Marvelis having another crack at making a Fantastic Four movie that people actually like this week, and it looks like, at the fourth time of asking, they might have finally nailed it. The reviews for First Steps are in ahead of its arrival in theaters this Thursday, and its score is significantly higher than the review scores for all three of the other Fantastic Four movies to have come before it combined.
Fantastic Four: First Steps review scores have been fluctuating slightly, debuting at 88 percent, then dropping to 86, and subsequently rising back up to 87. It seems to havesettled on an 86 for now on Rotten Tomatoes, though, based on 128 reviews. Even if that score were to drop significantly, which would require a review bomb on a professional level, theMCU’s attempt at a Fantastic Four movie will still have a better review score than the prior three F4 movies combined.
Fantastic Four’s review scores are rolling in, and it’s another hit for the MCU
It’s also the first Fantastic Four movie with a review score higher than 50
That’s partly because First Steps has reviewed so well, but also because every attempt at making a Fantastic Four movie so far has been so bad. Despite the success of theSpider-ManandX-Menmovies in the early 2000s, Marvel struggled to replicate that success with its first family. 2005’s Fantastic Four scored a lowly 27 percent. Its sequel - yes, it got a sequel for some reason - Rise of the Silver Surfer, did a little better with a score of 37 percent.
Ten years after its first attempt, Marvel tried again. Despite the MCU having already begun, 2015’s Fantastic Four wasn’t a part of it. I went to see it at the cinema, unclear on whether it was a part of the still-young MCU at the time, and I can confirm that its score of nine (that’s out of 100, not ten) is entirely fair.
The first attempt at making a Fantastic Four movie was actually in 1994. The movie was never released,but you can now watch it on YouTube.
All of that means the first three attempts at making a Fantastic Four movie scored 73 percent when pooling their scores, and First Steps has an 86 percent. Not only is that finally a good look for the Fantastic Four, but it’s also the kind of score it needed following on from Thunderbolts and withSupermanstill in theaters.
Thunderbolts scored slightly better with an 88, but between that and First Steps' lofty score, it looks like the MCU is on the right track as we move close to Avengers: Doomsday. It has scored slightly better than Superman’s 83 percent, but we will have to wait and see if Pedro Pascal and his new superhero family can better Superman’s fan score of 92 percent.
