The Fantastic Four: First Steps review – Marvel regains buoyancy with wacky superhero family sitcom
In a retro-futurist version of early 1960s New York, Mr Fantastic and Sue Storm are living together as a dysfunctional family with the Human Torch and the Thing – with a baby on the way Baby steps, in fact. Marvel has rediscovered the lighthearted dimension of superheroism, the buoyant fun and the primary colour comedy – as opposed to the wiseacre supercool of, say, Guardians of the Galaxy. Here it has amusingly brought back the Fantastic Four in their early years (but not to the very beginning) in a retro-futurist version of early 1960s New York where no one smokes. Hilariously, the Four are of course living together as a family in a bizarre hi-tech apartment, like something in TV’s Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, often wearing their comfy blue pyjama-style outfits. Scientist Dr Reed “Mr Fantastic” Richards, whose nickname rather oversells his peculiar superpower of stretchiness, is played by Pedro Pascal in a lighter vocal register than usual; he’s married to Sue “Invisible Woman”...