Who Needs Origins Anyway? (Spoilers for Superman 2025 and Fantastic Four: First Steps)

 There's something I've observed about the last couple of comic-book based movies that I've watched that I've actually found somewhat refreshing; they appear to have done away with origin stories.  James Gunn's Superman threw us right in the thick of the action right after a few lines of text told us about how Superman came to Earth, and Matt Shakman's Fantastic Four: First Steps introduced Marvel's first family through a quick, Ed-Sullivan-show like montage depicting their beginnings in less than five minutes before diving straight into the story.  

Having seen nearly every movie based on a Marvel Comics character in theaters and having seen most movies featuring Superman and Batman in one medium or another I have to say it is refreshing to not have to sit through origin stories again. I don't know who said it first but like that person, I do not have to see Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot by a mugger to that Bruce Wayne gets inspired to fight crime as a  giant bat, nor do I have to see Uncle Ben die again so that Peter Parker learns about great power and greater responsibility. I don't have to see Jor-El sent Superman hurtling off a dying planet again, and I don't need to see Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm take a radiation bath again in order to get incredible powers.   

Dispensing with the origin means getting to explore the characters in different ways, and avoiding the slow burn that usually comes with the main characters going from ordinary to extraordinary. It also challenges the writers to find ways to make life miserable for the main characters even though their hero's journey has already been established. 

Marvel kind of did this first when Spider-Man showed up in Captain America: Civil War with super powers and a pre-offed Uncle Ben.  Eventually, the MCU trilogy provided him an origin story of sorts when it killed off Aunt May but I feel that the main reason Uncle Ben never showed up was that Marvel had shrewdly decided not to waste time telling that story again, and it's a lesson that James Gunn took with him to DC, and which Matt Shakman learned well enough to incorporate it into his hit movie.

Neither Marvel nor DC will get away with this when launching new characters, of course, but given that they will undoubtedly be dipping into the well of their marquee superheroes for many years to come, complete with the occasional reboot, it's gratifying to know that they no longer consider origin stories a non-negotiable in storytelling.  

Honoring Lee and Kirby as They Deserve: A Review of Fantastic Four: First Steps

 directed by Matt Shakman

written by Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer

When Marvel sold off its various intellectual properties to stave off bankruptcy in the 1990s, one of the bigger casualties was the property that had kicked off the Marvel Age of comics back in 1961, the Fantastic Four.  Whereas other key properties like the X-Men and Spider-Man had their big screen breakthroughs in the early 2000s, Marvel's first family stumbled out of the gate with a film that was reasonably entertaining but notably less well-made than its contemporaries, followed up by a sequel that was more of the same, but which didn't make enough money to justify a continuation of the franchise. The worst was yet to come for Marvel's premier team when in 2015, back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe had already been launched and was going from strength to strength, rights-holders Twentieth Century Fox made the disastrous Fant4stic, a reboot of the franchise that was so infamously terrible it was only the second ever comic-book property to take home the dreaded Golden Raspberry Award or Razzie for worst picture. 

Ten years after that debacle, Walt Disney now owns Twentieth Century Studios, and as a result, Marvel Studios has finally gotten to take its own crack at its maiden superteam with Fantastic Four: First Steps.

 The movie kicks off in the 1960s, in Earth 828, which is a universe quite distinct from the Earth-616 in which the mainstream Marvel Cinematic Universe is set. The Fantastic Four, namely Mister Fantastic/Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), his wife the Invisible Woman/Susan Storm (Vanessa Kirby), her brother the Human Torch/Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and their friend the Thing/Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), have been operating as a superhero team for four years, having gained their powers from cosmic radiation that struck them on a journey to space. They've been using their powers to fight crime and other threats to the world, and as a result, they are widely beloved.  As the film begins, they are about to welcome a brand new member to the family when they find out that Susan is pregnant.  However, their entire world is shaken to the core with the arrival of a mysterious silver alien (Julia Garner) who arrives on what appears to be a flying surfboard, who tells them that Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds (Ralph Ineson) will soon arrive to consume their world. Not about to take an existential threat lying down, the quartet head off into deep space to meet Galactus, only to find a threat unlike any they've ever faced before. 

Like DC Studios did with James Gunn's Superman, Marvel mostly dispenses with the team's origin story, recapping it in a five-minute sequence reminiscent of the very first page of a comic book, and dives straight into the action. The story is simple and straightforward, and the film is briskly-paced. The four actors who portray Marvel's most famous foursome have such wonderful chemistry together that it's easy to believe that they're a family.  They're all accomplished actors in their own right but group chemistry isn't always the easiest to manage, and yet their collective performance is pitch-perfect.  The villain Galactus is less a bad guy than he is a force of nature in this film, and Julia Garner acquits herself well as Shalla Bal, this universe's iteration of Galactus' herald, the Silver Surfer. While people may grumble that she's serving as the herald and not Norrin Radd, the better-known version of the Silver Surfer from the comic books and the previous films, she gets far less screen time and character development than the last iteration of the Surfer did, so I really didn't have a problem with the change. Ralph Ineson certainly is an upgrade from the giant cloud we got as Galactus in the 2007 FF sequel.  Incidentally, I really liked how they handled Johnny Storm's character, which ultimately played a significant part in how the film was resolved.  It was a nice bit of writing, helped along by some effective acting from Joseph Quinn that showed that there's more to the character than chasing skirt and driving around in fast cars.  

Shakman gets the most important ingredients right; he extracts sincere, effective performances from his leads, and tells a clear and engaging story, but he also gets the big, bombastic stuff right, too. The action sequences have their own distinct energy to them; they're well-staged and not shrouded in darkness or nighttime, a usual cheat resorted to in visual-effects-heavy films. Another thing worth noting about the film is the decidedly bright color palette. After years of having to endure mostly washed-out colors that facilitated last-minute changes to special effects, it was refreshing to see a Marvel film confident enough to show its effects in broad daylight for a good chunk of the film. The space sequences were also staged quite impressively as well, though not quite on the level of the best that the Guardians of the Galaxy films has to offer.  This truly fills me with hope that Marvel will be able to tackle more of the FF's otherworldly foes like Annihilus, the Impossible Man, and the Skrulls. Yes, the Skrulls, whom the MCU has embarrassingly fumbled since debuting them in 2019's Captain Marvel, deserve a proper onscreen portrayal.  The CG effects that turned Ben Grimm into the Thing were basically flawless, and while I've never had a problem with the visual effects depicting the Human Torch, even in the older movies, he looked great here, as did Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman.  

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my absolute favorite part of this movie, and it was the soaring, utterly heroic and instantly iconic music score from Oscar-winning  composer Michael Giacchino.  This is already the fourth Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise to which Giacchino has contributed music after the first Doctor Strange film, the MCU Spider-Man trilogy, and the fourth Thor movie, but to my mind, his work here easily surpasses anything he's done for the MCU before, and I'd argue it's among the very best music that's ever been composed for a Marvel film, including gems like Alan Silvestri's score for Avengers and Ludwig Goransson's Oscar-winning score for Black Panther. 

I liked Marvel's last offering before this, the dark and somber Thunderbolts about as much as I liked this, but there's something I really appreciate about a bright and hopeful movie like this. Alongside Superman, this film really is one of my highlights of the summer movie season of 2025.  

8.5/10

The Movie the OG Superhero Deserves is Finally Here: A Review of Superman (2025)

written and directed by James Gunn

I may be a Marvel guy through and through, but there are a couple of things that had me very eagerly anticipating the new Superman film written and directed by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. The first one, quite simply, was that the trailer looked spectacular and promised a very exciting time at the movies. The second was that I had virtually complete trust in Gunn based on his track record of making superhero-related films; the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy was just about the best resume that anyone could have brought along.  The third one was that this movie, based on everything I had seen and read about it, seemed very happy to embrace its comic-book roots, and not pretend to be something that the character clearly was not.

The film, breaks away from both the continuity established by the original, 1978 Superman film, which Bryan Singer actually attempted to continue with his disastrous 2006 sequel Superman Returns, and from the DC Extended Universe that was kicked off by Zack Snyder in 2013's Man of Steel.  

For this film, Gunn dispenses with telling his own version of Superman's origin story and drops us viewers right into the action. Metahumans have been on this version of earth for over 300 years, and Superman, aka Clark Kent (David Corenswet), from the doomed planet Krypton, is the most powerful of them all. He has sworn to be a force for good, because he believes that this was the reason his parents Jor-El (Bradley Cooper) and Lara Lor-Van (Angela Sarafryan) sent him to Earth, though most of the time he pretends to be a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet alongside his colleagues Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) among others.  Unfortunately, billionaire Lex Luther (Nicholas Hoult does not appreciate Superman's efforts at all and, clouded by hate and envy wants to destroy him once and for all, and when he discovers a startling bit of information about Superman he might be able to do exactly that.  

I'll get straight to it: I loved this movie through and through. It was entertaining, moving and wonderfully-paced. The writing was topnotch; whatever the film's flaws may have been, writer-director James Gunn clearly gets what it is about Superman that makes him such an enduring part of our pop culture: his humanity and compassion.  Corenswet, was pitch perfect in this role, as were his castmates Brosnahan and Gisondo, as well as his fellow metahumans, the Justice Gang composed of Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) and Hawkgirl (Isabel Merced).  Special mention should also go to Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor who manages to make the guy evil as all heck but crazily charismatic at the same time. It's quite a feat.

Gunn brings out the very best out of not just his actors but his effects crews as the film's visuals are simply stunning, in a way no Marvel movie has been for years. Gunn really is an old-hand at these visual effects-driven extravaganzas, and he turns in some of his absolute best work here.

9/10