Since their creation by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, the Fantastic Four have been at the heart of the Marvel comics empire. Until now, though, the first family of superheroes has never successfully made the leap to the big screen.
In 1994, cult film-maker Roger Corman backed a production that has never been officially released. In 2005 and 2007, 20th Century Fox tried its hand; and again in 2015 with a dire reboot that even Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Michael B Jordan could not save. Aptly, it would seem that four’s a charm.
Though Matt Shakman’s movie is the 37th instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now in “phase six”, it benefits considerably from being set in the uncluttered alternate universe of “Earth-828” (as opposed to the MCU’s usual Earth-199999, if you’re interested), which, aesthetically speaking, bears a close resemblance to stylish early ‘60s camp. Transformed into superheroes by cosmic rays in space, the Fantastic Four are the sole guardians of the planet and feted as such.
The casting is excellent, with Pedro Pascal as scientific genius Reed Richards, aka the endlessly elastic Mr Fantastic; Vanessa Kirby especially good as his wife, Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman; Joseph Quinn as her brother, Johnny who blazes through the sky as the Human Torch; and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, the rubble-hided strongman known as the Thing.
As the movie’s subtitle hints, four is about to become five. Before a family dinner at the team’s plush headquarters in the Baxter Building, Sue announces that she is pregnant. But joy is soon eclipsed by elemental fear, as the alien Silver Surfer, Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), arrives to tell humanity that its planet has been selected for consumption by the mighty “devourer of worlds”, Galactus (Ralph Ineson – yes, Finchy from The Office).
Wrapped in retro chic, the movie is essentially a retelling of the Biblical myth of Abraham and Isaac, as the 14-billion-year-old space titan offers to spare the Earth if Susan and Reed will hand over their baby – destined to be a superbeing himself. When they refuse this deal, public opinion turns against them and they must find an alternative means of seeing off the heavy-footed Galactus.
Easily the best Marvel offering since Avengers: Endgame (2019), First Steps works precisely because it embraces the technicolour Americana of the comic strip original, recognising that not all superhero movies have to emulate the noir style of Christopher Nolan’s masterly Batman trilogy. After Formula One racing, dinosaurs and the return of Superman, the final tentpole release of the summer is also the most fun.
STREAMING
Washington Black(Disney+)
Esi Edugyan’s extraordinary 2018 novel, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, portrayed both the horrors of enslavement and the picaresque wonders of adventure and escape: Jules Verne turbocharged by steampunk imagination. And showrunners Selwyn Seyfu Hinds and Kimberly Ann Harrison – guided by Edugyan as co-producer – have done justice to their source material in this fine eight-part adaptation.
Unfolding in two timelines, the story follows the young Washington “Wash” Black (Eddie Karanja), 11 years old in 1830, under the sadistic rule of Erasmus Wilde (Julian Rhind-Tutt) on the Faith Plantation on Barbados. There, Christopher “Titch” Wilde (Tom Ellis), an aspiring scientist, notes Wash’s ingenuity and recruits him to help build a flying “cloud cutter”.
Seven years later, Wash (now played by Ernest Kingsley Jr) is living as “Jack Crawford” in Halifax, Nova Scotia, under the protection of Medwin Harris (Sterling K Brown), and working on the docks. Marine biologist G.M. Goff (Rupert Graves) disembarks with his daughterTanna (Iola Evans) who “passes” as white but is mixed-race. Wash is immediately smitten – but his romantic hopes face the obstacle of her betrothal to the wealthy Billy McGee (Edward Bluemel) who has promised the Goffs “a fresh start”.
As the narrative jumps back and forth, we learn of the young Wash’s Phileas Fogg-style journey with Titch that leads them to the Arctic, in search of answers to a Wilde family mystery. Along the way, they are captured by pirates on the commandeered British merchant ship Ave Maria, where Titch is thrown in the brig but Wash is taken under the wing of Barrington (Miles Yekinni).
“The story of a boy brave enough to change the world,” is how Medwin describes the tale. “That’s why this ain’t just his story. It’s our story.”
Interwoven with the fast-paced action are the themes of scientific revolution, abolitionism and the true nature of home. Magic realism coexists with a profound sense of historical injustice. Though the dramatisation takes some liberties with the detail of the novel, it is entirely true to its spirit – which is quite an achievement.
STREAMING
Unforgivable(BBC iPlayer)
Due warning: Jimmy McGovern’s feature-length drama about the impact of child sexual abuse upon a Liverpool family is gruelling to watch. But it is also compelling, unflinching and illuminated by uniformly excellent performances.
After the death of his mother, Joe Mitchell (Bobby Schofield), convicted of abusing his nephew Tom (Austin Haynes), is released on licence and offered a place at St Maura’s, a rehabilitation institution where he is counselled by a former nun, Katherine (Anna Maxwell Martin). In EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) sessions with a therapist, he opens up about his own childhood experience of abuse.
Meanwhile, his estranged sister Anna (Anna Friel) struggles to secure adequate treatment for Tom, who has only said “yes” or “no” since the assault and faces exclusion from school. Disgusted, she confronts Joe with the contrast. The sex offender, she says, is lavished with care: ”My son, the bloody victim, he couldn’t get any!”
As McGovern has put it, abuse is “like a hand grenade going off in the family. Everybody gets shattered with shrapnel”. Tom’s brother Peter (Finn McParland) feels neglected. Joe’s father, Brian (David Threlfall), blames him for the death of his wife – “You broke it… her heart” – but is also guilty about his own infidelities.
The sheer power of Unforgivable reflects its refusal to offer pat answers. Joe’s crime is indeed appalling and McGovern does not confuse compassion with absolution. Instead, he offers an extraordinary portrait of cross-generational devastation, inconsolable fury and tentative acts of reprieve.
FILM
Friendship(selected cinemas)
Perhaps the best-known bromance genre movie is I Love You, Man (2009), starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. So Rudd’s role in writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s debut feature, as moustachioed TV weatherman Austin Carmichael (also channelling his timeless character, Brian Fantana, in the Anchorman movies) is a tip-off to the audience that something is up.
That “something” is his neighbour, Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson, star of Netflix’s cult sketch comedy series, I Think You Should Leave), a suburban sad sack who drops off misdirected mail and, to his amazement, finds himself in the foothills of friendship. Austin does all the things that Craig imagines a cool man should do: collects palaeolithic artefacts, plays in a punk band, forages for wild mushrooms, explores the sewer tunnels.
All this is a revelation to Craig, who is nothing short of mesmerised. At home, his florist wife Tami (Kate Mara), who is in remission from cancer, and teenage son Steven (Jack Dylan Grazer) treat him with ill-concealed disdain. “There’s a new Marvel out that’s meant to be nuts!” he says, as they stare at him. At work, developing “habit-forming” apps, his colleagues openly mock him.
But after this set-up for a redemptive narrative arc, DeYoung pulls a fine bait-and-switch, as Craig’s quiet desperation turns into overt derangement. A night with Austin’s inner circle goes badly wrong, and he bellows that he should not be exiled for doing “one strange thing” (madly chewing soap as an act of atonement). Austin’s recognition that he has welcomed into his life not an acolyte but a dangerously damaged soul is superbly realised.
Part of the brilliance of Friendship is that, just as you think things can’t possibly get worse, they absolutely do. When Craig resorts to trying the psychoactive secretion of a river toad in the storeroom of a phone shop, even his hallucinations are rubbish. Robinson is a revelation as a cringemaking disaster of a man who simply cannot cope with anything or anyone. His performance makes this one of the darkest and funniest films of the year.
BOOK
Walter Lippmann: An Intellectual Biography by Tom Arnold-Foster (Princeton University Press)
If the great US journalist Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) is recalled in contemporary debate, it is almost invariably with reference to his masterpiece, Public Opinion (1922), which popularised the words “stereotype” (hitherto a technical printer’s term), “propaganda” and “pseudo-environments” – the subjective and constructed realities in which people live. Along with Orwell, he was also responsible for the idea of the “cold war”.
As Tom Arnold-Foster shows in this excellent biography, Lippmann deserves to be remembered for more than a single book and rescued from his caricatured reputation as a defender of elites. In fact, the longtime syndicated columnist of the New York Herald Tribune and co-founder of The New Republic – who honed his style reading the 18th century Spectator of Addison and Steele – had a much more nuanced view of experts and of technocracy which he dismissed as “scientific hocus pocus”.
The intellectual through line in his writing was a commitment to liberalism from Woodrow Wilson via Franklin D Roosevelt to Lyndon B Johnson. Having championed American leadership in the world, he ended his career in despair at the over-reach of Vietnam. He remained wisely sceptical of all who offered pat answers to great strategic questions.
“There is no solution,” he observed of liberal democracy’s challenges. “You can be certain that anybody who thinks he has a solution doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Arnold-Foster’s terrific study restores Lippmann to the position that he deserves in the history of 20th century letters and ideas.