The Fantastic Five
My 12-year-old and I have seen more than our fair share of movies this summer—most of them thoroughly unremarkable, but weekend matinees aren’t a bad way to beat the heat in South Carolina. And it gets us out of the house, which is always agreeable to a homeschooling mom—even and perhaps especially during the summer months. It should come as no surprise in today’s cinematic landscape that our last two outings were both in support of comic book heroes. The first was super and the second fantastic. But those, of course, are just the titles.
Earlier this year, my son and I watched the original 1978 Superman. I’d seen and enjoyed it as a kid but found it almost unbearable as an adult. What were you thinking, Marlon Brando?! Were it not for Gene Hackman, I’d call it a complete disaster, and yet, lo and behold, the new Superman is dramatically worse. To call it terrible doesn’t do it justice. I didn’t leave the theater thinking, wow, that was bad. I left thinking, how did something so inane possibly get released?Among the movies I’ve seen this summer, Superman sits well behind Thunderbolts, F1, How to Train Your Dragon, Lilo & Stitch, Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Karate Kid: Legends, and, yes, The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It remains in my summertime top ten for the simple fact that I’ve only been to the theater nine times.
What baffles me the most about the new Superman are the reviews. It has an impressive 83% on Rotten Tomatoes among movie critics and a 91% among fans. I can’t make sense of either score. Critics are notoriously out of touch, but I’d always thought that second number to be somewhat reliable. As such, I went to Superman fully expecting to enjoy it, particularly in light of my affection for Guardians of the Galaxy—which was helmed by the same guy. But from the moment Superman’s cartoonish and derivative robot servants first appeared in his magic ice castle that can simply sink into the ground whenever needed, I knew something was dreadfully wrong. Two hours, nine minutes, and one laugh later, my initial fear had been entirely confirmed. I could go on and on, but as you’ve already gleaned from the title, Supermanis not the movie I want to talk about. If you saw it and liked it, feel free to tell me what I’m missing. Otherwise, don't bother. But The Fantastic Four, well, that’s a horse of a different color. If not fantastic, it’s at least surprisingly good. And it is good in the literal sense of the word.
Like Superman, The Fantastic Four takes place in a stylized, alternate version of America. Unlike Superman, this one is beautiful and nostalgic. Much like the Jetsons, it’s a sort of future that’s set in the 1960’s past. First Steps did poll slightly higher than Superman on Rotten Tomatoes, pulling in an 87% and 92% respectively, but that’s hardly the gap you’d expect between movies of such divergent quality—leaving me to wonder this. Is the audience for superhero films so disproportionally filled by those whose brain mirrors that of an adolescent boy that the reviews are essentially meaningless? Because I can tell you this. My youngest son has never met a movie he didn’t like, and Superman was no exception. When I asked him after seeing both which one he liked the best, he said there were things in Superman he liked better and things in Fantastic Four he liked better—giving me great hope for his political future.
For those of you who aren’t that familiar with The Fantastic Four, and that would include me, they are a “family” of superheroes comprised of a husband and wife, the wife’s brother, and the husband’s best friend. All four were U.S. astronauts who gained their superpowers when they were unexpectedly exposed to radiation that altered their genetic makeup—or something to that effect. My comic book knowledge is admittedly thin, and I missed the earlier cinematic adaptations. In this iteration, the action opens with a positive pregnancy test. As Mr. Fantastic fruitlessly searches the medicine cabinet for something his wife will effortlessly find a moment later, she sits on the toilet mesmerized by what she holds in her hand. I knew from the movie’s preview that her pregnancy played at least a tangential role in the film, but I didn’t realize that it would drive the entire plot.
From here on out, there will be spoilers aplenty, but for my purposes, they can’t be avoided. Because that which is most commendable about The Fantastic Four is not its visual landscape or humor—both of which deserve credit. It’s its message. Specifically, the honor it gives to the family and the value it places upon children in the womb. There have been a few times in my life where I’ve been completely blindsided by a pro-life message in popular culture. That would include the song, “Let Me Live,” by Nick Cannon, the film Blue Jay, by Alex Lehmann, and the British period drama, The Frankenstein Chronicles by Benjamin Ross and Barry Langford. The Fantastic Four is now... a fourth. At no point in the movie is abortion mentioned or even referenced, and that itself is one of the things that makes it so explicitly pro-life.
The scene of Sue Storm, aka The Invisible Woman, laying down the pregnancy test for her husband to see is beautifully mundane, and his response is just as it should be: disbelief followed by ecstasy—notwithstanding the fact that both mother and father are genetic abnormalities that present all sorts of potential problems when it comes to the bearing of children. But none of that curbed their enthusiasm in the least. It simply galvanized their resolve to do everything in their power to protect and provide for their baby. We learn from the ensuing dialogue that they had tried for years to conceive but had given it up as a lost cause—only to be rewarded with exactly what they most desired once they had reconciled themselves to doing without. There’s a life lesson, to be sure.
No less charming is the scene of the “uncles” discovering the couple’s secret just moments later after they awkwardly but glowingly emerge for dinner. Here again, it’s a scene that’s common enough in real life but rarely conveyed with such joy and goodwill in film. It made me happy just looking on to see them so overjoyed by an unexpected and unlooked for pregnancy. But the hits just kept coming. Mr Fantastic, who is prone to analyze (and worry about) everything monitors his wife’s pregnancy relentlessly to make sure that nothing is amiss. He even builds a sort of proprietary ultrasound machine to more thoroughly track the growth of their unborn son, but in order to allay his fears, his wife finds a simpler approach. She is The Invisible Woman, after all, and by making the walls of her stomach and uterus transparent, both of the adoring parents—and we the audience—can gaze at their beautiful unborn baby without obstruction. We find him comfortably curled up in his mother’s womb—just as every baby in utero should be.
But even this is just the pro-life appetizer. The best is yet to come. To get there, though, I must delve into the weeds for a moment. The central villain in First Steps is Gigantis, an ancient being who has grown to such gigantic proportions that only the consumption of entire planets can slake his hunger. And Earth, it turns out, is next on the menu. But Gigantis’ enigmatic servant, The Silver Surfer, decides to warn Earth’s beloved protectors (that would be the Fantastic Four) about its impending doom. To prevent said destruction, our four intrepid heroes—including the ready-to-burst Sue Storm—board their spaceship in search of their giant foe. They soon find him but discover that Gigantis is well beyond their ability to thwart. Seeing that they have no apparent options, Gigantis makes them a sinister offer. If they will simply give to him their child, Gigantis will in turn leave Earth in his rearview. Gigantis, we learn, is wearied by his life of endless consumption and believes their child has the genetic potential to take over his mantle and relieve him his burden.
The immediate and fantastic response from all four heroes is a metaphorical “Go to hell!” Nary a thought is given to accepting Gigantis’ depraved proposal, but that doesn’t make their escape any easier to manage. Adding to the drama is the fact that Baby Fantastic chooses this precise moment to make his debut. Just as they board the ship, his mother goes into labor but not before the audience is treated to another stunning visual—that of a pregnant woman floating freely inside her space shuttle just as her child floats freely inside of her. Before Sue can deliver her baby, she must be strapped down since “you need gravity to push.” But their escape is also contingent upon her ability to cloak their vessel—which can only be done through tremendous exertion between contractions. The result is another poignant image of a woman doing two supernatural things at once: protecting a spacecraft by making it invisible and giving birth to a new human being. The first only happens in movies. The second happens every day, all over the world. We just tend not to appreciate or recognize it for the absolute miracle that it is.
When the heroes return to Earth, they are greeted by tremendous fanfare, and when Sue emerges with baby in arms, the whole city erupts. But then two things happen. It is confessed that their efforts to negotiate have failed, and it is revealed that Gigantis would have foresworn the destruction of Earth if they simply would have given up their baby. Suddenly and for the first time, public sentiment turns against the Fantastic Four. Adulation gives way to animosity because the crowd can’t understand what’s so bad about sacrificing a single baby to maintain the status quo. And that, of course, is the same basic equation that fuels every abortion in the world. My life is over if I don’t get rid of this cild. That thought, reinforced ad nauseam by a cynical and godless culture, runs through the head of scared young mothers across the western world. And through some creative storytelling, it is the literal threat facing the entire world in Fantastic Four: First Steps.
In the end, it is mother and child together who manage to turn the public tide and heal the breach. After a crowd of angry protestors has gathered outside their residence, Sue Storm walks nobly and courageously through their midst with baby Franklin in her arms. Once she reaches the mob’s center, she informs the crowd that she will not sacrifice her child for this world. But neither will she sacrifice this world for her child. And that, when you think about it, is the mantra that should guide every family in the human community—and especially those who claim the name of Christ. We cannot sacrifice our children for the world, nor can we sacrifice the world for our children. Whether it was her words themselves, or the transcendent iconography of mother and babe—which Jordan Peterson calls the most fundamentally-sacred in all of society, the crowd relented. They saw the barbarity in what they were prepared to do. They realized that sacrificing a child to save themselves is an act even worse than dying.
And while The Fantastic Four does suffer at this point from the same thing that plagues virtually every superhero film in history—a tiresome and drawn-out climax that is long on property damage and short on plausibility, the beautiful message of this film remains intact. And its funniest scene is reserved for the very last, or at least the last before the credits roll. Having been rushed out of a media event in response to an emergency distress call, we find mother and baby looking on in amusement as the super-scientist dad and his superhero friends struggle to get Franklin’s carseat successfully strapped into their flying vehicle. For any man who has ever had to wrestle with the installation or removal of those diabolical contraptions, it’s a hilariously human moment. Even in this beautifully stylized alternate universe, where everything is elegant and functional, carseats reliably drive even the most brilliant and patient men to their knees. All that to say, if you’re looking for a bit of healthy escapism this summer or beyond, I heartily recommend The Fantastic Four. Because it’s actually all about the fantastic five.