The second of this summer’s superhero tentpoles, Fantastic Four: First Steps, is upon us. Taken together with its predecessor by two weeks, James Gunn’s Superman, it’s enough to draw some conclusions about The State of Comic Book Movies. To an almost Jungian degree, in the same way that certain baby names just seem to bubble out of a culture’s collective unconsciousness, the two films embody a retreat from the dark, gritty, real-world templates that ran a bit amok once the genre really took off over the last couple of decades. In their stead, they offer a vision of heroism that includes self-sacrifice, protection of the innocent, and an emphasis on the second part of “superhuman.”

Like Gunn, director Matt Shankman (the WandaVision series) foregrounds a bright, primary color visual scheme and protagonists who are refreshingly free (mostly) of angst and inner conflict. They’re not out for vengeance or trying to banish some origin-based trauma. (Looking at you, Batman and Wolverine.) They’re just trying to do good, as befits characters who were created in ostensibly simpler times and have served as flagships for Marvel and DC publishing for decades. In 1961, Fantastic Four #1 ushered in the Marvel Universe (yes, nerds, Hank Pym’s first appearance was published earlier, but he wasn’t Ant-Man then so it doesn’t count) and what’s known as the Silver Age of Comics, so it’s only fitting that the quartet’s Marvel Cinematic Universe debut take place on an alternate Earth (Earth-828 for those scoring at home) that feels very much like a sci-fi version of that very year.

Another similarity between Superman and First Steps is that both forgo the usual origin story narratives, opening with the heroes already established as public figures and using devices (here, a retrospective TV interview) to make up any expository ground for viewers who’ve been under a rock. The Fantastic Four, of course, as created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, consists of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), a genius scientist who embarked on humanity’s first space flight along with his best pal and pilot Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), his wife Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby, no relation), and her brother Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), only to be bombarded by cosmic rays and return to Earth transformed into the stretchy Mr. Fantastic, the orange-rock-hided Thing, the self-explanatory Invisible Woman, and the also self-explanatory Human Torch. First Steps, despite its title, opens four years later, as Reed and Sue discover they are pregnant and, shortly thereafter, the chrome-plated Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives from space to announce the imminent arrival of the gigantic, eternal Devourer of Worlds, Galactus. Plans for the baby shower will need to be put off.

Unlike Superman’s villain, Lex Luthor, who’s clearly meant to represent a real-world, billionaire tech bro archetype, Galactus is a force of nature, a symbol of nothing more than existential destruction. It’s certainly possible that the character’s comic book origin was a reaction to the possibility of extinction-level nuclear conflict during the Cold War, but here there’s no lesson or moral to be gleaned from him. Despite his awe-inspiring appearance (excellently rendered here as played by Ralph Ineson) and hyper-advanced technology, he’s really just a hungry animal whose genocidal binges are rather beyond good and evil. Still, he’s gotta be stopped, which is no easy task. After an initial foray at faster-than-light speed (Reed’s advances in space flight over four years are remarkable) and a taste of what they’re dealing with, the team learns that Earth can be spared, for a price I won’t reveal here because it’s the one clever twist on traditional Marvel lore that the movie delivers.

First Steps looks amazing, all trapezoids and tailfins and period-appropriate references (the Pan Am building, Canada Dry billboards, Lucky Charms cereal). It’s like an Isaac Asimov version of the Mad Men universe, where advanced tech remains charmingly analog, from the chalkboard Reed writes his endless formulas on to the phonograph records used to capture interstellar messages. Don’t think too much about how a spaceship that can travel through wormholes or a teleportation device could be created without digital technology, and anyway, have you seen Apollo 13? And don’t think too much about the naïve confidence with which the team treats the fact that the Earth may soon become a galactic entrée. Each represents a particular Silver Age sense of certainty that moral and scientific triumphs were always just around the corner. One consequence of this is the film’s family-friendly feel, although that vibe is rattled by some potentially intense perils faced by members of the Fantastic Four family.

Among the main cast, the only weak link is Quinn, whose portrayal of the cocky, handsome Johnny feels disconcertingly like Robert Downey, Jr. cosplay far too often. Moss-Bachrach spends 90% of his screen time under CGI, but his voice work and Ben Grimm’s culinary expertise are enough to kindle fond associations with Cousin Richie on The Bear. There’s also a welcome recognition of Ben’s Jewishness (a trait hinted at for decades in the comics but only explicitly confirmed in 2002), although Natasha Lyonne’s appearance as a schoolteacher feels like the remnants of a subplot left on the cutting room floor. Paul Michael Hauser has an amusing turn as the Mole Man, the first villain the FF ever fought in the comics, and the movie tosses out a number of early, often ridiculous foes in flashback mentions, from the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes to the immortal Spanish alchemist Diablo. There are plenty other Easter eggs for ferreting out, as well as multiple billboards for a film called Subzero Intel, the meaning of which remains unclear.

The group made its first appearance in the MCU during the closing credits of Thunderbolts* earlier this year, when they appeared on the sky over Earth-616 after having apparently traveled from their home universe. While this film doesn’t answer any questions related to that moment, it does, as expected, set the stage for the next big event, next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, which threatens to bring together the titular team, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men to battle Reed Richards’ archnemesis, Doctor Doom. Compared to that overstuffed-sounding epic, there’s something comforting about a simple save-the-world story that doesn’t require any homework viewing or feature any mass slaughters. Ultimately, though, First Steps feels a bit empty at its core, the two-dimensionality of its characters and its ethos a reminder of why superhero stories (and not just in movies) needed to grow up a bit more before truly coming into their own. (Wide release)

Sponsor

Akira Kurosawa: A Retrospective: Following up on its recent screenings of Kurosawa’s Ran, which seems to get remastered and or re-released every couple of years, Cinema 21 is presenting a lineup of some of the Japanese master’s other iconic, but less frequently revived, classics. This batch is from what you might call Kurosawa’s first golden age, the decade-plus after 1950’s Rashomon made him an international figure. Among the titles are the inspirations for Star Wars (1958’s The Hidden Fortress), A Fistful of Dollars (1961’s Yojimbo), and Spike Lee’s upcoming Highest 2 Lowest (1963’s High and Low). All seven titles in the four-day mini-festival have been restored in 4K by Janus Films, and every one of them is a must-see, the only possible exception being Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth, 1957’s Throne of Blood.  (Cinema 21, 7/25 through 7/28)

The Home: Pete Davidson is perfectly cast as a petty crook, Max, who gets arrested for spraying graffiti and accepts a plea deal to do community service by working at a live-in elder care facility, Green Meadows, that immediately presents as super suss. The fourth floor is forbidden territory, the avuncular head doctor (Bruce Altman) seems almost too friendly, and one of the residents plummets to her death, impaled on the requisite iron fencing that surrounds the premises. The sensible thing for Max to do would have been to change his plea and serve the jail time, but of course he starts poking around, hiding cameras around the place and interacting with a disturbing figure in a computer chat room. Director James DeMonaco, who created the Purge films and shares writing credit here with Adam Cantor, plays on the same inherent fear of aging that has shaped horror films from M. Night Shyamalan’s Old to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. He counts on us to be repulsed at some of the old folks’ overactive libidos, and whether he’s commenting on or exploiting our society’s ubiquitous gerascophobia is unclear. The events at Green Meadows get increasingly baroque and inexplicable until a third-act revelation that supposedly makes everything clear. At this point, DeMonaco gives in to the same orgasmic, violent release that powered The Purge, and The Home descends from a curious, engaging thriller into an over-the-top bloodbath. (wide release)

House on Eden: The number of low-budget found-footage horror movies that have littered the landscape in the thirty-plus years since The Blair Witch Project has amply demonstrated that it’s very easy to make one but very difficult to make a good one. The latest evidence for this conclusion comes in the form of this utterly basic effort about a trio of paranormal investigators-slash-content creators who investigate a creepy old house where creepy things have happened in the past. The only thing that’s creepy in the present, at least for the first 95% of this blessedly short feature, is the obnoxious banter between “stars” Kris Collins and Celina Myers. The relentless tedium of shaky-cam footage and whispered inanities is enough to make one wonder why this film, unlike so many of its pedestrian brethren, managed to garner a theatrical release instead of going straight to video-on-demand or the streaming horror service Shudder (which will be House on Eden’s fate soon enough). It turns out that Collins (who is credited as writer and director) and Myers are Canadian TikTok celebrities and podcasters who have managed to attract a sizable following via thirty-second videos and social engagement. Making a movie is a whole other job, one at which everyone involved with this project fails. (Regal Fox Tower, Clackamas Town Center)

Oh, Hi!: The best reason to see this darkly comic second feature from writer-director Sophie Brooks is the performance of Molly Gordon, aka the adorable and woefully underseen Claire Bear on The Bear. She plays Iris, one half of a couple (erstwhile Percy Jackson portrayer Logan Lerman is the other, Isaac) on their first weekend trip together. After settling into their rental cabin and enjoying a romantic dinner of scallops, they discover a trove of S&M gear in the place’s closet and decide to have some saucy fun. Chained to the bed, Isaac picks exactly the wrong moment to let slip that, honestly, he’s not really looking for a relationship right now. Cue the besotted Iris’s descent into an “I’ll make you love me” obsession that plays something like an indie romcom version of Misery. Eventually, Iris must call on her best friend (the always welcome Geraldine Viswanathan) and her S.O. (John Reynolds) to try to get her out of the mess she’s created. For some reason, a heavily bearded David Cross shows up as a nosy neighbor. It’s a painless enough experience, at least for the viewer, but it’s also a movie that would play much differently if the genders of the leads were reversed. (Living Room Theaters, Regal Fox Tower, Clackamas Town Center)

Shoshana: It’s been a while since we’ve had a new narrative feature from Michael Winterbottom, the veteran British filmmaker who has crafted an impressively independent and diverse filmography over the last thirty years. Like much of his work, from Welcome to Sarajevo to A Mighty Heart, Shoshana is set in a turbulent corner of the world, in this case 1938 Palestine, where the British mandate remains in place as World War II and the Holocaust loom around the corner. The fact-based but melodramatic story has the title character (Russian actress Irina Starshenbaum) involved with a British cop (Douglas Booth) who’s charged with tracking down the leader of an extremist arm of the Irgun, a violent Zionist group carrying out a series of bombings against both British and Arab targets. Shoshana is the daughter of a famous Jewish Socialist, and holds to his dream that a united Jewish-Arab state can be created once the European imperialist forces are expelled, and the film (which was completed and premiered prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel) asks us to imagine the possibility that the antipathy and bloodshed that have followed in the wake of 1948 could have been avoided. Winterbottom unfortunately relegates his Arab characters to the background, focusing on the love story and political dynamic between his leads in an attempt, perhaps, to make the history lesson go down more smoothly. It’s a well-crafted story, and shines a genuine light on an aspect of Middle East history that’s often overlooked, but one wishes for a slightly more radical perspective from a director who’s never been known to shy away from such things. (Regal Fox Tower)

Also this week

Soldiers of Song: This feature documentary from director Ryan Smith, filmed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, focuses on that country’s musicians, from string quartets to hard rock bands, and the ways that their music has helped to unify Ukrainian resistance and communicate its resolve against aggression. Smith will be in attendance at the screening, and all proceed will go toward aid for Ukraine. (Saturday 7/26, Chapel Theatre, 4107 SE Harrison St., Portland)

Repertory

Friday 7/25

• Hook [1991] (Academy Theater, through 7/31)
• The McPherson Tape [1989] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day [1991] (Academy Theater, through 7/31)
• They Live [1988] (Cinemagic, also 7/26)
• The Thing [1982] (Cinemagic, also 7/26)
• The Triplets of Belleville [2003] (Cinema 21, also 7/26)
• Wings of Desire [1987] (Academy Theater, through 7/31)

Saturday 7/26

• The Big Heat [1953] (Cinema 21)
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut [1982] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 7/28 & 7/31)
• Dirty Dancing [1987] (Salem Cinema)
• Napoleon Dynamite [2004] (Clinton St. Theater)
• RRR [2022] (Hollywood Theatre)

Sunday 7/27

• There Will Be Blood [2007] (Cinemagic, also 7/28)
• To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar [1995] (Hollywood Theatre)

Monday 7/28

• Conan the Barbarian [1982] (Hollywood Theatre, on 35mm, also 8/4)
• Kindergarten Cop [1990] (Cinemagic, through 7/31)

Tuesday 7/29

• Pacific Rim [2013] (Cinemagic, through 7/31)
• The Time Masters [1982] (Clinton St. Theater)

Wednesday 7/30

• Cooley High [1975] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Evening Land [1977] (Clinton St. Theater)
• Four Films by Maya Deren (Hollywood Theatre)

Thursday 7/31

• 1984 [1984] (Clinton St. Theater)