I had planned to see this in the theater, and my regular movie watching partner was on board, but life got in the way, films don’t stick around the the theater as long as they used and the second run cinemas are almost all gone, which is a shame because as gorgeous as the 4K HDR copy I watched was, some movies just benefit from seeing it on a huge screen with immersive sound. It makes the experience more Amazing, more Incredible, more… well you get the point.

I loved the movie. There have been many attempts at bringing Marvel’s first family to the big screen with varying degrees of success and I think a lot of the failures were due to the people behind the projects not understanding the characters and turning it into a generic action movie. This time, they got it. I don’t know if it’s all down to Kevin Feige, the director Matt Shakman, the writers or having the right combination of all of them, but everyone was making all the right decisions when it came to this project.

Let’s start with the overall look and feel. The retro-futuristic styling isn’t just something I personally love, but it fits these characters and their early years perfectly. Toning down the dumb blonde hothead Johnny Storm other filmmakers gravitated to and making him a real member of a scientific team was great and makes the character more interesting and useful. Setting Sue as the team leader is… the way it is the comics. It’s only misogyny and a failure to learn about the characters that put Reed at the center of previous versions. As in the comics the Mister Fantastic here is a genius, but too easily distracted by scientific puzzles.

Confession time, after watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness I was really looking forward to John Krasinski as Reed Richards, he seemed perfect and I could not see Pedro Pascal in the role when the official casting decisions were announced, but I was wrong. There’s a reason he keeps getting roles as a father, and he’s shown us why again here. He was great and they even managed to make his powers not look goofy. Stretchy powers are hard to translate into a live action setting without looking cartoony, and I’m sure that was the reason the people on Ms, Marvel changed her power set, but the Netflix live action version of One Piece showed it could be done and the folks at Marvel appear to have learned from that.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach was an interesting choice for Ben Grimm. I only knew him as the bombastic Richie on The Bear, but he does the quiet solid strength needed for The Thing equally as well. I have only two quibbles about the movie though and the first involves him. It’s not a complaint, really, I thought his performance was excellent, but it’s his voice, it was just… his voice and I felt it should have been deeper, stronger somehow, more gravelly, no pun intended (okay maybe a little intended). I have to compare it to the performances of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel in Guardians. I cannot imagine ANYONE topping Bradley’s Rocket, who, in my opinion, stole the show in all three films, but if his name hadn’t been in the credits, I wouldn’t have known it was him. There’s no mistaking Ebon’s voice for anyone but him though. Maybe he tried different versions that just didn’t work, or maybe the director just always envisioned him sounding like that from the start, I don’t know, I just feel like it didn’t project the strength of a man made of solid stone to me.

My second quibble is Natasha Lyonne, when her character of Rachel was introduced, I did a double take, because I didn’t realize it was her at first, but I loved her, it was a very different character compared to what she’s been playing recently and I was looking forward seeing what would happen between her and Ben, but nothing did happen, it felt like that part of the movie might have gotten cut. Hopefully we see more of her in the next one.

They did such a good job with this movie, they even made Galactus work, and the visuals are beautiful. Franklin had that slightly unnatural look that CGI humans often have, and I think that’s why they had him being held by The Thing so often, but aside from that, the effects people deserve a lot of praise.

I don’t want to leave out Juila Garner’s Silver Surfer. Even through the CGI, you can see the emotional changes she goes through in the film and that’s all down to the actor and the animators, and I truly hope this isn’t the last we see of her.

This is one I want to add to my collection, I think it works for comic books fans, Marvel fans and even casual sci-fi fans.

Excelsior!