By Zach Johnson
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is getting some fantastic new additions. On July 25, only in theaters, Marvel’s First Family—Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach)—joins the MCU in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Set against the vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, The Fantastic Four: First Steps revs up quickly. “Audiences really don’t need to know anything going in,” Emmy® Award winner Moss-Bachrach tells D23. “The origin of the Fantastic Four is delivered up in the first five minutes of the movie. It brings everyone up to speed.”
The titular quartet of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben are respectively known as Mister Fantastic—with an amazing ability to stretch his body—Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and The Thing, super strong and nearly indestructible.
According to director Matt Shakman, the work of Disney Legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who created the Fantastic Four for Marvel Comics, was a major inspiration, “starting with Fantastic Four No. 1 and throughout their historic, amazing run together.” He adds, “There have been so many amazing artists and writers that we’ve looked at and been inspired by, but ultimately, we thought about what the Fantastic Four means to us and tried to tell a new story.”
Shakman calls the Fantastic Four “the source of optimism and inspiration for their entire world,” and that hopefulness extends to the production design, with Kasra Farahani in charge of creating a retro-futuristic world filled with vibrant colors and geometric shapes. “Matt was really clear early on that this world should be the embodiment of the optimism of the American mid-century,” Farahani says. “We decided it would be the manifestation of the future we were promised in the pulp artwork from the ’50s and ’60s.”
He adds, “We had a lot of beautiful Kirby artwork to go off of, and we were also pulling a lot of retro-futuristic pulp art, covers from novels, from industrial illustrations, and, of course, [American neo-futurist artist] Sid Meade illustrations for appliances or for automobiles or for things that you wouldn’t even imagine… The world that the Fantastic Four live in is the delivery of the promise of that art, the future that we never really got.”
Much like Mister Fantastic, for Farahani, working on The Fantastic Four: First Steps allowed him to stretch himself in ways he had never anticipated. “My work on Loki was a stoic, brutalist, kind of Orwellian, dystopic version of the mid-century, and The Fantastic Four is the complete opposite of that,” Farahani says. “It’s absolute optimism that the future will be beautiful, fast, and exciting.”
But the design never exceeds the requirements of the narrative. “The story leads what the design needs to be. But within that brief, there is a lot of latitude for invention. It’s always been important to me that we give audiences and MCU fans something new, something they haven’t seen,” he says. “The thing that I always look for when I’m watching a film is that feeling of awe, and that can come in a lot of different ways. It can come from a staggeringly beautiful, vast vista of retrofuturism that just makes your mouth drop because you can’t believe how dynamic it is. Or it can come from a really beautiful and intimate moment between two people who are becoming parents. And I hope that we have found a lot of moments in the film to elicit that reaction from our audience.”
Audiences may also be awed by the enemy the Fantastic Four face in the film. Galactus is a formidable adversary. “He’s essentially a god,” Shakman says. “He’s 14 billion years old, he’s physically enormous, and he has such a strong power set that he’s just about unbeatable. And, yes, he consumes planets; he’s a bit of a space vampire.”
Heralded by the Silver Surfer, Galactus’ sudden arrival naturally amazes—and terrifies—the Fantastic Four. “How do you go up against a mountain?” Shakman wonders. “How do you beat something like that?” The answer taps into the essential identity of the Fantastic Four: They handle Galactus as they would any other threat—together, as a family.
“These wonderful characters have existed for years, and I have loved them for so long, so to see them come to life is a real joy,” Shakman says. “This is a story about love and optimism, which is something I think we all need.”
See The Fantastic Four: First Steps only in theaters, beginning July 25. For more insights and behind-the-scenes stories about the film, read the Summer 2025 edition of Disney twenty-three, where portions of this article originally appeared. Disney twenty-three is available exclusively to D23 Gold Members. Learn more here.