Brief Story Line
Set in the 1960s, austronauts Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal - The Wild Robot, The Mandalorian TV series etc), his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby - Mission: Impossible - The Dead Reckoning Part One, Napoleon etc) and younger brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn - Gladiator II, Warfare etc) with Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bacrach - No Hard Feelings, The Bear TV series etc) became superheroes known as Fantastic Four after their return from an outer space mission. As they fought plenty of villains for several years such as Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser - Inside Out 2, Cruella etc) and few others, the four of them became quite well known through out the world.
However their nice life was disturbed after an alien referred to as Silver Surfer (Julia Garner - Wolf Man, Inventing Anna mini series etc) delivered a devastating message that her master Galactus (Ralph Ineson - Nosferatu, Gunpowder Milkshake etc) would destroy the earth soon. Despite Sue's condition, the Fantastic Four decided to search for Galatcus and have peaceful negotiation with him to avoid earth destruction.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Before I saw this movie, I read many comments about the high quality of this latest addition in MCU and after seeing this, I got to admit that it was indeed very good. At first my wife and I were surprised to see the introduction of the characters were done in speedy manner that lasted only few minutes. Although we both still remembered how the Fantastic Four gotten their powers through two previous adaptations, but it would be nice if this was an origin story cause some people might not know/remember them. Furthermore, we also need some getting used to the new cast, especially Johnny Storm who we remembered fondly played by Chris Evans.
However after a while, the characters did grow on us. But the story only became interesting after the appearance of Silver Surfer. And that scene where they encounter Galactus in his previous location for the first time was really intense, though subsequently the movie did feel more like a drama. Not until the final third that it became more like a superhero film with wonderful and dramatic action sequence. We were finally able to see Reed and Sue's super power instead of just Johnny in earlier stage.
Despite having few light moments (mostly the bickering between Ben and Johnny), the movie in general felt a bit heavy, unlike the recent Marvel films. There was strong science fiction feel and space drama to it as well which made it less like superhero. I certainly understood the appeal of this movie to the more critical audience while hard core Marvel fans would definitely rejoice the positive effect to the future of MCU. The movie itself was directed by Matt Shakman in only his second feature film after Cut Bank as he was more experienced in directing TV series like WandaVision or It's Always Sunny in Philadephia etc. Apart from the names I mentioned above, there were appearance of Natasha Lyonne (DC League of Super Pets, Poker Face TV series etc) as Rachel the school teacher, Sarah Niles (Heads of State etc) as Lynne CEO of Future Foundation and few others.
My wife and I admired the very realistic 1960s setting like the hairdo, clothing, retro building, old style TV and so on. As we were born after that period, we could only compare them against old photos or films, but we thought they looked really convincing. The special effects were pretty good to my opinion with nice enough sound effects which would probably be more satisfying with more action. The movie had duration of 114 minutes that I think rather short as it included long closing credits & two end credit scenes. The pace was quite steady and did not feel too rushed, probably because the story did not require a lot of effort to understand.
As a standalone film, I think it might be a bit heavy to be categorized as superhero movie. But as part of the large universe, this was more interesting and exciting due to its future link to MCU major arc story. Though my wife and I preferred a more extended introduction of the main characters and hard not to compare with the original 2005 cast that we liked, but in general the cast were able to portray the characters nicely. The villain was probably a bit too enormous for the superheroes, which made the ending pretty intelligently done. Overall we were entertained by this movie and it was a delightful experience. So if you are looking forward to the next Avengers movie in the upcoming years, you better not miss this one. Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out 5 stars
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