The Fantastic Four: First Steps

The Fantastic Four: First Steps starts with some genuine promise — the space expedition to encounter Galactus has a sense of scale and dread, and the team's attempt to escape carries real tension, even if their survival against such overwhelming forces strains credulity from the start. But that early goodwill evaporates fast, and what follows is one of the most logic-deficient blockbusters I've sat through in years.

The central conflict hinges on whether the Fantastic Four will trade their child to Galactus in exchange for saving all of humanity. It's a genuinely interesting moral dilemma — and the film completely wastes it. They refuse on the grounds of "family," a small protest forms outside their headquarters, and then Invisible Woman walks out and delivers a saccharine speech about family values and somehow the entire world just... accepts it. In reality, that child would be hunted by militias, nation states, and mobs within hours. What's even more baffling is that Reed Richards — supposedly one of the smartest humans alive — never thinks to argue the obvious: that there's no guarantee Galactus upholds his end of the deal, and that the child clearly poses some kind of threat to him if he wants it this badly. That reframe alone could have made the decision feel earned. Instead, we get vibes.

The plot holes only compound from there. The team decides to teleport the entire Earth despite barely understanding the technology. They somehow end up running global customer support for this initiative. The Silver Surfer destroys every teleporter across the planet in seconds — travelling country to country in the blink of an eye — yet Human Torch managed to keep pace with her in an earlier scene. The inconsistency is jarring. Then they hide humanity underground while Galactus, a being taller than a skyscraper and apparently made of solid matter, strolls through the streets of Manhattan directly above them without collapsing the tunnels. And the finale? Invisible Woman defeats a planet-devouring cosmic entity through sheer maternal willpower, moving a mass orders of magnitude beyond anything she's shown capable of previously. It's not triumphant — it's embarrassing.

Every character is flat and unlikeable. Invisible Woman is the worst offender, swinging between incompetence and inexplicable omnipotence as the plot demands. The humans who depend on the Fantastic Four are written as comically stupid, which might be unintentionally revealing — because this whole film plays like propaganda for the human race. An alien watching this would find it pathetic.