Culture Watch: The Fantastic Four

The new film adaptation of The Fantastic Four comics from Marvel wasn't high on my watch-list but I'm trying to impress a guy who is into science-fiction so I headed down to Curzon Hoxton and paid my money.

Directed by Matt Shakman, this is a family-centric telling of the Fantastic Four story - skipping over the origin story and focusing on Reed and Sue having a baby while also battling to save the world from impending annihilation.

Putting the 4-D chess of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to one side, a superhero film such as this has to be able to stand on its own as a watchable piece of entertainment. If it doesn't make sense unless you've read the comics and seen the prequels and the sequels and the origin stories, then it should probably exist on a streaming service somewhere - not on the big screen.

If you don't overthink it, The Fantastic Four is an easy and engaging watch that doesn't overcomplicate its narrative and clearly establishes its characters.

What's interesting is the decision to place this story in a futuristic version of the 1960s. It all feels a bit Jetsons-coded, in a way that leans into the comic-book aesthetic and helps the audience suspend disbelief.

There are clear parallels with the animated films of The Incredibles - which reflects that they're all drawing from the same comic-book source material.

If you're a Marvel-geek, you'll know that this Fantastic Four film is the first instalment in the next phase of Marvel's cinematic universe. I haven't tried to figure out whether that retro vibe is going to be the framework for the MCU films that will follow in this sequence - the nuances of the multiverse can take some keeping track of.

The good news is that means that we're going to get more of Pedro Pascal in superhero cos-play.