Movies Worth Seeing
Movies Worth Seeing is a comedy podcast that explores all the best trending films and blockbuster releases. A big movie buff, Michael is an unconventional reviewer of all things movies. This podcast is for anyone sick of watching crappy movies and wants only to watch the best
Movies Worth Seeing
Fantastic Four: First Steps Stumbles Where Superman Soared
Fresh out of the theater, we're diving straight into Marvel's latest attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to life in "First Steps." This film represents yet another chapter in the troubled cinematic history of Marvel's first family, and we're breaking down exactly why it stumbles despite its impressive cast and visuals.
The movie teases greatness with an exhilarating opening sequence showcasing the team's powers, but quickly devolves into a frustrating waiting game. Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby deliver committed performances as Reed Richards and Sue Storm, with Kirby particularly shining in emotional moments. However, the film fundamentally misunderstands what makes the Fantastic Four special – their dynamic family chemistry and distinctive personalities.
We explore how the retrofuturistic aesthetic creates a unique visual identity but lacks narrative purpose, and why Galactus' mere four minutes of screen time in a two-hour movie represents a massive missed opportunity. Through a direct comparison with James Gunn's Superman, we highlight where both films succeed and fail in their superhero storytelling approaches. For longtime Fantastic Four fans, this will feel like another disappointment in a long line of adaptations that can't seem to capture the magic of Marvel's original superhero team. If you're looking for the definitive Fantastic Four experience, you might be better off watching The Incredibles instead! Subscribe now for more brutally honest superhero movie reviews delivered straight from the theater to your ears.
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Movies Worth Seeing. Today's episode we will be discussing the latest Marvel extravaganza, that is, fanforskin, fantastic Four First Steps. So how does this Fantastic Four stack up against the three other films and the bootleg film that they made back in 1994? How did this stack up, especially considering the success of James Gunn's Superman, which is meant to be the start of a whole brand new DC cinematic universe? And the short answer is they both suck for completely different reasons. We just got out of the theater, straight out of the theater, from watching FanFourStick First Steps.
Speaker 1:Fanfourstick, it was a movie I don't know what else to say. If you had seen our Superman review, I was pretty much saying that that film had no emotional investment, no emotional weight. This film spent the first five minutes blowing its load across the screen for us to show us all the cool shit that fantastic four can do with their powers. It blew its load all over the screen. It prematurely blew the load and then for the next hour and 50 minutes we were just sitting there on our hands just being like, okay, when is stuff gonna happen? Like I literally was getting so fucking bored at one point that I started talking to chat gbt. So I was like, okay, chat gbt. If the movie started at this time, when's it supposed to end?
Speaker 1:man this movie was two hours and it felt like it. There was a a young rambunctious kid in the back row of the cinema who wouldn't shut up.
Speaker 2:Is she dead? What's going on? Are they flying in the car? Is that girl dead? Just wait for it to come out on Disney Plus so they can watch it in their own time. It kept you awake, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the great thing. Kept me awake, kept me engaged. That kid back there is keeping me on my toes, but it does bring up a good point. Like this, kid is bored.
Speaker 2:I'm bored. Ah, they're not being engaged, they're not in the flow Because there's no action.
Speaker 1:Controversial opinion, but I actually think 2005 Fantastic Four was more interesting underneath all that triple cheese more cheese than a fucking Domino's pizza. There was still lots of great moments in there. I didn't get anything from this except this long winded build-up of like how are we gonna deal with galactus? We'll try this thing. It didn't work. All right, we'll try this thing. It didn't work. Why don't we just try luring to earth and just battling him? Great, that's what I fucking wanted for like two hours. For you to just battle Galactus. Don't get us wrong. He looks fantastic. He looks great, sounds great, amazing. But in the last five minutes of the movie it's like we're finally getting this battle between Fantastic Four and Galactus. And it's not even that exciting. You don't even see a lot.
Speaker 2:He has four minutes of screen time in a movie.
Speaker 1:That's like a little over two hours, two hours. It's just so simplistic. In this. It's like okay, what does Galactus want? He's cursed to devour planets. Why, who cursed him? Like I know nothing about him, thanos. Like we got so much depth and layers to him, how can we go from that to galactus, where it's just so simplistic of he's a giant dude, he's purple and he wants to eat planets because he needs to feed on planets you know it improved on some things from the other movies.
Speaker 1:At least galactus wasn't a fucking dark cloud like in rise of the silver surfer. But man like, forget galactus. You guys don't know how to do galactus, so just let it go. It's like x-men with the dark phoenix you don't know how to do it, just give up. Do someone else get obscure villains. Give me a villain where the superheroes are just battling him for the last half hour in the climax.
Speaker 2:That's all I wanted yeah, and that's the end of the review.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me along so I'm joined by addy uh sorry, not addy asian addy martin, I'm joined by martin young. On today's episode. Martin, what did you think of fan four stick?
Speaker 2:phone four skin. It's like I think, coming in I I had like tempered expectations. I usually like to say I want to go into a movie blind, with no preconceived biases, but for superhero and especially Marvel movies that's not possible. Now I already going having expectations about the way that the formulaic storytelling is going to play out and I was going in with like a solid sort of 7 out of 10 expectation. Now that we're fresh out of the cinemas I will give my final score at the end. But it actually has downgraded a bit for me. Not great, not terrible, just a big meh for majority of the movie. And it's always just sad walking out of a movie theater thinking like I can't hate this movie because this is just a movie of wasted potential, and it's like I can't hate you for it.
Speaker 1:You could have done so much more. Well, that's what pisses me off the most with Fantastic Four movies is like you have four characters, distinct characters with great superpowers, like what is so fucking hard? Superman tried to juggle 10 million characters. This film honed in on the family. I got family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that encompasses the whole, like Fantastic Four, storytelling, the family dynamic, family, the immature little brother, the mature older sister, the book, smart like nerdy the dumbest smart guy Ray Richards, which we'll get into yeah, and then we have like the, the gentle giant, you know Ben Grimm, the, the thing. It almost feels like a family dynamic that writes itself, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:and as they have in the you would think yeah, let's try and start with some good.
Speaker 1:Let's try and get into some good here I'm thinking back and I'm like and vanessa kirby, phenomenal actress, this marvel movie doesn't undercut its emotional beats with shitty humor. That doesn't work. The way she displayed the range of intense emotions as a mother, as a new mother, just dealing with this heavy burden that galactus puts on the team, that was phenomenal, and I loved the chemistry between vanessa kirby and pedro pascal. Pedro pascal, we know that dude can act his ass off and we know he's great for bringing an intense presence. I guess one thing I would say, though, is there's times where I was just like can you give us a bit of lightheartedness, just a tiny bit. He just delivers all of his lines in this very like we don't know how to, how we're gonna deal with galactus. We failed like. There's this tonality he has throughout the whole fucking movie that just sucks all of the life out of his character. By the end, you're like man, can you give me like a smile or something we will protect?
Speaker 2:you. It did make me think a character trope of his kind is supposed to be like semi cocky, know it all, and this time we're seeing him not have the answers, and I think that only works if we've had a scene beforehand that does show his scientific confidence, where he always has, like, the smart answer to everything yeah, like if we had seen them deal with another villain and he has all the mathematical answers and stuff and he's like he quick, like a quick thinker, and then it would have worked to see like the devastation of a smart guy who's supposed to have a hold on a hand on everything not have a hand on everything that then we would have felt the dread even more.
Speaker 1:But this is like the only time we've seen him sort of like working out the mess and being like I can't figure it out, guys, I can't figure it out I mean, in some ways it was good that, like you can tell, galactus is challenging them as superheroes and it's like their first huge challenge, yeah, where they don't know what to do with this guy, to the point where they're like we tried negotiating with him and it didn't work. But then there's these moments of Reed Richards being I mean, perhaps it is that idea that he's the dumbest smart person, because at one point in the story he tells the entire world something he didn't have to tell them. And me in my mind I was like why the journalists are just like so, guys, you know, how did you go with galactus? Did you kick his ass? And ray richards is just like um, um, no, yesent, not yet. And then proceeds to be like okay.
Speaker 1:So here was the 411. We negotiated with Galactus. We said to him please don't eat our planet. Galactus said no, unless you give me your baby. We said fuck off. No, we're not doing that. Leave things on a knee to no basis.
Speaker 2:And now we're so we don't know what we're gonna do now. You can picture like their PR team just going like, yeah, maybe don't mention it, don't mention it.
Speaker 1:I actually missed the cheesiness and the goofiness of the old Fantastic Four movies, and that kind of goes the same with Ben Grimm and Johnny.
Speaker 2:Storm, which you leveled up to level 47 or whatever in Ultimate Alliance. You know he is a great character.
Speaker 1:Completely irrelevant, but yeah. Yes, martin, chris Evans is such a powerful, charismatic figure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the annoying little brother. That would just say the most outlandish things. The ladies love him, but then with your immaturity, he's so cocky and so arrogant, but it's so much fun to watch.
Speaker 1:Is it true what they say about him, that he can expand any part of his anatomy? Well, I've always found him to be a little limp.
Speaker 1:They've dialed it down here. They've dialed it down to, like, if Chris Evans was like a 10 on the scale, they've dialed it down to a 2. What are you doing? What do you mean? What am I doing? I mean you're to ruin your appetite. I'm hungry. Ben and Johnny bicker a little bit, but nowhere near as much as they do in, like in 2005 Fantastic Four. Ben Grimm can't stand Johnny and that's funny. That's great popcorn.
Speaker 2:Johnny, where'd all that confidence?
Speaker 1:go cockiness and all the fun go. Don't want to rock the boat, guys. We can't have him flirt with any girls because not in this day and age. It's 2025 and men aren't allowed to flirt with women even though this is like the retrofutury 1950s or whatever which, by the way, never gets explained at all. It's just just roll with it. It's futuristic but it's retro, and don't ask any questions about why this universe is different. It's just the multiverse, and just shut up and accept it but rounding off our ben grim.
Speaker 2:What do you think of?
Speaker 1:him. The great thing, the thing in the 2005 fantastic Four, because it's the origins of them. You get to see Ben Grimm like hating becoming the thing Reed, look at me and they don't even touch on it. In this there's like one shot, yeah, ben Grimm looking at the tv screen, seeing his former self. They allude to him maybe wanting this relationship with this girl, but it never goes anywhere.
Speaker 1:She gets one scene with Ben Grimm to show more of his humanity that he yearns for, of that connection with a woman. But the movie's like nope, fuck that the thing did, fuck all. In this movie there's even one point where they're trying to do something to Galactus and they're kind of working as a team. He's running through these pillars and it didn't do anything. I don't actually remember what the point was of it. Let's play a little game. Let's have Superman versus Fantastic Four. First steps as far as what we feel is the better film.
Speaker 2:Villain, I'm gonna have to give it to Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor action sequences uh, superman again, by virtue of the fact that there's more of it versus a grand total of one set piece music. Definitely Fantastic Four. I'm still humming it, you know, but in the back of my mind uh acting, hmm, look it's. I mean it's. It's a toss-up really, given like what the actors had to work with cinematography. Man, I can take it or leave it, like if, if. I feel Like if, fantastic.
Speaker 1:Four I feel like Fantastic Four at least had a distinct look.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, okay yeah, I'll give it to Fantastic Four then. I only wish that they leaned into the retrofuturism and the cosmic horror more. Yeah, look Galactus for his limited screen time all four minutes of it. I was wishing that I watched this in the full imax aspect ratio. You could tell that, like composition wise, there was a lot of headroom that they had to cut off, like when he turns around to look at the statue of liberty. They're unable to fit all of that into the cinematic aspect ratio pacing.
Speaker 1:Gotta give that one to superman, because superman had a lot of action. But I'd rather a lot of action and a lot of fun versus fantastic four just blowing its load in the first five minutes and then us essentially waiting for it to get back going.
Speaker 2:Rewatch value goes to superman memorable scenes uh, look to be honest, neither of the two have any memorable scenes, so it's a, it's a toss-up, I would say all right, so pretty much.
Speaker 1:But we can easily say that superman has won yeah we're not really.
Speaker 2:We're not exactly raising a high bar with the comparison are we.
Speaker 1:It won by default. So final ratings for fan Fan 4 stick foreskin, I'm going to give it two and a half out of five. Fan 4 stick is better than 2015 Fan 4 stick, but that's still not saying a lot. It's serviceable. It's okay if you wanted a more emotionally grounded kind of version of Fantastic Four, but if you're like me and you prefer the fun over the top, lighthearted cheesiness, then just go watch 2005 fantastic four. But uh, you'll have a much better time with that film my score.
Speaker 2:As I said, I went in already biased, thinking like seven out of ten, and then I alluded to the fact that I think it actually has gone even further down. I would say six and a half out of ten. The first five minutes montage I was Starting to get optimistic.
Speaker 1:That okay. Maybe it will start to like exceed my expectations. I know like I was like, oh, I think it's gonna be way better than I thought.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be like exactly what I was. It's gonna be like in the Incredibles.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm gonna watch the Incredibles, that's for sure. Yeah, if you want a good Fantastic Four movies, watch the.
Speaker 2:Incredibles. Well, I'm going to watch the Incredibles, that's for sure. Yeah, if you want a good Fantastic Four movies, watch the Incredibles.
Speaker 1:Disney just nailed it 21 years ago, so fuck this movie. Anyway, if you enjoyed this review, please like, share and subscribe for more movie reviews like this Until next time. Flame on Sorry, what? Now? It's clobbering time. No, don't say it, man, don it's clobberin' time. No, don't say it, man, don't say it. I don't like saying it.