An antidote for dark times: The quiet politics of the new Fantastic Four

A superhero film, with lavish sets and dazzling special effects, does not at first glance seem like an overtly political work of art. But in the fictional, fantastical worlds of Marvel and DC Comics, and of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the art-as-realpolitik is sometimes more about what is not said.

It should come as no surprise that The Fantastic Four: First Steps lands, “Barbenheimer”-style, with an intentionally aspirational Superman as its cinematic stablemate. When the world’s stage feels dark, art often serves up a subconscious antidote.

“I feel raised by commercial entertainment and Hollywood stories, for better or worse,” Pedro Pascal, Hollywood’s 50-year-old Chilean-born man of the moment, says. “And what I love is that [The Fantastic Four and Superman] work and provide a kind of adventure-in-storytelling that was able to imprint itself into my childhood experience growing up.”

Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.Credit: Marvel Studios

Such stories, Pascal says, “teach me that caring about people and wanting to save humanity and to have the opposite of moral injury-through-leadership, but inspiration and love for humankind in a non-hero-worship way, in positive messaging that reminds you of stories about caring for one another.”

In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Pascal – who has become Hollywood’s most in-demand actor off the back of stunning performances in everything from The Mandalorian to The Last of Us – is joined by Vanessa Kirby (The Crown), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, Andor) and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, Gladiator II) in the third big-screen outing of one of Marvel’s most valuable comic book assets. With the planet in peril, who better to call on than Mister Fantastic (Pascal), Invisible Woman (Kirby), the Thing (Moss-Bachrach) and the Human Torch (Quinn)?

Created by one of Marvel’s most significant partnerships – writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby – The Fantastic Four is unusual in comic book history. Its heroes are not broken, or haunted by dual identities, common tropes in the genre.

In the comic book canon, they are celebrities, known by both their real names, Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny, and their superhero monikers. Much in the same way the comic book did in the ’60s, the new film reboot promises something quite remarkably unlike everything you’ve seen before.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.Credit: Marvel Studios

That’s clear in the storytelling. It’s also clear in the audience’s reaction to both the film’s trailer and the world promotional tour the cast has been on for the last month, including Sydney this week. Pascal’s X-factor melted the thermometer long ago. But the ensemble – Kirby, Moss-Bachrach and Quinn – is also electric.

They are greeted by thousands of fans at every stop, and the collective conversation has been a revelation, says Kirby. “I think we felt it from the start. I’ve never experienced the level of care and love that’s [coming at us]. People that are really excited about seeing the movie, but also have a deep history with these characters, you know.”

While the film is plainly a big-ticket, blue-chip action blockbuster, with a budget that is probably in the $US200 million-plus range, it is also a quite nuanced character film which dives deeply into the emotional world of its protagonists.

What sets The Fantastic Four: First Steps apart, says Kirby, is its humanity.

“The film actually looks at what it’s like to feel all the conflicting things that we feel as humans,” she says. “We have good days. We have bad days. Sometimes we feel like we have a superpower. Sometimes we feel like we’re the very opposite. And we have both light and dark within us, and there’s something amazing about playing real family dynamics and not feeling like you’re a superhero.

“We’ve found it really interesting to look and think about otherness and how they feel other, because of the change in identity and how we all struggle with that. I struggle with that all the time. And as you move through your life and you feel like ‘this is a version of me’, and then it changes and you look back. There’s something about coming to terms with difference in yourself and confronting that, that I think the film is really asking us to look at.”

A basic humanity lies at the heart of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby.Credit: Marvel Studios

Pascal says the film carves out“a singular identity while still honouring and staying connected to the world that we all know”. “We met Iron Man in such a unique way and the Guardians of the Galaxy and even in the middle of an arc of a familiar character we shake it up with some new style, and this is just really coming in with its own identity and I love that.”

To that end, the actors were given more latitude than they had anticipated, particularly for a film in the superhero genre, and with a story structure where so much of the narrative would be dictated by the needs of the film’s special effects.

“More room than I was expected to ever have to fill, actually,” says Pascal. “They’ve been incredibly collaborative and we had a beautiful sort of theatre-like rehearsal process before we started shooting the movie, sitting around the table and working with the script and the writer and getting on our feet.”

Dial the clock back almost a year, and we are standing inside a sound stage at London’s Pinewood Studios. This is the spiritual home (and filming location) of some of the most famous films of all time: various James Bonds, Star Wars, the Christopher Reeve Superman, Aliens and, if you’re old enough to remember, Britain’s Carry On films. To say the grounds and stages are filled with artistic ghosts would be an understatement.

The mid-century vibe of The Fantastic Four: First Steps is evident in the look of H.E.R.B.I.E and Ben Grimm/The Thing.Credit: Marvel Studios

It is here that director Matt Shakman – with production designer Kasra Farahani, set decorator Jille Azis and prop master Ty Teiger – created the alt-1960s world of the film. The intersection of architecture and mid-century style is critical, says Pascal.

“That informs the character-building in a big way,” Pascal says. “There’s a lot of style that shapes the way things are played, and it’s a … kind of delicate balance of a world that is very nostalgic, a world that’s very grounded, something that is very much Reed, Sue, Johnny, Ben, and something that is very Pedro, Vanessa, Ebon, and Joe. It all kind of is a soup of these things, the ’60s being the ultimate flavour, I think, even in the playing of it.”

At one point, Shakman was considering letting the actors speak in the mid-Atlantic accent of 1960s-era television shows. “They had to pull me all the way back because I was ready to talk that way the whole time and I loved it, and I mean, I loved it,” Pascal says.

Helpful too is the extent to which the world has been realised physically. Which is not to say that The Fantastic Four: First Steps is not an effects-rich film. But a substantial part of the sets and locations have been created physically.

“We were on the set of our world’s Times Square. It’s one of the most impressive sets I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been on some really impressive sets,” says Pascal. “It just does all the work. Your imagination is activated in the way it was when we were children. That is harder and harder to do as you get older, or within the labour of making a movie. When you are able to actually believe the world in a physical, practical way it is everything.”

For Shakman, the project was a labour of love. “I’ve loved The Fantastic Four since I was a kid, so this is a dream job and a chance to bring these characters to life … is incredibly exciting. I’m honoured.

“They’re each individually wonderful characters, but then together as a group, they’re very special. And they are Marvel’s first family, which really sets them apart from found families like the X-Men or the Avengers. We have all the good and the bad of a family, all the messiness and the love that comes from that, and that’s what makes them very special.”

(From left) Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in Sydney on Tuesday.Credit: Marvel Studios

Perhaps the hardest balance to strike was between the humanistic elements of the characters and their superhuman capabilities. There is a general trend in the superhero genre towards slightly more authentic character notes; that feels particularly strong in Fantastic Four, which has a tone and style quite distinct from its Marvel stablemates.

“When you are trying to bring these larger-than-life characters who have such special power sets into the real world, you have to figure out how to ground them,” Shakman says. “You want them to still be magical, but you need to understand how they work physically, so you need science.

“You need to figure out what does it mean in terms of the anatomy and the musculature for Reed to stretch? What does it mean [for Sue] to turn invisible? We did all sorts of research about things that have that in nature, camouflage. And then what does it mean to be a giant rock man? What does his anatomy look like? How would he move? And certainly the human torch, what does it mean? We looked at all sorts of fire elements and playing around with ways to make that feel as real as possible.”

In the greatest cinematic tradition, the film is essentially hand-drawn first. Almost all motion pictures use such “storyboards”, but they seem like a uniquely resonant tool for a comic book-to-movie adaptation.

“We storyboard things, we make beautiful, amazing preview animations, and eventually the special effects department does incredible work,” Shakman says. “But if you don’t base it on a real body, a real human body in motion at some point in the process, it won’t feel real. So we need to film actors doing it.”

In one sense, a movie is a movie: an illusion carefully crafted out of set pieces, camera angles and a lot of plywood. At the same time, the Fantastic Four universe, like Star Trek and Star Wars, involves very specific props that, in part because of the intangible power given to them by fans, are almost talismanic in nature.

Pedro Pascal with H.E.R.B.I.E in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.Credit: Marvel Studios

“To bring a Fantastic car to life, or a H.E.R.B.I.E. robot, or these space suits, all of that is a big task,” says Shakman. “It’s a fun task, it’s one of the best parts of the job, but also because our movie is a period film set in the mid-’60s, so much of that world informs our design aesthetic.

“We aren’t just bringing a Fantastic car to life that is a kind of Platonic ideal of a Fantastic car, the [kind of] specific car that could have been built in this era by the Reed Richards of this era,” Shakman adds. “So it is equal parts retro-future and Detroit motor excellence coming together, and that’s been true for all of our props and all of our sets. We’re trying to find something that feels very grounded in this period, but also is informed by retro-future ideas of the time as well.”

The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes at a curious juncture in the history of comic book cinema. Several Marvel films have misfired, while a rebooted Superman, off the back of a critically conflicted iteration of DC Comics, has parlayed an optimistic tone into box-office success. With their combination of kindness, brilliance, empathy and strength, this rebooted foursome might be just what the world needs now.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is in cinemas from July 24.

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