#176 – The Fantastic 4: First Steps Reaction

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. I'm your host Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest. And wow, wow, wow. I just walked out of Fantastic Four and I'm still reeling. This movie hit fast, it hit hard and it never let up. I'm in almost a loss for words. So I'm gonna keep it together for you here. Smiling ear to ear. I hope you liked it as much as I did. It's emotional, it's cosmic, it's self contained, but with just enough teases to blow the door wide open. And yes, me and TJ both gave it a four out of four. I gotta credit Dustin with the four out of four thing. He asked me a non spoiler review And I said 10 out of 10. And then he said not four out of four. And I felt, well, I felt like I missed that opportunity. So I brought it here to you. But I couldn't lie and say I came up with it. Okay. Anyways. Okay, so here's the instant reaction. This movie starts off immediately. There's no long MCU intro giving it even more of a multiversy vibe or just another worldly vibe than the one we're familiar with. And just the Marvel Studios logo with its own unique theme. And boom. And we're in it. The first scene, Sue Storm finds out that she's pregnant. It's quiet, it's surprising. And before we can even process that, we're thrown into this montage of origin moments. How they went into space, got their powers, fought street monsters and saved the city. We see like found footage type of the. Of the team over the years. Yes. By the time this movie starts, they've already been Fantastic Four for a while. The baby is born way earlier than I expected. I figured that to be like an end of movie type thing. Not at the end, not a final beat. The baby comes and it becomes the heart of the story. The entire story. Let's break it down a little bit further. There's just so much I loved here. So let's hit the big ones. I got to go see this movie. Mole man vibes. There's. There's this villain beneath the city who feels like a nod to both the classic comics and the Incredibles. He starts as an enemy and ends as an ally. And that's some incredible world building that they do in this movie. Just one example of that. The Silver Circle. Silver Circle. The. So I'm excited. Can you tell? The Silver Surfer, she is cosmic, intense, and played so well. And her warning that Galactus is coming Your world is marked for death. That becomes public so the entire world knows what's coming. Johnny Storm even develops a cosmic crush on her. It's just some classic Human Torch right there. How about Galactus? He is terrifying. I mean, they did such a good job on Galactus. What if they fumble? Galactus, they're fumbled. And he's a presence and a force on a being that might even predate the multiverse. He has a voice that vibrates through the theater. And when he looks at Sue's unborn baby, he knows the baby could be the next Galactus or something like that. He makes the offer. Give me the child and I'll spare your planet. They say, no more. There's no way they're gonna give up their baby. So they decide to run. The fact is they. They followed. Their technology is so ahead. I can't tell if it's in an earlier time with just super great technology Reed Richards is making. Because the flying car is so cool. I really like that. The fact that they know how to fly in their rocket at light speed to catch up with the Silver Surfer, who, by the way, she literally kicks ass in this movie. Like, she is one of the strongest, like, secondary heroes you'd ever think of. And her story is really interesting in that of its own. It seems like such an easy thing for Galactus to say, give me your child. No, I mean, it's honestly the thing that puts us on their side. And the world ends up kind of being against the Fantastic four because the F4 is honest. Reed is honest that he wanted the baby and they'll spare the world. So the world gets pretty mad. The baby is born in space while on the run. Reed and sue are on the ship returning from their failed mission. Well, also with, you know, the other guys, too. Returning from their failed mission to stop Galactus. Fail mission. That, that's. And you know, they weren't going to do it right away because, well, the movie would have been over too fast. And there's this beautiful moment where she shows him the baby through her stomach earlier on that even. That there's even a moment earlier when the crowd turns on them, like I was saying. And sue steps up and says, this is Franklin. This is our son. Would you like, pretty much, would you give up your baby? And suddenly there's some understanding and there's. There's feeling here that the world can get on board with the Fantastic Four, their heroes, and maybe sympathize with the idea of not wanting to give their only child up as sacrifice There should be no sacrifices, except. Except not. Except for anything. There should be no sacrifices unless it's a heroic one. But not the baby. No baby sacrifices. That's what sparks the idea to. To move the Earth. Not fight Galactus, but relocate Earth itself into another universe. Not another multiverse like another. Another universe with the sun. And they try and they really get the whole world on board to do this thing. Reed Richards is such a genius. Pedro Pascal plays a role perfectly. And there's a lot of Pascal out there right now. But I'd say he plays Reed Richards in its own way. I think he put his heart into his role. As long with all the other actors in this movie that just brought it to life. This movie was living and breathing. The Reed Richards has this technology that he can teleport an egg across the room. So this gives him the idea to move the Earth, right? And they try and they really actually looks like they're totally about to succeed. Until the Silver Surfer arrives, still loyal, destroying the relay points all across the world. And at light speed, nearly. It's devastating. Their plan fails. And then Galatis arrives. Except the team had a new plan. This time they weren't going to move the Earth. They were going to set the baby in a trap to catch Galactus himself and send him all across the galaxy to a point where he can't even come back because he doesn't have a ship. And I think it was smart to give him a ship. I always wondered how this man is just flying around in space eating planets. They made him a little smaller like than the size of a plant. He could walk on the planet, but he still eats it and just slower. And I wonder if he has the power to grow even bigger if he wanted to. But he is big. So Galactus is coming to this baby. He jumps into the ocean like it. What an impact too. Stands over the Statue of Liberty and starts walking towards toward and through Manhattan. He scans the city. It is empty because Reed and the team teamed up with the mall city dwellers to evacuate New York underground. That reveal felt earned and just. It's so heroic. The final battle. There's so much emotion, power, and, well, one hell of a mom. They try to trick Galactus right into entering that portal. Galactus has scanny eyes, so he scans and he sees the baby where they have him set up. Just when he does that, Johnny Storm brings the baby back to the Baxter Building. However, Galactus is smarter than that. He comes so close to stepping into the portal where they would zap him away. But he scans again and he sees the baby at the Baxter Building. Chaos follows. And then Sue Storm steps up. What a hero. The heroes, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Reed Richards. Together these actors nailed the part. The camaraderie, the family, the teamwork, it's there and it, it's so good. She unleashes a new level of her powers once he gets that baby. Force fields, energy, determination. She's not just an invisible woman. She has a hard super force like power. And it looks really pretty, but she used it to a degree which she never did, that would nearly exhaust her to death. She literally is able to push Galactus down the street. And while protecting the baby, kind of protecting, he has the baby in his hands and he's just very distracted by being zapped with power that he could not expect, which really blew even us, the audience away. It's like she's strong man. And Reed Richards gets up there, saves the baby. She pushes Galactus into the portal, but he comes back out. Silver Surfer has a moment with Johnny where he says that she was just a normal person. And he knows because he studied her language and he learned how to speak it. This Johnny's very smart. Not that Chris Evans wasn't, but he has just an attraction to her as a cosmic being. So the Silver Surfer sacrifices herself to push Galactus into the portal and sacrificing herself ultimately to save the Earth. Because Johnny honestly did that. So everyone played a part. Trust me, the thing, Ben Grimm, he, he, he is an emotional anchor in this movie as well. And I really like his light heartedness. They don't lean into him wishing he was human, even if he has that built up in there somewhere. He seemed to have accept that he's a rock man and he can grow a rock beard. So cool. So, so cool. So when we see sue releasing all this energy and getting rid of Galactus, we think, all right, they won. Except she used so much energy that she, she died. We thought she died. She did die. But TJ and I both thought she died. And it was honestly an emotional moment because they put the baby on her chest. I thought it was going to be like a fantastic Three from here on out. And I was thinking they can't do that. But maybe Baby Richards is the fourth, you know, when he grows up. But are they really going to kill her like this? But the baby, it's a cosmic miracle. We don't know all the powers it has. And it brings, he, he brings her back to life. Little Franklin Richards. Jack, Jack level power Unaware but real. Earth is saved. Baby intact. Oh my goodness. Thank God. So let's talk about the post credits scenes. Okay. We get a little bit of what you'd want, what I wanted, but not all of it. Four years later, sue is reading books to Franklin. He's a little bit older, obviously he's four now. She goes to get another book to start reading him. She's definitely reading very smart books to him when we see her. But she went to go get more of a kid's book. And when he, when she comes back into the room, There he is, Dr. Doom. No mass mask on the floor, hovering over young Franklin Richards. I don't know what he's telling the child. We don't know if they're enemies or my idea. Maybe they're allies. And it wasn't Robert Downey Jr. We saw no face. It was just Doom. I mean it could be implied that it was him under there, but honestly, it's a little mysterious. It's a little bit mysterious personally, considering the four years later and that in the comics Reed Richards and and Victor von Doom have a history of being rivals, but also working together. This could be a moment of in a time of peace between the two characters. And it might be the twist later that he is just there visiting and he always dons the mask and the cloak because it's a very superhero thing. If he's friends with the Fantastic Four, why can't he do it? Especially if he has powers. We don't know anything about this. And I don't know if it's a bait and switch. There might be like a Council of Dr. Dooms for all we know how much they're going to take from Kang Dynasty. But the fact that we even just see Doom is he's in the game now. Whether it's Robert Downey Jr's Doom or just another Doom that they're tricking us. And it's the real Do. I don't know, you know is the Russo's directed that part. So it's going to have, it's going to have ramifications. We're going to find out eventually. But this is very much Thor Ragnarok post credits scene like where they just stop at Thanos's ship or Thanos's ship stops them and it's like, oh, where's this gonna go? Well, open up Infinity War and you've got your answer. So the second post credit scene, it was a cartoon. It's something that's rep represented in the movie. And Johnny Storm is Always trying to get Ben Grimm to do his signature line, it's clobber in time. And then the cartoon, he delivers it, but he does it in the movie too. And it's so good. I like that running gag and I like these characters. I'm getting them all in Fortnite. I have to. Are they out now? I don't know. I think it's tomorrow. The world loves the Fantastic Four again. I can assume that I will be making more episodes about this movie. I don't know exactly when. I'm still buzzed off it. I mean, I ran in here to record. So let's just give some final thoughts for now and then we'll. I'm not gonna lie, we're gonna revisit this movie probably multiple times. It was phenomenal and honest as ever. I'm just gonna call this one on the level of a Phase one classic. Like an Iron Man, a Captain America. It's a self contained story instead of the world being destroyed at the end. Like I thought. Like I don't know how many thought it really seemed. If you've seen the post credit scene for Thunderbolt, Spoiler alert. Skip ahead 20 seconds. Okay, post credit scene for Thunderbolts. We see the Fantastic Four ship arriving in universe 616. Well, they're in universe 838. And in all trailers it's. They make us believe that they're. They're playing my assumption, and I was very sure of it, that they were going to destroy their planet by accident. Like not them, but Galactus. And they would be the only ones to run and survive. And then that guilt would drive their characters going forward to save the whole multiverse because they couldn't save their own world. Didn't happen. Their world is okay right now. They. They didn't really reference the multiverse that much. Except for the fact that Reed Richards knows about the multiverse because he's figuring it out on his chalkboard. I like seeing him at work. He's giving me very Tony Stark vibes. And I just love the way he's thinking and thinking all the time, trying to come up with new ideas that to just save the world. So the movie's just original and emotional in a way I didn't expect. I went in hoping for a fun ride and I left feeling something real. The power of family, the bravery of choosing not to sacrifice what you love. And the idea that sometimes a mother's love can be stronger than a God's hunger. Pedro Pascal Again, he's Mr. Fantastic. He earned it every member of the team delivered something special, and I cannot wait to see what comes next. That's it for now, Maniacs. I'll be back soon with more thoughts, bonus tastes, and maybe even a deeper analysis on Franklin's powers. I've heard some pretty extraordinary things through Screencrush and other videos, video channels on YouTube, and I'm sure they're going to have a great after show for this as well. I wonder the multiverse implications of this Doom if it is Robert Downey June. If it's another June Robert Downey Doom or another Doom, we will find out. Maybe they just didn't want to pay Robert Downey Jr. For a cameo, but I think they would have done it. I think people are gonna go see him be Doom and Doomsday no matter what, so they didn't really need to do that. But until next time, I'm Mr. Honest. And you, you're fantastic. That sounded fake, but I really wanted it to sound sincere. Anyways, until next time, Avengers disassemble.