Fantastic Four: First Steps (5 Stars)

I walked into the cinema today with zero expectations. No, that's not quite true. I was expecting it to be bad. From the beginning the Fantastic Four comic was Marvel's flagship. Starting with the fourth issue the words "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" appeared at the top of every comic. As long as Stan Lee was writing the stories (the first 125 issues) the comic lived up to this claim. After he left there were ups and downs, some writers better than others. Nevertheless, any film about the Fantastic Four should live up to the hype made about the comics.

The Fantastic Four's origin story isn't told yet again. That would have been tiresome. The film starts four years after the group gained their super powers. In televised news reports their early adventures are related. Marvel comic fans like me will immediately remember the stories that are mentioned. Then Galactus comes, and the adventures leave the path of Marvel canon.

This is when Galactus and the Silver Surfer were first introduced. (Actually it was an issue earlier, but Galactus wasn't on the cover). The film shows Susan Richards (or is it still Storm?) being pregnant, which didn't happen in the comics until 18 months later, but it's typical for Marvel to telescope events from different times.

So much in the film deviates from the comics, in particular:

The Silver Surfer is a woman.

Reed Richards has a moustache.

Ben Grimm wears a shirt.

These are things that really bugged me when I saw the trailers, but the film was so good that I was able to accept them. Okay, it's a parallel universe, Earth-828. I need to update the list that I wrote four years ago.

When the film ended people in the audience applauded. They were impressed, and so was I. Are Marvel Studios and Disney finally turning things around? Have Kevin Feige and Bob Iger finally realised that writing good stories is more important than presenting DEI propaganda? Can we expect better Marvel films from now on? I hope so.