Fantastic Four: Marvel get its mojo back - critics

Fantastic Four: First Steps is helping Marvel to "get its mojo back", according to most early reviews of the new superhero reboot.

The 37th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is "Marvel's best film in a decade", the Telegraph said, while the Guardian declared the studio had "regained its buoyancy".

But other critics brought the returning comic book superheroes' feet back down to earth. The Independent suggested the retro-looking film is "no disaster – but it's no Superman, either".

The latest attempt at a Fantastic Four reboot follows a 2015 adaptation that flopped at the box office and was poorly received by critics.

The new iteration stars Pedro Pascal as Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as The Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as the Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing.

Set in the 1960s, it sees the heroes forced to defend Earth from a hungry space god named Galactus, played by Ralph Ineson, and the Silver Surfer, played by Julia Garner.

US publication Variety was impressed, running the headline: "Marvel gets its Mojo back with a satisfying retro-styled reboot."

Reviewer Peter Debrudge said it was right to scale back from "the overcrowded feel of recent offerings", adding: "There's relief to be had from a Marvel movie in which you needn't have carefully studied multiple other movies to make sense of what's happening."

Gender-swapping the Silver Surfer, he noted, is "the biggest - and likely most controversial" change to the story, yielding an "intriguingly flirtatious dynamic with [Human Torch] Johnny".

He concluded: "True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start. And like this summer's blockbuster Superman reboot over at DC, that could be just what it takes to win back audiences suffering from superhero exhaustion."

The Telegraph's Robbie Collin offered four stars, saying the reboot "feels like the start of an exciting new chapter for Marvel".

"First Steps is earnest, colourful, upbeat," he said, "and asks its audience to bring nothing to the table beyond a willingness to be wowed."

It makes the viewer "wish that Marvel had reached this point years ago", he opined.

"Why do Pedro Pascal's elastic-limbed Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby's Invisible Woman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach's rock-skinned Thing and Joseph Quinn's fiery Human Torch make such a refreshingly human quartet of heroes?

"It's partly because the casting allows all four to play to their strengths – and as the team's steadfast matriarch, Kirby is especially good value – but also because the film keeps putting them into the sort of human spaces where human behaviour naturally occurs."

In a three-star review, the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw explained that "in a retro-futurist version of early 1960s New York, Mr Fantastic and Sue Storm are living together as a dysfunctional family with the Human Torch and the Thing - with a baby on the way."

The result, he wrote, "hangs together as an entertaining spectacle in its own innocent self-enclosed universe of fantasy wackiness, where real people actually read the comic books that have made mythic legends of the real Four".

He continued: "I have expressed my dissatisfaction recently with superhero films which have to finish with AI cities collapsing – and, yes, this is what happens here, but at least this finale emerges from the established story premise, and works well with the tone of uncomplicated fun."

Adding: "Overall a very silly movie - though it's keeping the superhero genre aloft."

The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey also dished out three stars, underlining how actress Kirby "is a standout as Susan Storm and the set design dazzles", but that "this franchise-starter is still weighed down by the usual unfunny banter and pathological Marvel aversion to risk".

She wrote: "It's Reed and Sue's marriage that also births one of the most fascinating ethical quandaries Marvel's ever put to screen – and, yet, it's somehow happily solved about three scenes later.

"Truly, angst isn't on the cards for Marvel as of now. And it's nice, admittedly, to see the genre embrace wonder once again."

Director Matt Shakman has said his latest attempt to bring the comic book heroes to the big screen exists in its "own universe" so fans need not worry if they haven't seen all or any of the previous 36 MCU films.

John Malkovich had been due to appear in the film as Red Ghost, however, Shakman told Variety, it was "heart-breaking" to ultimately have to leave his scenes on the cutting room floor.

Fantastic Four: First Steps is out in UK cinemas on Thursday.