AFTER SOME SPLUTTERED PREVIOUS INCARNATIONS — AND SOME CORPORATE STUMBLING BLOCKS — MARVEL’S FIRST FAMILY ARE FINALLY JOINING THE MCU. WILL THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS HERALD A BRIGHT NEW ERA FOR SUPERHERO CINEMA? LET’S GO TO SPACE…

WORDS JOHN NUGENT with Mr Fantastic

The Fantastic Four are preparing to launch.

“How long to get Excelsior launch-ready?” asks Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) of the Fantastic Four’s spaceship, pacing with urgency. “Twenty hours,” replies Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), heavily pregnant, springs into action. “We have to make a statement,” she says. “We need to get ahead of this.” Meanwhile, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) is looking pensive: “The herald” — referring to the mysterious shiny alien the Silver Surfer — “spoke to me in her language,” he says. An intergalactic threat is looming. The cosmos is calling.

It’s 9 September, 2024. Empire stands in Reed Richards’ laboratory at the top of the Baxter Building, the midtown Manhattan skyscraper that has always been the home of the Fantastic Four, aka Marvel’s ‘First Family’. More accurately, we’re on the S Stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, just one of several studios and outdoor sets commandeered at the facility for the mammoth production of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the superhero team’s long-awaited entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The lab set is vast and cavernous, all bold colours and mid-century chic, with vaulted ceilings and giant, eye-shaped windows. There’s a huge, curved blackboard — wide enough for someone with stretchy powers, perhaps? — covered in mathematical chalk scribbles; an engineering section for inventions; and a full-blown NASA-style space-mission control, covered in blinking lights, computer data and star charts. The helper robot H.E.R.B.I.E. zips about, puppeteered by a crew member. And, most tellingly, four spacesuits hang by the door. In case the Neil Armstrong-coded title didn’t give you a hint, this is very much a space movie. “The Fantastic Four are, first and foremost, scientists, explorers, adventurers, and astronauts,” says director Matt Shakman, who has set the film in a unique retro-futuristic alt-1960s. “They are passionate about exploration. They are part of this JFK-inspired

Clockwise from main: It’s a family affair: Ben Grimm/ The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Reed Richards/ Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Johnny Storm/ Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Sue Storm/ Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby); Johnny Storm makes a giant leap; Director Matt Shakman on set; Reed Richards with his helper robot H.E.R.B.I.E..

optimism: ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’”

Making a Fantastic Four film has, traditionally, been very hard indeed: every one of the previous films has been less than fantastic, so much so that some speculated a successful adaptation was beyond reach. It is Marvel’s super-powered white whale. And Marvel recognises the challenge. “This is our opportunity to put them on Mount Rushmore, as they should be,” says executive producer Grant Curtis of the Four.