Fantastic Four: The First Steps feels odd to me. It feels like it’s lacking something. Maybe I had my planet eating expectations set too high.

Going into this movie, I felt like it had to be huge. This was gonna be the movie that carries on the Marvel Cinematic Universe storyline. I don’t feel like this is an unreasonable thought to have considering Thunderbolts* fades to black on a shot of the Fantastic Four (from another universe, by the way) starting to burn up into orbit.

Pedro Pascal plays the part of Mr Fantastic aka Reed Richards and Vanessa Kirby plays Sue Storm aka the Invisible Women. I’ll admit I had reservations about Pedro Pascal particularly but he ends up playing the part really well. He plays Reed as a thoughtful, quiet individual who has a lot of self doubt and he has a lot of great chemistry with Vanessa Kirby who both bring a great parental energy to the entire film and are really the core of the dramatic moments. Julia Garner plays the Silver Surfer and also does a great job; as she brings the tragic mystery of the character of the Silver Surfer to the big screen. Unfortunately she along with Galactus isn’t used as much as I’d like.

I really enjoy the retro-futuristic vibe of the entire movie, it brings a uniqueness that we haven’t seen in the MCU. The effects look great, Human Torch when he’s flamed on looks amazing, the few times we get to see Reed stretch look really nice and The Thing looks great throughout the movie. The movie’s soundtrack has the perfect sound for the setting, hitting us retro space age wonder and dread when needed.

Along side the parents of the Fantastic Four are Ebon Moss‑Bachrach’s Ben Grimm aka The Thing and Joesph Quinn’s Human Torch aka Johnny Storm. Compared to the previous two members of the Fantastic Four there is a lack of focus on these two. They get their dramatic moments but they’re lacking and majorly underdeveloped. Johnny’s humour tended to fall flat for me too and it didn’t really felt like the writing but more so Joesph Quinn’s performance being unable to pull off those comedic moments, which is a core of Johnny’s character. The Thing really gets the bum end of the stick, getting basically zero time to develop his drama despite being quite frankly, one of the most tragic characters not only in the Fantastic Four but the entire Marvel Universe. For both of them it feels like their actors don’t quite suit either of them.

The emotional arcs in this movie are rushed, which is felt in the third act in particular. There are arcs that are wrapped up way too quickly and it makes you wonder why people cared in the first place if it was that easily resolved. As previously mentioned I thought this would have had a much more immediate impact on the MCU. But we’re just going to have to wait till Avengers: Doomsday to truly see what impact it has.