to be a sequel, Galactus does not end up destroying The World. And he isn’t defeated either. (Actually, how they get rid of him, makes so much more sense, takes so much less effort, and has so much less chance for catastrophic failure than the original plan, you wonder how they could not have considered it in the first place.) So Galactus is going to be back, maybe.
The Infinity Saga was an incredibly wise plan for narrative development. It was rare for any particular solo movie to involve plots that endangered the planet. Such stakes are exhausting, unnecessary, and hard to take seriously if they happen in every movie. You build towards those types of stakes and when you are ready, call it an Avengers movie. The Fantastic Four: First Steps would have been a better movie had Marvel heeded its own example and started small.
