It wasn't that long ago that Marvel had a string of hits at the box office which any other production company would envy. Not all the films were great but the number that were surprisingly good was impressive. My own list of hits would looks something like this:
- Iron Man, 2008
- The Incredible Hulk, 2008
- Captain America: The First Avenger, 2011
- The Avengers, 2012
- Iron Man 3, 2013
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 2014
- Guardians of the Galaxy, 2014
- Ant-Man, 2015
- Captain America: Civil War, 2016
- Spider-Man: Homecoming, 2017
- Black Panther, 2018
- Avengers: Infinity War, 2018
- Avengers: Endgame, 2019
Those are the ones that worked pretty well in my view and most of the others, while not as good, were passable. There were only a few duds in the mix: Thor: The Dark World, Captain Marvel.
But since the pandemic, things have been pretty rough. The only real hits were Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine. The rest ranged between forgettable: Black Widow, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and really bad: Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder, And-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Marvels.
To be fair, some of the films from the post-Endgame era did make money. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever made $900 million which is definitely a hit at the box office but it's not a good film in my opinion.
Most recently, Captain America: Brave New World underwent a title change and a bunch of reshoots and still belongs in the forgettable category. It also probably barely broke even at the box office with a worldwide take of $415 million. I thought Thunderbolts was a partial return to form. It was fairly entertaining and definitely not awful but it still didn't come close to most of the films in the list up above. It also didn't make money, topping out at $382 million.
That's a recap of the past 17 years. Marvel had 11 really great years followed by four years filled with movies that wore out the brand. The general consensus is that this had a lot to do with Disney pressuring Marvel to crank out equally terrible TV content for their streaming service. Not coincidentally, they started pushing those out in 2021 with WandaVision and it really went downhill from there: Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at law, Secret Invasion, Echo, Agatha All Along and, most recently, the truly awful Ironheart.
It has a lot of people saying that Marvel's future may depend on the success of its next film: Fantastic Four: First Steps. But maybe they finally got one right? Reviews are now coming in and they aren't too bad.
Let’s be clear: The Fantastic Four: First Steps is not reinventing the superhero movie wheel in any meaningful way. The 115-minute film (refreshingly slim among increasingly bloated comic book movies) hits all the familiar beats of the genre. But director Matt Shakman leans into this simplicity, with a straightforward plot, memorable setpieces, and impressive action. It’s all elevated by excellent performances from the core cast, and some of the best visuals in any Marvel movie to date.
Another one:
Some very minor quibbles aside (wonky CG at times, a couple of sequences that go on just a touch too long), “First Steps” — the beginning of the MCU’s Phase Six — is the movie this family of heroes deserves. It’s heartfelt, action-packed and just plain fun (and comes with an intriguing mid-credit scene you don’t want to miss). Fantastic indeed.
Pretty positive:
The short version: this is a solid, intelligent, occasionally inspired comic book movie that delivers most of what a popular audience demands from the genre (including interstellar voyages and massively scaled action sequences) plus a little bit more, mainly through thoughtful and grounded lead performances and production design that deserves its own section in this review—and gets one further down. It’s probably a three-star movie in terms of nuts-and-bolts achievements, but the acting and the visuals elevate it far beyond the baseline of the genre, which is often blandly lit and indifferently composed screensaver images with CGI-enhanced people in them.
Even skeptics seem partly won over:
Fantastic Four: First Steps feels like a brief reprieve. It’s wildly uneven, but it’s also light and unencumbered by backstory and unnecessary lore; it doesn’t require homework, either before or after. Setting it in a half-imagined past avoids all the baggage Marvel movies come with nowadays, here at the ass end of Phase Five or whatever.
Overall it sits at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it won't be the best Marvel film you've ever seen but it might actually be good. This particular story is one of the best-loved stories in all of Marvel comics (FF# 48-50) so it would be nice if they didn't screw it up.
Fantastic Four was always my favorite comic back when I was reading comics as a kid in the 70s. Like everyone else I'm feeling sort of burned out from too many bad films and TV shows, but I'm hoping they got this one right. It opens this Friday.
