The Fourth Time’s the Charm

The fourth time’s the charm for Marvel Comics’ flagship super-team.

Fantastic Four: First Steps is in fact Hollywood’s fourth iteration of the FF (the first, produced by Roger Corman, was never even released). Lovingly directed by Matt Shakman and set in the retro-futuristic mid-century modern Manhattan of the 1960s, it’s the most satisfactory of the lot. There’s always something interesting to look at in this movie.

The summer’s other superhero blockbuster, James Gunn’s Superman, begins in the middle of the action, but this film takes a surprisingly leisurely approach to re-introducing us to these characters, presented as world-famous celebrities beloved by the public because they’ve already thwarted a string of bizarre menaces that threatened New York.

They are Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, respectively Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing (names that are rarely mentioned during the film). Playing against type, the Thing is the most sensitive of the Four. Moss-Bachrach brings an understated charm to his role that I’d like to have seen more of, but the planet Earth has to be saved, after all. 

And the threat from the gigantic, cosmic, world-devouring Galactus is particularly overwhelming. The Fantastic Four’s super powers are as nothing against it, and the situation confronts the team with a horrible moral dilemma.

Galactus is heralded by the Silver Surfer, a character who has been pointlessly gender-switched. Nevertheless, Julia Garner gives one of the best of the several good performances in the movie — as coldly alien as her shiny metal skin. 

Pedro Pascal hits just the right note as Reed Richards, the noble, worried super-genius who, admittedly, has a lot to worry about. 

I have to think that, if I had seen these Superman and FF movies as a child, I’d have fainted dead away with delight.

As in the Superman movie, these characters are pretty faithful to their comic book versions. And again as in Superman, the actors worked hard to make these characters real — not an easy task with such childish source material. But the actors do not condescend to their characters.

One great actor we don’t see in the movie is John Malkovich, who played the intangible Russian villain the Red Ghost. But his performance was cut. 

Poor Malkovich has had bad luck with Marvel movies. He was to have played the Vulture in Spider-Man 4, but that film was never made.

Fox News vs. Superman

The scripted Republican attacks on Superman 2025 don’t seem to be working. It’s cleaning up at the box office.

“He’s creating a moat of woke, enlightened opinion around him. He’s got a woke shield,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld whined as an on-screen graphic proclaimed that the “Superwoke” movie embraced “pro-immigrant themes.”

Fox News has always peddled such ugly fascist trash propaganda aimed at destroying empathy and decency. Previously, Fox News called Captain America, Wonder Woman and Superman “un-American,” while describing the children’s gentle champion Fred Rogers as “evil.”

In its constant quest to gaslight its willing victims, Fox News uses panic mongering, character assassination and ad hominem arguments, psychological projection and flipping, the rewriting of history, scapegoating, conflation of violence with power, bullying, confusion, populism, invocation of the Christian God, saturation, the disparagement of education, guilt by association and diversion. 

Fox News’s most basic propaganda technique is simply to lie about facts, and it does so constantly.

Fox News is where Phineas Taylor Barnum meets Paul Joseph Goebbels.

Someone to Look Up At (and To)

In 2013, Zack Snyder gave us a Pa Kent who seriously suggested that maybe Superman should just let children die. 

But as repellent as that moral viewpoint was, it was in keeping with the amoral American zeitgeist that has come to a boil in the 21st century.

After all, we once regarded Lord of the Flies as a horror story. But by 2013 we were treating it as comedy on Survivor, a long-running hit “reality” show designed to teach the value of deception, con-artistry and personal betrayal. Children raised on nothing but Hollywood's product might well be forgiven if they thought the two most popular professions in America were “assassin” and “prostitute.”

And in 2013, Americans were only a couple of years away from installing Donald Trump — a man who epitomizes utter indifference to suffering — into the Oval Office.

Superhero comics were born with an inherent optimism, as colorfully costumed exuberant rescue fantasies. It’s no surprise that they would be “out of step” in an era where cynicism, greed and even torture can be celebrated.

Superheroes were essentially super powers plus moral exemplars. The current corrupt culture seems determined to lose the latter, leaving us with a bunch of super-powered biker gangs cutting each other to pieces for our “amusement.” No thanks.

And thankfully, director James Gunn has joined us in that “no thanks.” His Superman 2025 is a bright, shiny answer to nihilism.

I always had every confidence that Gunn could pull this off, because he had already taken an obscure Marvel property that no one cared about — the Guardians of the Galaxy — and infused it with fun, adventure and heart, making it a major financial juggernaut for Marvel. 

Gunn is as truly as masterful a storyteller as Frank Capra, and that’s something Hollywood is woefully short of these days. He understands that Superman is really more about rescue than crimefighting, more about heart than anger.

David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Hoult are, simply, perfectly cast as Superman, Lois and Luthor. The story rockets right along, comic-booky from the first moments. Yet the complicated moral implications of Superman’s do-gooderdom are considered, and his relationship with Lois has a realistic and appealing vibe. 

Hoult’s frighteningly evil Luthor has understandable, if completely wrong, motives. And Krypto the lovable Superdog is not just cutesy-pie, but made integral to the story.

Over and over again, Superman is placed in extreme, chair-gripping peril, and that’s not something that’s easy for storytellers to do.

“Gunn describes his take as ‘a story about kindness,’ which sounds simple until you remember how little space our culture makes for that word without irony,” wrote Charlene Badasie. “Kindness is only cool in hashtag form, while those with pure intentions are accused of being naïve or performative. But Gunn seems willing to push back against that cynicism by building a story around a man (who just happens to be an alien immigrant) navigating the messy, uncertain work of caring.”

“If Gunn sticks the landing, this version of Superman could reflect who we are becoming – not just what we’ve survived. We’re weary, distrustful of dominance, and starving for connection. We don’t want gods. We want people who fail and keep going. So this Superman might just meet us where we are. Gunn calls him ‘a kind person in a world that thinks kindness is old-fashioned.’ And in a culture built on sarcasm and self-defense, a Superman who chooses kindness anyway might just be the most radical one we’ve seen.”

Gunn underlines the fact that Superman’s fundamental kindness is out of step with our world. But let’s face it, it has been for 87 years. And that’s why, in the hands of the right storyteller, Superman is always relevant.

Irritation Into Intention and Interest

Your irritation,

if wisely invested, can

yield to interest.

Fascism on the 4th

Masked secret police are kidnapping people on American streets. Happy 4th of July!

Very Alert, Very Still

“Life isn’t ‘about’ air raids, swamis, love affairs, places, deeds done or undone — those are only the shapes of the letters in which the message is written. To read the message, that’s all that matters. But how? By being very alert, very still. By holding your breath and listening, always, everywhere, in the midst of this earsplitting uproar.”

— Christopher Isherwood’s diary, Sept. 20, 1944