Critics call The Fantastic Four: First Steps the Greatest FF Film of All Time! It’s a low bar to crawl over, but it’s a relief Marvel didn’t smack themselves in the face with that particular rake again.

After Tim Story’s two earnest but awkward sitcom episodes and Josh Trank’s grimdark body-horror take — whose second half was amputated and replaced with prosthetic superheroics (and which “celebrates” its tenth anniversary next month) — most of us had given up on seeing Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s greatest co-creation writ large on the big screen without half-baked compromises of what makes these intrepid scientist-adventurers tick. We settled for key cameos in the second Doctor Strange and Deadpool & Wolverine, but those tongue-in-cheek callbacks only gave us one member apiece sans the Richards’ dynamic. Writing solo comic relief is easy; writing affectionate, super-powered teamwork is hard, unless you’re Brad Bird paying homage with The Incredibles.

If we disqualify Roger Corman’s unreleased zero-budget fan-film available only as a bootleg (and for a reason), then fourth (ha!) time’s the charm as the First Family has been wrested from its former Fox overlords and eased into the Marvel Cinematic Universe via gentle alternate-Earth reboot courtesy of director Matt Shakman, who handled the amazing WandaVision but whose only previous feature, 2014’s barely existent Cut Bank, made less than 300 grand worldwide. Working with at least five different screenwriters (including Sarah Connor Chronicles showrunner Josh Friedman and Thunderbolts co-writer Eric Pearson), Shakman understandably kept the odds of success manageable by revisiting Lee and Kirby’s FF #48-50, the original Galactus Saga, which Story’s 2007 sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer bungled. Last time a classic non-origin comics tale was adapted twice to film, the end result was the abjectly time-wasting Dark Phoenix.

Thankfully First Steps avoids Rise‘s mistakes and not only better recaptures the essence (e.g., not making Galactus a hungry space cloud) but elevates Our Heroes’ comeback into grandiose science-fiction myth-making of the sort that comics used to do best, on a level meant to inspire our broken world even while barely resembling it. Among its many idealistic propositions: sure, everyone loves found families in movies and TV, but what if just once in modern times the day were saved by an actual family-family? Plus Dad’s best friend as honorary Fun Uncle?

Much like James Gunn’s grade-A Superman relaunch, First Steps rejoins the FF’s lives already in progress and does not blow its full runtime retelling their origin a third time, apropos of Good Superhero Comics. In my day no one could start reading a series with #1 because trades and digital services didn’t exist: you could only jump aboard with the latest issue on the stands, which usually got newcomers up to speed if the writer and editor did their jobs the way they used to be defined. So in this latest “issue” the super-celebs of Earth 828 (the lack of a hyphyen bugs me SO much) have been fighting evil and saving lives for four (ha!) years from their home base in the Baxter Building. Grogu’s legal guardian Pedro Pascal is Reed Richards, the stretchy mega-genius Mr. Fantastic. The Crown‘s great Vanessa Kirby (last seen suffering a much worse husband in Napoleon) is Sue Storm Richards, the differently smart, force-field-wielding Invisible Woman. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, a.k.a. Cousin Richie from The Bear, is perfectly gruff under that vastly improved CGI rock-hide as Benjamin J. Grimm, the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing. And Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, A Quiet Place: Day One) is Sue’s kid brother Johnny Storm, the flame-headed hothead known to his fan club as the Human Torch.

In four short years the FF have affected Earth more radically and positively than nearly every American President ever, and not just by defeating various funny-looking super-villains. Through their own organization called the Future Foundation, their powers of super-diplomacy made the United Nations obsolete! Vietnam seemingly never happened! There are flying cars! Racism isn’t a thing! Yancy Street and its schoolkids sure seem squeaky-clean, so maybe they cured class-war poverty, too! They’re heroes who’ve made Disney’s Tomorrowland happen and objectively changed the world, and not necessarily with a terrifying Doctor Manhattan ultimatum. (Well, we hope, anyway.)

One efficient career recap later, Our Heroes soon encounter their latest challenge: Sue’s pregnant! A super-baby is coming! Daddy-to-be Reed in particular has all the feels: shocked, happy, but concerned. Can two people whose very DNA was altered by cosmic rays in an ill-fated spaceship ride safely have a normal child? Of course his first reaction is to knuckle down in the lab. Reed’s happiest when he’s solving equations. If there aren’t variables and an “equals” sign, he’s lost. The parenting thing is a secondary concern, and is soon overshadowed (literally) by an even bigger problem: GALACTUS IS COMING.

Same as the previous versions, the imminent arrival of the Devourer of Worlds has an opening act. Ozark‘s Julia Garner (last seen dealing with super-transformation in Wolf Man) arrives as his herald to announce Earth’s doom — Shalla Bal, the Silver Surfer, wielder of the Power Cosmic bestowed unto her by her nigh-immortal master. Garner’s expressions are necessarily muted by her argent super-shellac, but she does look extremely cool in her scenes of actual space-surfing through assorted extravagantly animated phenomena. Inevitably she’s one-upped when Our Heroes attempt to negotiate with her Celestial-sized boss. The Witch‘s Ralph Ineson (who just popped up in the latest season of Foundation) is all but lost inside Galactus’ iconic helmet, regal armor (with the Ben-Day purple toned way down) and staggering presence. I understand his scenes were shot using IMAX cameras, but even on a non-upgraded screen, the visual effects team went all-out in making Ineson colossally intimidating. He is very much the size of the End of the World.

By this point everyone’s already had a rough ride over the elapsed months. As comics fans expect, Sue’s already had baby Franklin, though in comics his first appearance came three years after the Galactus Saga. His arrival is nothing like Kirby’s excruciating, Oscar-nominated childbirth scene in Pieces of a Woman, though there are complications, but definitely more laughs. Later, when the very leaders of the Future Foundation attempt to appease a far less impressed entity, Galactus offers them an extortionary out that would spare their planet, but with a price too great to pay. By then they have had enough, and it’s super-heroing time. Or possibly some other kind of time.

Everything that comes next is all about epic-sized visuals centered on a Bullwinkle-helmeted humanoid kaiju strolling through the New York City skyline and grazing the occasional skyscraper in his path. (Some streets seem wider than in reality, interstate-sized to let him through many intersections untouched. Maybe Reed used super-science to redesign Manhattan’s layout to maximize comfort and negate the need for pesky “congestion pricing”. The miracles of Earth 828 are endless!) With a budget nearly the size of any two previous FF films combined, First Steps thrives on that excess in the cosmic-powered showdown, where every teammate gets Big Hero moments with their pricey CG superpowers, though Reed’s super-stretchiness is just plain weird (better-looking than all Reeds past, but so, so WEIRD) and Vanessa Kirby struggles a little to playact comic-book strain in her Final Battle — she might not be totally into that blockbuster-flick task of pretending to wield imaginary powers against imaginary foes. In the end it all comes together, and Shakman rightly ditches the goofy sci-fi deus ex machina that helped end the original Galactus Saga.

None of these apocalyptic set-pieces would mean quite so much if Shakman and the actors hadn’t devoted the time, head-space, and craft to making Our Heroes a fleshed-out, fully functional family. Occasionally some clunky dialogue bits land with a thud and possibly ran out of time for an on-set rewrite, but in general we can buy Reed and Sue as the loving couple and expectant parents, Ben and Johnny as pals who love needling each other but love each other like bros, and so on. Earning the viewers’ trust is especially critical as the film gets increasingly idealistic in its lofty impossibilities. Indeed, a key part of the whole Galactus-stopping plan rests on the assumption that the entire Earth shares a single, totally interconnected power grid. Also a big ask: the FF need all us billions of its residents to unite and do their/our part to save each other as one worldwide family. (Tribes and communities that live just fine without lights and screens are technically already doing their part.)

More so than the noticeable baby-swapping as different infants are used to play Franklin throughout, the toughest part to swallow — the one scene where I could feel First Steps diverging from Life As We Know It in this very country today — follows the failed Galactus negotiations. Much of the end of Act Two might’ve gone a lot less painfully if only Reed had kept his big mouth shut and been more discreet in his public announcement about how things went out in space. Whereas our “leaders” would’ve thrown out a vague statement and walked away, big-hearted Reed decides to answer honestly to a “fault”, as we sinners conditioned to swallow PR-speak might think of it. The next several minutes’ worth of tensions are arguably all his own fault, but Pascal goes out on a limb to embody someone we might wish we had here in our reality: a world leader who’s 100% honest with us, even about the worst parts of major events, but trusts that we as a society can talk about such things and work through them together.

In that sense FF and the new Superman share a common goal more retro than the Baxter Building’s Spacely Sprockets aesthetic or Michael Giacchino’s Broadway soprano choir sounding straight out of a Hudson/Day rom-com or a ’60s detergent ad. These two latest superhero films consider the upside of humankind maybe no longer wallowing in angst or seething with rage, and instead devoting energies to rediscovering our squandered potential for good — like, an altruistic good not ill-defined by any political party to suit their rigged public debates. Maybe it isn’t “realistic” per se, but comics back in Lee and Kirby’s day weren’t about photocopying the world outside our window: using that reality as a baseline backdrop, they were all about imagining how the world could be, above and beyond our petty limitations. That is the most Reed Richards thing possible.

That might explain why I reacted more to Fantastic Four: First Steps‘ emotional beats here than to Superman‘s, which — don’t get me wrong, it was pretty great! But it spent more than a little time setting up future DC projects at the expense of its own core cast. If you choked up a little at Spider-Man 2‘s subway sequence like I still do 21 years later, First Steps has some of that very same, superheroic heart.

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Meanwhile in the customary MCC film breakdowns:

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Emmy Award Winner Paul Walter Hauser (Apple+’s Black Bird, last heard in Inside Out 2) wins his scenes as the Mole Man, the team’s very first-ever comics foe, that subterranean ruler eternally at war with our uncaring surface world. Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face, Russian Doll) plays not her character from Marvel’s animated What If…? series (which would make zero sense anyway), but rather a potential love interest for Ben. She of course has to make way for Ben’s eventual true love from the comics, so let’s not get used to her.

Ted Lasso‘s Sarah Niles (who had a small part in The Sandman) is the Future Foundation’s non-powered CEO. Sherlock‘s Mark Gatiss (last seen in the final Mission: Impossible) is a talk-show host. Sound engineer and occasional voice actor Matthew Wood (General Grievous!) is the voice of Reed’s multiple H.E.R.B.I.E. robots, who handle various chores such as reminding Gen-X of those Saturday morning cartoons without the Human Torch in them. All four stars of Corman’s “FF” “film” have cameos, but I failed to spot any of them without cheating after the fact, even the one guy who had a West Wing bit part I watched not long ago.

Alas, John Malkovich, briefly seen in the trailers as the Red Ghost (who had phasing powers like Kitty Pryde before Kitty was born, and who commanded a trio of Super-Apes), is name-checked, but ultimately dubbed Sir Not Appearing in This Film.

How about those end credits? To answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: yes, there is indeed a scene after The Fantastic Four: First Steps end credits. For those who tuned out prematurely and really want to know, and didn’t already click elsewhere…

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[…insert space for courtesy spoiler alert in case anyone needs to abandon ship…]

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…after a time-jump of four (ha!) years, we land on Sue enjoying quality time with preschooler Franklin. She leaves the room for a second to find a book and comes back (after rejecting Darwin’s Origin of Species, which of course Franklin already loves), only to recoil at an unexpected visitor from nowhere: a silent figure in a green cloak, facing toward Franklin and away from the camera! In one hand is a Doctor Doom mask. He might as well be a stunt double or Kevin Feige having a larf, but Marvel totally swears the man in the suit is indeed special guest Robert Downey, Jr., shot by directors Anthony and Joe Russo on the set of their next MCU film now in production.

Speaking of which, there’s also a special message: “The Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday.”

After all the end credits are done and over with, the final scene is the opening sequence from an in-universe FF cartoon, whose montage includes shots of such quasi-beloved second-string villains as Dragon Man and Diablo. I bet even to this day Earth 828 still has Saturday morning cartoons because it’s just that magical a place.

At the very, very end is a quote from the late Jack Kirby himself: “If you look at my characters, you will find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there.” And yeah, little bits of Kirby are everywhere in this film.