Fantastic Four is extremely important to Marvel, but the company has spent decades allowing movie studios to completely miss (and misunderstand) what people liked about the characters and how to make them work in the first place. This has especially changed with Fantastic Four: first stepswho took the team seriously by not taking it too seriously, and even though it wasn’t a worldwide box office success, it proved that Marvel Studios and director Matt Shakman knew what they were doing. Now everyone at Marvel just needs to remember this lesson to Avengers: Apocalypse.
Not to mention Roger CormanIt is Fantastic Four film, which is in its own right, the last three Fantastic Four the films all tried – and failed – to be a little too cool and rise above their comic book origins. The 2005 film had Doctor Doom, but that made him more of a generic supervillain than the tyrannical ruler of a foreign nation like he is in the comics. Its sequel, Fantastic Four: The Silver Surfercommitted the deeply annoying sin of depicting iconic mega-villain Galactus as an annoying space cloud. SO, Josh TrankThe 2015 reboot tried way too hard to look cool and Also Doom didn’t succeed, and that’s because no one trusted the public to get on board with a team called “The Fantastic Four” led by a guy who can stretch (even though they’ve been an iconic part of comic book history for decades).
What can “Fantastic Four: First Steps” teach Marvel for “Avengers: Doomsday”?
We know that Avengers: Apocalypse is doing something new with Doctor Doom, which will be played by the Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. through some sort of multiverse shenanigans. But, Unlike Doom’s mistakes in previous films, this seems like an encouraging sign. Everyone wants to see Doom sitting in a castle in his homeland of Latveria, which we might very well get one way or another (there’s a quick Latveria tease in First steps), but the fact that there are multiverse shenanigans at play means something stupid is happening – and we mean stupid in a good way, like how First steps used a retro-futuristic aesthetic to differentiate its world from the main world of the MCU, or how it didn’t shy away from Galactus being a big man with a big helmet.
What Marvel Studios needs to do to Avengers: Apocalypse it’s just that everything is weird. The MCU has been relatively rough lately, especially compared to its Avengers: End of game in the climax, but it’s still the same series of films that got everyone to care about the emotions of a tree and spent several films promoting magic rocks. People are at least mostly okay with this multiverse thing and everyone loved seeing Galactus walking around New York, so Avengers: Apocalypse better not to do what failed Fantastic Four the films have done this by pretending to be something they are not. Comic book movies are cool, we all love comic book movies, so I hope Marvel Studios and directors return Joe and Anthony Russo whether it’s a comic book movie. Give us Doctor Doom in an all-metal suit with robots, give us The Beyonder, give us the Annihilation Wave, give us the Cancerverse! People can handle this stuff now.
And we might not have to wait too long to see if they’ll succeed. The trailer for Avengers: Apocalypse is about to premiere alongside James CameronIt is Avatar: Fire and Ash December 19 – almost exactly a year before doomsday spell. But if you can’t even wait for that, Fantastic Four: first steps is now available on Disney+. That means you can take a look at Galactus’ big helmet right now and imagine what silly/cool/weird stuff the MCU has in store for the future.
- Release date
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July 25, 2025
- Runtime
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115 minutes
- Director
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Matt Shakman
- Writers
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Jeff Kaplan, Josh Friedman, Ian Springer, Eric Pearson, Kat Wood, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee
