I don’t go to the movies much anymore, and neither does anyone really. If video killed the radio star, then streaming killed the big screen. It takes a lot to get anyone interested in actually going to a theater to see a movie these days, but people will still go to the spectacle of the summer blockbuster.
As we approached the summer, there were three spectacles that I wanted to see—Mission Impossible, Superman, and Fantastic Four. As I said in my previous reviews, I was disappointed with the first two movies. Mission Impossible was an implausible matriarchal farce, and Superman was vacuous and silly. So perhaps my expectations were a little low before I finally went and saw Fantastic Four earlier this evening.
To my great astonishment, Fantastic Four stands head and shoulders above those first two films. Much better characters and a far superior story. Instead relying on a lot of CGI and explosions to carry the film, the producers put a thorny moral dilemma at the heart of this story. A galactic tyrant is going to destroy earth unless Sue and Reed Richards sacrifice their baby to the villain. At first, the mobs of terrified citizens of earth are so scared that they are willing to sacrifice the baby. In order to keep their own lives undisturbed, they were willing to kill an innocent child.
That is, until Sue Richards appeals to them to see the humanity of her baby and to come together to fight the evil rather than succumb to it. In the end, that is exactly what the people of earth do. Instead of offering up the baby to be destroyed, they come together to do the right thing. So the plot is really simple. Save the baby, save the world, and save your soul.
Dare I say that the movie had a pro-life ring to it? I don’t think the filmmakers necessarily meant to do that, but my goodness. The characters kept referring to Sue’s unborn baby as a child—like it was really a little person in there. In one scene, they actually show the baby in utero, and it wasn’t just a “clump of cells.” Moreover, the main characters were willing to move heaven and earth to save the baby and not sacrifice him on the altar personal expediency. That’s not something you see everyday out of Hollywood.
Of course there is a lot of CGI and explosions and all that stuff. But there is a lot more than that, which is why it was so much better than the other two movies. As a kid who collected and read Marvel comics back in the day, I’m always pulling for the filmmakers to do well with this universe of characters. That is why it was so sad that previous attempts to bring the Fantastic Four to the big screen have not been very good. In Marvel’s universe, the Fantastic Four are the OG, but you wouldn’t know it from the MCU.
But this film marks a new departure for the group that launched Marvel Comics’ silver age. I can hardly wait to see how they get incorporated into the larger MCU storyline. We’ll see soon enough because the final scene says that the Fantastic Four will be appearing in 2026’s new Avengers movie. Finally. It’s all coming together.
Image Credit: Screenshot from Fantastic Four (2025) trailer, © Marvel Studios
