With three months to go until release, Marvel Studios has kicked up marketing for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, where it’s learned the FF will be reimagined for a modern audience.
The FF have already been on screen three times, so to go with the four in Fantastic Four, the MCU will reinvent the characters a fourth time, which sounds like it will line up with Kevin Feige’s approach to the post-Endgame era (there’s actually that Roger Corman FF movie, which I actually heard was pretty good; I met a cinematographer at Comic-Con who worked on the movie).
Rumors have already offered Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm is the star of The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This would follow Feige’s female-led approach in movies like Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Marvels, and the upcoming Thunderbolts movie. The approach, of course, has been a big part of the launch of Marvel on Disney+ with WandaVision, Hawkeye, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Secret Invasion.
New images and a different take
The cast of The Fantastic Four: First Steps participated in a promo interview with Entertainment Weekly. The article revealed new images and the different take the MCU will be going with the characters.
On a side note, it’s pretty funny that the article tries to convince fans that the recent comic book run by Jonathan Hickman is on par with the original Fantastic Four comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. That’s nowhere near the case (Feige and Marvel Studios, as of late, have actually told their creators not to read the comics). Worth a mention is that Hickman is the go-to guy at Marvel Comics to adapt properties for the MCU. Recently saw a Marvel Comics exec confirm that nowadays, the comics are only good for being test material for “eventual film and animation development.” It’s been like that for years.
Back to the article and the MCU reimaging the Fantastic Four for a modern audience, it sounds like the changes primarily have to do with Sue Storm, aka Invisible Woman, and Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch.
New Human Torch for the Post-Endgame era
Regarding Joseph Quinn’s Human Torch, it sounds like Johnny will be nothing like the portrayal from Chris Evans. The article makes a point of stating “Chris Evans played the character as a skirt-chasing scallywag,” but “Quinn wanted to do something different.”
He’s a man that leads with a lot of bravado, which can be an affront sometimes. But also he’s funny,” Quinn says. “Myself and [Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige] were speaking about previous iterations of him and where we are culturally. He was branded as this womanizing, devil-may-care guy, but is that sexy these days? I don’t think so. This version of Johnny is less callous with other people’s feelings, and hopefully there’s a self-awareness about what’s driving that attention-seeking behavior.”
“He is really smart,” Shakman says. “He’s on that spaceship for a reason, and I think sometimes people forget that in various comic stories, he’s been one of the most heroic of them, even if he’s undercutting his heroism at every turn through humor. He’s Sue’s brother, which means they are cut from similar cloth.”
Invisible Woman no longer invisible
Now for Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, the MCU is elevating Invisible Woman to the level of Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, or quite possibly, Sue will be even better than Reed, which again fits with Feige’s post-Endgame era to the MCU. The comics have even retconned the origin of Sue and Reed to fit with the modern audience.
Sue has accomplished just as much in the political realm. As head of the Future Foundation (a concept taken from writer Jonathan Hickman’s 21st-century Fantastic Four comics, one of the successor stories that is as beloved by fans as Lee and Kirby’s originals), she has helped achieve global demilitarization and peace. When Shakman and his collaborators say the dreams of the ’60s have been made real in this movie, they don’t just mean rocketships.
“If he is the most scientifically intelligent person, then she is the most emotionally intelligent person on the planet,” Shakman says of Reed and Sue. “Between the two of them, they’re building an idealistic society.”
Gender politics is a big theme
The article and Vanessa Kirby go into the notion of “gender politics”:
Achieving global political peace sounds only slightly harder than synthesizing the decades-long fictional history of Sue Storm. As Marvel’s first female superhero, she been part of the Fantastic Four since its first issue — but back then, she carried the relatively demeaning codename of “Invisible Girl,” could only turn herself invisible, and mostly functioned as a damsel in distress.
“If you played an exact ’60s Sue today, everyone would think she was a bit of a doormat,” Vanessa Kirby says. “So figuring out how to capture the essence of what she represented to each generation, where the gender politics were different, and embody that today, was one of the greatest joys of this.”
Does The Fantastic Four: First Steps sound boring?
So the plot of the movie follows the Fantastic Four existing in their own universe on a different Earth. They’re the most popular people on the planet even before getting superpowers, which only heightens their status. Reed and Sue create a utopia on their Earth. It’s a retro-future. There are robots and flying cars, and everything seems hunky-dory.
While that sounds like it will eventually get pretty boring and dull real quick, we already know the Silver Surfer (again, fitting with Feige’s post-Endgame approach, played by Julia Garner) and Galactus (Ralph Ineson) are a part of the movie. Reed and Sue are the smartest people on their planet who solve everything. Well, Galactus seems to be the one thing they can’t solve. What happens next?
Marvel has also already confirmed the cast of Fantastic Four for Avengers: Doomsday.
Release info
The Fantastic Four: First Steps gets released on July 25, 2025, directed by Matt Shakman.
Who stars?
Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ralph Ineson, Julia Garner, Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne, Sarah Niles
Behind the movie
Kevin Feige is the producer. Executive producers include Louis D’Esposito, Grant Curtis, and Tim Lewis. Mitch Bell is co-producer. The music score is by Michael Giacchino.
Plot
Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, Marvel Studios’ ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ introduces Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Ben Grimm/The Thing as they face their most daunting challenge yet.
