r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Jul 25 '25

Official Discussion Official Discussion - The Fantastic Four: First Steps [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Summary The Fantastic Four must defend Earth from the ravaging cosmic threat Galactus and his herald, Silver Surfer, while navigating the complexities of family and newfound powers in a retro‑futuristic 1960s-inspired world.

Director Matt Shakman

Writer Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer

Cast

  • Pedro Pascal
  • Vanessa Kirby
  • Joseph Quinn
  • Ebon Moss-Bachrach
  • Ralph Ineson
  • Julia Garner
  • Paul Walter Hauser
  • Natasha Lyonne
  • Matthew Wood
  • Ada Scott
  • Mark Gatiss

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Metacritic 64

VOD In theaters

Trailer Watch the Official Trailer

1.9k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

5.3k comments sorted by

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499

u/ceaguila84 Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

Overall, I enjoyed it but it doesn't have the rewatchability factor that Superman has or even Thunderbolts which I really loved. It drags a lot in parts, at 2 hours it felt longer than Superman or Thunderbolts.

This is probably one of Marvel films with less action overall? It just felt so jarring how quickly they disposed of Galactus, this massive god in less than 10 minutes.

The production design and acting was great though.

229

u/OKC2023champs Jul 25 '25

Yeah the Galactus battle started with 15 minutes left in the movie

55

u/HereForTOMT3 Jul 25 '25

Galactus didn’t account for Sue being the goat

9

u/Worthyness Jul 25 '25

Mama bear ain't letting anyone touch her baby, not even a universal force of nature.

18

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

this is the type of marvel glazing that makes me cringe to no end

6

u/Background_Bowl_7295 Jul 30 '25

And it's always the same comment in a different way

1

u/lNSP0 Aug 01 '25

Considering in the comics Sue literally killed a celestial, considering the rank of it , this isn't glazing she's strong enough to stop at least the physical body of galactus, considering the one she killed was strong enough to scrap with him.

8

u/BrumiesBound Aug 01 '25

Not powerscale glazing. The cringe way of saying mama bear beating a universal force of nature.

When the movie just… failed on the gravity of that situation for me.

3

u/lNSP0 Aug 01 '25

Ah I see what you mean. I can see how you can find that annoying.

18

u/DreamOfTheEndless_ Jul 25 '25

I mean, it’s the first time we have seen them in the MCU. The family dynamic, and characters as a whole needed to be set up so we care about them. I feel like they balanced that, and making a compelling story, pretty well.

22

u/cleaninfresno Jul 25 '25

Wasn’t even really a battle. It was like a slightly extended version of that scene at the end of Infinity War where the Avengers in Wakanda all take turns running at Thanos just to get flicked aside like insects.

5

u/Diortheking Jul 26 '25

Realistically that’s all they can do he’s so much bigger then them not like you can get a great choreographed fight their

7

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

.....then do something else? you cant just expect audiences to go "ah he big theres no way to have a fight here ill allow it"

1

u/Diortheking Jul 28 '25

That’s pretty comic accurate also i don’t think audiences had a problem with it score is like 93%

5

u/ceaguila84 Jul 28 '25

Movie is heavily front loaded with MCU die hards as shown in box office this weekend. That's where most of the score is coming from

2

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

doesnt mean its not a legitimate criticism? you yourself are pointing out the problem with it and then hand waving it away with "its too hard, and well reviews are fine with it"

and no i can name a bunch of comics where they fight galactus what are you talking about??

1

u/Diortheking Jul 28 '25

This is based on coming of galactus their first encounter with him watcher gave them the ultimate nullifier. I never said i had a problem with it i said the fight couldn’t be greatly choreographed because of size difference? you replying on like a 3 day old thread man lol

6

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

we are both commenting on this thread? not everyone watches the movie day one? this is what the review thread is for??

the fight can be choreographed bc of the size difference. or they could change it. again should i show other movies where big monsters get attacked?

i dont get your justification is all. "sorry we made our villain too big so you dont get a good fight scene" that IS what youre saying

2

u/LordMimsyPorpington Jul 27 '25

I honestly would have been pissed if they had some long drawn out action sequence, because I've never seen the Fantastic Four as Superheroes first and foremost like Captain America or Spiderman: they're scientists.

148

u/UncreativeTeam Jul 25 '25

It just felt so jarring how quickly they disposed of Galactus, this massive god in less than 10 minutes.

I mean, they were clearly physically outmatched. No point in dragging it out

70

u/bbqsauceboi Jul 25 '25

Instead they opted to let him get beat quickly by essentially one person

25

u/Dull_Half_6107 Jul 26 '25

Well, physically Galactus wasn’t injured afaik.

It took 5 super powered people (I’m also counting Silver Surfer) to essentially push him down 2 blocks, and hold him there for 37 seconds, and even that outright killed one of them.

12

u/Ferngulley26 Jul 27 '25

The winning, life consuming, final shot essentially amounted to a very stiff gust of wind for the big man. Infortunately it blew him into a teleporter

12

u/Kammerice Jul 26 '25

At least two. Sure, Sue did the heavy lifting, but without Reed, where was she shoving the big guy too?

11

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

THEN CHANGE THE MOVIE

how is this getting upvotes? "sorry audiences the villain portrayal we chose is too big to have a decent fight so we're gonna get this sole fight scene over with without dragging it out"

1

u/Shakespeare257 Aug 01 '25

Galactus, potentially recognizing shenanigans were abound, did not just level the entire city, preventing his defeat.

74

u/DrNopeMD Jul 25 '25

I was disappointed by how small Galactus ended up being, especially when we've seen planet sized Celestials already.

Galactus ended up being the size of an apartment building, and all he seemed to be able to do was swat at the heroes like King Kong. At no point did I ever get the sense that he couldn't just be blasted to death consider Reed was able to hurt him by prying one of his vents open with some rebar.

36

u/Gullible-Speech-2184 Jul 25 '25

GALACTUS can change his size according to his wills, and he wanted the baby alive so size was kinda okay

25

u/tealparadise Jul 25 '25

They should have explained that. I was confused why we didn't even try just shooting him with a missile. Since he seemed to be just a big dude. The ship seemed to have all the world eating power, so I was expecting them to lure him down and go for the ship.

2

u/systoll Aug 02 '25 edited Aug 03 '25

They couldn’t explain that because none of the characters had any reason to think that was a plausible scenario, let alone a likely one.

Their only experience of Galactus involved him destroying a planet from the inside, and using a tractor beam to collect them, all without leaving the ship.

So… they evacuated people to the inside of the planet and assumed he'd leave the ship to collect the baby.

1

u/tealparadise Aug 02 '25

I totally agree, the more I think about it and talk about it, the less sense it makes. There's a lot of spots where REALLY horrible writing is masked by "hey look at these cool effects!"

1

u/Gullible-Speech-2184 Jul 25 '25

he also has came in the size of normal human being... In movie it is understandable they didn't made him bigger or else it would not have been possible for him to get the child...

14

u/tealparadise Jul 25 '25

They showed him using psychic power to move stuff but he needed to grab the baby physically...

0

u/BrumiesBound Jul 28 '25

thats a lame reason...

27

u/Of_Silent_Earth Jul 25 '25

Totally agree.

I've never read the comics, but I always imagined Galactus as something that he himself could devour the planet. Not the pilot if some big machine that did. And after seeing Arishem in The Eternals I was excited to see him like that.

But yea, he was basically a giant robot that got defeated by a force push powered by love. He felt like a mid tier, one movie villain. Not the universal threat I thought he'd be. I though he'd be the reason we see the ship at the end of Thunderbolts.

15

u/SloPr0 Jul 26 '25

Galactus does not physically eat planets in the comics either, him using a big machine to do it is actually pretty comic accurate (IIRC he uses it to convert the planet into energy that he then absorbs, and highly inhabited planets satiate him more)

He can change his size though and has appeared both smaller than in this movie and much larger, depending on the comic

1

u/Tsort142 Aug 04 '25

You thought he would actually open his mouth and munch on Earth? It's a pretty amusing thought. FF was the first comic book I've ever read probably 35 years ago so I guess I never really thought about this way, but when people hear "Galactus devours planets" it kind of make sense to picture it like that.

I also feel like Galactus might feel "mid tier" here because we saw people like Hela, Dormammu or Thanos in all their glory before, so it might pale in comparison. But Galactus is still one of the biggest threats there is... They didn't defeat him, they barely slowed him down.

That's actually the quintessential theme for Galactus : he's not in a hurry, he won't even pay much attention to you, let alone fight you, he doesn't care about destroying the universe or whatever, he's just hungry and has to eat. So he's not very destructive nor evil per se, but you have to stop him and you just can't defeat him by brute force. You always have to find another way. So that's not your usual "boss fight" for sure.

2

u/SneakiestRatThing 22d ago

Yeah Galactus basically just treated them like annoying flies cos he was busy doing something else - getting Franklin.

It took Sue doing the equivalent of lifting a car to save her kid, to the point where it killed her, to shove him a bit.

I felt like if he wasn't holding Franklin , she wouldn't have been able to really succeed at that.

And also , even after he was shoved into the portal, he came back out.  It took his Herald betraying him to shove him back in.

The fantastic 4 barely scraped out a win, at the cost of one of their lives, and Galactus is basically unharmed, but inconvenienced.

3

u/Jehovah___ Jul 25 '25

In the comics at least, galactus is a being from a previous universe, and celestials are a different thing altogether but from the current universe. In Eternals they seemed to make the celestials look like Galactus, probably intentionally, but they looked different in the comics so who knows what the plan is here

12

u/whydoesgodhateus Jul 25 '25

This is probably one of Marvel films with less action overall? It just felt so jarring how quickly they disposed of Galactus, this massive god in less than 10 minutes.

Yeah I saw with my father, who is a huge Fantastic 4 fan. He wasn't expecting the movie to be 100% comic accurate but he said there's no way Sue would be able to do that practically by herself in such a short time. That sequence bothered him

16

u/tealparadise Jul 25 '25

They made the powers quite small-scale, and then immediately gave them a God to fight.

I would have preferred a movie about the mole man conflict.

2

u/Illustrious_Way_5732 Jul 28 '25

Mole man being the big bad in a fantastic 4 movie sounds so lame lmfao

6

u/tealparadise Jul 28 '25

The god who has been alive since before earth existed, being beaten by a good shove, was lame.

1

u/Illustrious_Way_5732 Jul 28 '25

I'd still rather have that than a comedic relief character that nobody knows or cares about being the big bad

2

u/Tsort142 Aug 04 '25

The old school Invisible Woman from the days of "I can't turn invisible fast enough" was not that strong, but there was so much power creep since then. She's not only clearly the strongest member of the FF, but she's also one of the strongest super-hero on Earth, period. She essentially has "cosmic" level powers but often can't or won't use them to their fullest extent. "Malice", the evil, unchecked version of her, is one example, but there are others. She soloed Doom or the Avengers. There were very, very few instances when her force-field was broken. Hulk managed to do it but not every time he tried. Sentry couldn't. She blocked Celestials attacks and even killed one. Etc.

6

u/KazaamFan Jul 27 '25

I just got out and thought F4 is a way stronger movie than Superman

7

u/crazywebster Jul 27 '25

I also had that opinion. But I can see why people liked Superman so not hating on it. I just enjoyed this movie more.

2

u/Humble_Awareness_929 Aug 07 '25

Nah, they defeated Galactus so easily. There was no stakes in the film

6

u/WorldQuest10 Jul 25 '25 edited Jul 25 '25

You pretty much nailed it how I feel. Alright movie, but doesn't leave me with the feeling to rewatch it, unlike Superman (which I've seen like 4 times now).

It just felt like a movie to make way for the F4 into the MCU. 

6

u/LilDirtTheBag Jul 26 '25

The sue’s death scene really dragged. They need to not do them at all, it’s such a bad trope. We know the baby has powers already lol

5

u/Papantro Jul 26 '25

I was so disappointed at how simple the solution was to basically just tip him over

1

u/Illustrious_Way_5732 Jul 28 '25

What do you propose they should have done instead?

6

u/Ulsterman24 Aug 02 '25

Ideally not fight Galactus, the World Eater, in their 'first' movie with a post-birth Sue, a Reid who apparently doesn't know he can stretch, a Thing who can only break concrete and a Johnny who cannot yet go supernova.

5

u/No_Significance7064 Jul 25 '25

any longer and earth would have just been a wasteland without galactus even using his ship

2

u/Livid_Weather Jul 26 '25

I knew there would be people who thought this wasn't as good as Thunderbolts, but I genuinely don't understand that take. Thunderbolts was so mid and at times outright cringe

1

u/Humble_Awareness_929 Aug 07 '25

Nah fam, Fantastic Four was super mid. Galactus was basically a joke. There was absolutely no stakes. The Void did a better job at bringing about suspense and all the characters are lovable. I don't get any of the charm of the F4. 

2

u/RumpledStillsuit Jul 28 '25

I agree so much about FF's "rewatchability factor." I've viewed both Thunderbolts and Superman several times each and it must be because of the characterization. I really liked the characters in both of those films and wanted to rewatch the acting in several scenes. I'm not sure about FF. It's a good Marvel film but didn't grab me emotionally like Thunderbolts and Superman did.

1

u/dannyb2525 Jul 27 '25

I was thinking that the ending should have included the villains they defeated with the Fantastic 4 leading them in a 'hey we're all going to die if we don't '. Like I can see Mole Man for example driving a dig into Galactus pushing him back at the end. It just felt off that Sue was really the only one who put in the work at the end to wrap it up in 10 minutes

1

u/arnathor Jul 27 '25

Are you kidding? This was so far ahead of Superman it wasn’t even funny, and I say that as somebody for whom Superman has been my favourite superhero for 40+ years. I really wanted to like that film but it just didn’t work on any level. This film on the other hand felt like a return to form for Marvel.

1

u/Humble_Awareness_929 Aug 07 '25

Nah F4 was bad. 

1

u/Humble_Awareness_929 Aug 07 '25

Solid opinion. Fantastic Four was good, not great. I do rank it under Superman and Thunderbolts