The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

so far it's a very grounded, family oriented, serious film.

the live action Jetson's aesthetic is really good. The quick way they handle the origin story recap along with the touching moments between the characters really makes you feel like you've already known these characters for a while and they definitely feel like they've been working together as a team for years. (Take note Gunn, if you are going to start a movie in the middle, this is how you do it.)

first nitpick, why the fuck would you take your heavily pregnant wife into space? So far every single scene has been about reed being super overprotective worrying dad to be, baby proofing everything, running every test he can think of to make sure his baby is going to be healthy, worried about the damage to their DNA from their encounter with cosmic rays, there's no way on earth he would take his pregnant wife to space even to face galactus, it only makes sense because the plot needs it to happen.

goddamn, they got Galactus right at least. fucker is just...imposing. terrifying.

And the surfer as well, actually showcasing her power.. This whole wormhole chase / blackhole fight is pretty good...great visuals.

"Your child will be born with the power cosmic, he will inherit my throne, give him to me and I shall spare your world"
"Nah, our child will be normal. We're going to take him into space and give birth to him while slingshotting around a blackhole at 0.88% the speed of light then quantum tunnel into FTL travel, he'll totally be a normal kid with no weird powers at all"

Reed does the dumb smart guy thing (you see this in the trailer, its just as dumb in the movie).
"hey earth, yeah galactus is going to kill everyone unless we give him our baby. we told him to fuck off, he's on the way here now to kill everyone. we have no plan at all on how to deal with this"
IDK is this just a thing that reed richards does? This harkens back to John krasinski's reed telling scarlet witch how to beat black bolt.

Sue is a little bit girl boss, people excuse it due to mom strength or whatever but you can tell how the story unfolds this was clearly setup for ultra girl boss but they must of "fixed" it in reshoots but you can tell it's still there. her little speech to win over the angry crowd is evidence of this.

the pacing is a bit off. clearly they return back to earth (1 month, we'll ignore time dilation even though they used time dilation/spaghettification to trick silver surfer and escape from the black hole...) and galactus's ship is super slow moving / sub-light.
So we jump forward in time like, at least 6 months, the baby is older, still no plan, the world is going to shit because everyone knows they're going to die.
ok galactus is suddenly in the solar system so I guess his ship isn't sub light, just slow FTL? ok whatever. But reed finally has a plan.
In the time it takes galactus' ship to travel from Jupiter to Mars he has rolled out his plan and everyone on earth has banded together rosie the riveter style to build all these teleport bridges...seems to be at least a month at least, but realistically it must have been at least 2-6 months.

let's say 1 month...for galactus to travel 550 million KM (avg distance between Jupiter and Mars). But they were just on another planet like 30 light years away (or however far) when they met with Galactus so...

lets say its just 4 light years away, literally the minimum distance to another star from us but we know that's not the system they were at, but ignore that. That's 38 trillion km. at the speed of 550mil km per month, it would take Galactus 70k months, or 5800 years?

only makes sense if he FTLs in his ship to the edge of the solar system and then just jason vorhee's style slow walks towards earth. but why? if he knows his ship's sublight speed is so fucking slow why would he FTL to around pluto and just walk towards earth over a year or so? whatever its a comic movie despite wanting to be grounded in science it never will be...whatever.

Grimm's beard is a nice touch, lol he shave's with an angle grinder haha

fucking 3rd marvel movie in a row where they convince the bad guy to stop using emotional blackmail because they can't stop them physically? But ok, yeah it totally makes sense why they used the female silver surfer for this. I mean they did the same thing in Rise of the Silver Surfer, but Norran Rand spared the earth because Jessica Alba's fine ass titties, not because of any emotional outburst.

So far every character is getting their time in and seem to be pretty archetypical. Johnny's clearly a recovering womanizer, grimm is good with kids, reed is super smart and spends half the movie doing math to solve problems. Sue is well...a bit mary sue but again, that seems to be lingering DNA from the original version, they've seemingly cut as much of that out as they can but it still shines through. you can tell with all the quick jump edits.

ok their "plan" well every plan, but especially this last plan, is really dumb. Like they assume a bunch of shit. They think because he likes his slow ass moving ship that he needs this ship to travel in space? All they know about him is that he's some giant space god who predates the fucking universe and his ship is made out of materials that are from before the big bang. like ok, they don't fucking know if he can teleport or fly or fucking anything. Reed your dumbass just invented teleportation you think they space god who is over 13.8 billion years old can't teleport?

Like ok, he can't sure, but reed doesn't actually know this. He's using his baby as bait based on having read the fucking script? because there is no way that he would just assume this.

Ok whatever, its here because it sets up the amazing shot of Galactus walking around new york godzilla style. i get it, but plot holes matter.

And the swap out? the only thing you do know about galactus is that he can scan through time and fucking space and see whatever he wants. he saw your baby through a fucking wormhole while it was still inside Sue and knew instantly what he was going to become, you think you can swap out the carseat with a fake? like what? I figured the plan was to have johnny fly in at the last second and grab franklin as reed turned on the Teleporter. The one thing galactus isn't is fast, you could of easily rescued him in time? if you are supposed to be so smart, why is your plan so dumb?

holy shit when galactus throws the thing into fucking space, chef's kiss.

Ok again, why does Sue think that her invisibility affects Galactus? he's seen through it every single time before? Again like the one thing we've established is his goddamn gaze can see you, stop trying to pull a fast one.

Ok here comes the Mom strength to save the baby. Honestly don't have a problem with Sue's power level and the way this scene plays out. It's actually fine all the way up until fucking silver surfer stops Johnny's sacrifice play to save the day, that part is kinda cringe.

I totally get why there's accusations of woke, and I also get why people defend it.

Truth is Johnny isn't powerful enough to have done shit, burned his eyebrows maybe? he wasn't going to be able to push Galactus into the portal. While silver surfer's power level has been shown she could of easily done it.

its the way it unfurls and plays out where she has to heroically jump in and push him out of the way in order to save the day. Reminds me of hawk eye black widow fight where they go back and forth on who gets to sacrifice themselves for the soul stone? There was no need to set it up like that. Just stealing johnny's thunder for no reason. They've established the whole film that he's been spending time learning her language, making breakthroughs with her, able to communicate with her and get her to switch sides. Could of easily set it up so that he reaches out to her for help with their plan over and over and his persistence finally pays off and she swoops in at the last minute to help. give Johnny the heroic moment without shitting on him.

This film, its plot beats, is structurally almost identical to Rise of the Silver surfer lol. Silver Surfer defeats galactus and sue storm dies at the end, only to be brought back to life by the power cosmic. ok its franklin doing it in this film not the silver surfer but like story boards these are scene for scene comparable lol.

I know it's just for a laugh, them putzing around with the car seat, but they are literally taking their baby with them on some world threatening alert they have no idea how dangerous it's going to be. i mean come on.

I know i'm mostly bitching but actually, film is pretty good overall.