As a 90s kid, Galactus always felt like a looming legend. His name carried weight, his shadow stretched across comics, cartoons, and playground whispers, but he was never fully realized on screen, particularly live-action—which I have hungered for, for years. So when he finally appeared here, in "Fantastic Four: First Steps," fully designed with all the grandeur and spectacle I had dreamed of, I was floored. It was nostalgic, gratifying, and awe-inducing to finally see him—huge, terrifying, and alive in live action.
But then… he didn’t do very much. For all the careful world-building behind his size, scale, and mechanics, Galactus largely wanders across the cityscape, crushes some buildings, and stands as a backdrop for the Fantastic Four to look stylish as they take him down. There was an immense opportunity to mine the cosmic horror and philosophical depth that comes with a being like him, but the film treats his arrival more as a victory lap of spectacle than as a story. It’s epic in appearance, but hollow in purpose.
Where the film shines most is in its portrayal of the found-family dynamic. For once, the Fantastic Four feel like flesh-and-blood people navigating love, fear, responsibility, and imperfection. This rendition carries far more emotional resonance than any that came before it. The humanity between the team is tangible, and the script resists drowning them in empty quips, choosing instead to lean into genuine emotion. That said, their arcs never fully take root. The film sketches out the outlines of compelling growth—conflict, vulnerability, reconciliation—but then shelves them in favor of a safer, simpler progression. It’s as if the characters exist only to serve the film’s mechanics, rather than to grow on their own terms. The result is occasionally moving but just as often disingenuous, a gesture toward emotional depth rather than the real thing.
The visuals, however, are exquisite. The retro-futuristic aesthetic is fully realized, a tactile 1960s sci-fi playground that feels lived in. From the sets to the costumes to the grandeur of Galactus himself, the production team has crafted something beautiful. Yet that seems to have been the film’s main concern: making it look good. And it does—but story and character have been left undernourished as a result. The polish can’t hide the predictability of the plot, which is thinly written and structured around safe beats that never surprise.
The casting is a mixed bag. The actors undeniably have chemistry, but that spark is wasted when their arcs give them so little room to move. I’m not yet convinced by Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards—his presence feels more about marquee value than embodiment of the character. Vanessa Kirby is capable of incredible emotional range, but here she’s saddled with melodramatic choices that feel contrived, none more so than the decision to have Sue Storm give birth in space. The moment is less profound than absurd, as if the writers wanted to justify her inclusion on an otherwise reckless mission. Joseph Quinn doesn’t quite fit as Johnny Storm, yet paradoxically, I found his arc the most compelling of the four, largely because it at least tried to diverge from what we’ve seen before. Ebon Moss-Bachrach emerges as the strongest fit, anchoring Ben Grimm with an authenticity the others struggle to reach—but even his performance is limited by the film’s unwillingness to go deeper.
And then there’s the baby. Galactus’s CGI was forgivable, even admirable in places, because of the sheer scale and moving parts of his design. But the CGI infant? Absolutely not. It’s one of the most immersion-breaking choices in the film, reducing a climactic moment into something unintentionally laughable. It’s baffling that so much care went into the textures of retro-futuristic cityscapes, yet the film dropped the ball on something so pivotal, intimate, and in comparison to the rest of the film, rather simple.
In the end, "Fantastic Four: First Steps" is a paradox. It’s the most emotionally sincere, visually stunning take on Marvel’s first family we’ve had, and yet it constantly undercuts itself with thin storytelling and cautious choices. It looks wonderful, it gestures toward depth, and it delivers long-awaited nostalgia—but it’s ultimately a blueprint, not a fully realized piece of storytelling. A promising “first step,” yes, but one that left me wishing it had taken a few braver, bolder strides.
7/10
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