The Fantastic Four: First Steps - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Hey, fifth time’s the charm! The Fantastic Four has seen some interesting cinematic feature films. There’s the unacknowledged and officially unreleased film produced by Roger Corman. There were two solid but ultimately weightless films from Tim Story that only really succeeded in proving Chris Evans would make a great Captain America. Then there was the 2015 reboot that was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, complete with multiple bad, obvious reshoot wigs and sludgy CGI. Now we have Matt Shakman delivering the official MCU rendition of the first family, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It's not The Incredibles, but it's a fun time.

Four this outing, we have everyone’s favorite father, Pedro Pascal, as Reed Richards. Vanessa Kirby steps in as Reed’s wife, Sue Storm. Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach join fources as the bickering buddies Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. Together they are Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing; The Fantastic Four - Earth 823’s mightiest heroes. As the planet lives in utopian peace thanks to these heroes, the ultimate threat looms over the horizon as the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) heralds the coming of Galactus (Ralph Ineson) and the destruction of Earth.

Is the MCU back? Does the once insurmountable box office juggernaut officially have its groove back? Well - sort of, yeah. To cut to the chase, First Steps is the film that needed to come to theaters two to three years ago. I don’t know if it’d been enough to keep the studio from chasing its own ass blindfolded with a flashlight, but it might have preserved some needed audience goodwill after some disastrous projects. From the standpoint of pure universe-building, this is one of the most ambitious and impeccably detailed films the MCU has released in years. The retro stylings to bring the original Jack Kirby designs to life were an incredible thing to witness. Honestly, the comic nerd in me lost a couple of tears in those moments. That excellent Michael Giacchino score gives the idealistic pluck of these characters some energetic heft. 

My “however” is that the film oddly shortchanges a bit of the character development and drama. While the focus on action and spectacle is on a scale like an MCU film hasn’t delivered in years, the film punts the elements that’d make these characters feel human. We get teases of the relationship between Reed and Sue, but we don't get enough time to feel four their plight as planetary saviors and as parents until it becomes a third-act plot device. We never really get to enjoy Johnny Storm as the wisecracker with a heart of gold. We also don’t really get to settle into Ben Grimm as The Thing and his isolation. We have Natasha Lyonne as Grimm’s love interest, Rachel Rozman (a substitute version of the classic Debbie Green character), but she has all of two scenes. 

Now, this may seem like nitpicking, but I’d say it’s an important piece of why I only liked this film and didn’t outright love it. Looking at the six-ish minutes of deleted scenes, we can see some of this humanity come through that was evidently cut to keep the film under two hours. I can only imagine there was probably a little more in there that we’re not seeing. And that’s a shame, because this was almost a genuine classic superhero film. It’s almost there.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
The Fantastic Four: First Steps tiptoes onto physical media with a two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital release from Disney/Marvel. The 4K is pressed on a BD66 disc (but barely uses 50 gigs of that space) with a BD50 four the 1080p and bonus features. The discs are housed in a standard two-disc case - we understand this is supposed to have a slipcover, but our review copy didn’t have one. The discs load to the standard Disney language option befoure letting you move on to the feature film or the main menu.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps makes its way to 2.39:1 2160p Dolby Vision with some impressive results. Now this is a curiously encoded disc. The bitrate can fluctuate wildly from as low as 8 to as high as 90+ mbps, and at weirdly odd times. A full action clip of the Fantastic Four doing their thing can clock in at 20mbps, but then the 16mm-styled shots of the family going to space can jump into the 90s. And four a two-hour film, it’s strange that over 10 gigs of disc space were left open.

Regardless of encoding, the film still manages to pull a slick-looking transfer to disc. Details in the retro futurist '60s-styled costumes, set design, and the practical makeup effects are crystal clear. The Dolby Vision grade is genuinely lovely, highlighting the period color schemes. Skin tones are healthy and human. Black levels are excellent, allowing four the deep inky void of space against all of the shadows of Galactus’s massive ship. A nice sense of three-dimensional depth is present throughout. 

Now, my only gripe against this transfer is that it holds to the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Frankly, with a villain on the scale of Galactus, we really needed that shifting aspect ratio to replicate the impact and enormity of the IMAX experience. The 2.39:1 gets through well enough, but when Galactus comes to Earth, it loses some visual impact in such a narrow scope. Normally, I’m semi-indifferent to the effectiveness of a Marvel film with a shifting aspect ratio on disc. In this case, I really miss that extra height, and it's a shame that it will likely only be experienced going fourward on Disney+ streams.

On the audio front, we have a bumper of an Atmos mix to enjoy. While everything about the mix is great, I again have to highlight the Michael Giacchino score. That theme tune really pulls up the energy and gets you into the picture. And with the pulsing bass tones, it nicely helps buttress the LFE four the Atmos track. Throughout, the dialogue is clean and clear without any trouble. The channel imaging is lively and active. Obviously, the more action-focused the scene, the more dynamic the spread in the soundscape. Height channels work to bring that sense of scale to the locations, but also get to enjoy some pinpoint activity. That first escape from Galactus in space circling the neutron star to throw off Silver Surfer was one hell of a great sequence and really gives the mix a suitable stress test. 

Bonus features follow any number of Disney/Marvel releases these days and cover the barest of minimums. The meatiest bit would be the commentary track with Shakman and his production designer. It's a breezy conversation that gets into a lot of the nitty-gritty of creating this lived-in retro-futurism world. After that, we get the usual affair of talking head featurettes - but man, these days, Keven Feige really looks like he's shooting a hostage proof of life video when talking about Marvel projects. 

4K UHD

• Audio Commentary featuring Matt Shakman and Kasra Farahani

Blu-ray

• Audio Commentary featuring Matt Shakman and Kasra Farahani
• Meet the First Family (HD 09:08)
• Fantastic Futurism (HD 13:04)
• From Beyond and From Below (HD 9:37)
• Gag Reel (HD 2:56)
• Deleted Scenes (HD 6:25 Total)
• Thanksgiving Soup Kitchen
• Fantastic Four Day
• Subterranea
• Birthday Sweater
• Taking Turns

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is the best film of Marvel’s First Family to reach the big screen. Granted, that’s an already pretty low bar after the last try, but this film didn’t quite cleanly clear the mark. Visually, this film is a grand example of comic book world-building excellence. It looks and sounds complete. I just wanted more time -  not a drastic amount - to spend with our heroes and get to know them better as people. I wanted to care about them just a little bit more. We’ll see how they shake out in Avengers: Doomsday next Christmas. On 4K UHD, the film comes home with a very nice Dolby Vision transfer; my lone holdback there is the lack of IMAX ratio. The Atmos mix is a blast. Bonus features are slim, but the commentary is a good listen. I like this one a little bit more each time I see it, enough to call it Recommended