Matt Shakman, Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal Ributing Fantastic Four
Marvel Studios introduced The Fantastic Force: First Steps, taking a fresh on an alternative superhero family in the 1960s universe. The film combines cosmic adventure with hearty subjects of paternity and vulnerability.
In short
- ‘Fantastic Four’ enters a retro-futuristic 1960s universe
- The film discovers paternity amidst cosmic chaos
- Vanessa Kirby plays the role of a pregnant lawsuit storm
Marvel Studios “The Fantastic For: First Steps”, steps into an alternative, retro-furrthritic universe in the world’s most prestigious super-family steps, and is in favor of a film in favor of the audience, which balances the emotional agency of becoming a parent amidst style, substance, and cosmic crisis.
Recently at a global press conference, director Matt Shakman, actor Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinse and the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Phees unpacks the journey behind Marvel’s 37th film, and its first standalone story was set in a brand-new Universe. The result is a film that can be set in the 1960s, but speaks for very modern concerns, especially around family, vulnerability and identity.
For Vanessa Kirbi, who plays the prosecution of the storm, the film’s emotional arc was clear from Shakman and his first meeting with Paiga. Responding to a question about how the lawsuit storm fits into today’s world, Kirby said, “Matt already had this vision of putting it in the 60s in the 60s. I remember how do you overcome the decades of stories in a film for 2025?” Answer, he said, lying in a word: paternity.
“A lot of DNA of the story reflects the experience we have. One moment we will be in this domestic scene, sniffing the socks, brushing her teeth, and next, we were in this epic, intergactic cosmos. And somehow, this is the same, what is the film,” Kirbi said.
For Kirby, playing a pregnant superhero was not only revolutionary, but deeply grounding. “The child is its heart,” he said, “It became the soul of the film. I was sueing all the time through the script, through other actors, through this child, who made us all the basis. If we ever took a bad, we were scoring Michael (Giacchino) child! It keeps us in check.”
But the journey was not only about balanced with the spectacle, it was also about hugging the “bizarreness” of the film. “Marvel has always been counterclockwise, not this?” Kirbi said, and said, “There is a strangeness and an otherity for comics, and the mat really bends into it. He has beauty in what he has done.”
For director Matt Shakman, who had earlier diluted ‘Wandevison’, a completely new universe was built by a challenge and an adventure.
“I have been a fan of a ‘brilliant four’ because I was a child, so it was an honor,” he said. “Because they are such public figures, we knew that we could not set them regularly into the Marvel Timeline – we must have already heard about them. So, we placed them in a separate universe, a separate earth, and made the world of the 1960s of this retro – the 1960s.
Phees echoed the feeling that is called ‘First Steps’ “our 37th MCU film”, and so far we have actually done the first standalone that establishes its newly established universe. “He said the approach was simple: no wire was attached.
He further said, “Matt will often say, no homework is required. Whatever you need to know about ‘brilliant four’, you learn in the first 10 minutes – they are a family, they are human, they are emotional, and they want to help.”
Fee also pointed to the return of Marvel’s counter -roots, seeing, “It is also a counterclockous to take someone like Pedro Pascal, surely the best human being alive, and makes it cool, because he is a big*, but because he is smart. That is the one who makes him calm in this film. He is a genetic.”
At which Pascal quickly quipped, “and so dumb of Pedro,” was sending the panel in laughter.
Pascal, who plays the role of Reid Richards aka Mr. Fantastic, occupies deeply into the emotional trajectory of his character. He said, “What I loved the most was that Reid could solve the most complex scientific problems, but he does not know how to handle relationships,” he said. “A partner, a friend, as a father, he tries to make the world baby-proof instead of being present in experience. It was my way in the character, and Matt really helped me navigate that arc.”
Pascal also jokingly said that Matt Shakman’s daughter helped him play the role. “He sold me lemonade, and that was it. But honestly, the conversation with Matte was my entry points.”
No one is denying ‘First Steps’ Marvel’s Formula Multivars is an adventure departure from the spectrum. It is the story of an alternative universe, but it is also surprisingly intimate. Kirby calls it “modern and retro at the same time”, and Figa frameed it as “return to counter -counterpalas”.
Finally, the ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ is not just another superhero flick. It is a reset button, a retro experiment, and it has managed to attack the right cords somehow.
