Hello, and welcome to the Geeky Brummie Film Roundup! Each week we run through the biggest new cinema releases and why you should be excited for them. In this week’s Roundup: Marvel’s First Family and Dreamworks’ second film about a group of criminal animals.
Usual disclaimer: unless otherwise stated, I haven’t seen these movies yet so all of my opinions are based on trailers, early reviews and other rumours and buzz.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
There is a lot riding on Marvel’s third and final film of 2025. Not just because the other two have underperformed – Captain America was disappointing and Thunderbolts* was depressing, which didn’t get either of them enough positive press to draw the big numbers Marvel are used to. But this is also the third attempt to bring the Fantastic Four to the big screen, and the first time it’s been done under the MCU umbrella (not counting John Krasinski’s spaghetti cameo in Doctor Strange 2). The 2005 and 2007 Ioan Gruffud/ Jessica Alba films were fun at the time, but look a bit naff nowadays when compared to the superhero blockbusters we’ve had since, and the 2015 Miles Teller/ Kate Mara version wasted a great cast on a terrible script and lacklustre character design. Now that Marvel finally have the film rights to their first family, it’s time to do them justice. Because the Fantastic Four are one of the most important sets of characters in Marvel’s catalogue, with a sprawling history in the comics that has made the four hero-shaped holes in the MCU all the more conspicuous. This film will have to introduce the new cast and establish their characters and relationships, as well as explaining how they got from their universe to the spaceship glimpsed in the Thunderbolts* post credits sequence.
All the early signs are very positive. There’s a lot to love in the look and feel of the film. The visuals have a real ’60s vibe, as appropriate for when the comics were first published. This is set in an alternative universe where the world is still stylistically in our ’60s but technology is far ahead of our own, resulting in a retro-futuristic design best showcased in the FF’s car and their robot assistant H.E.R.B.I.E. The music draws from the retro influence too, with Michael Giacchino’s main theme building from a delightful choral arrangement that wouldn’t sound out of place in Disney’s Epcot park up to a bold crescendo chanting the group’s name.
The cast is excellent too – first up is the ubiquitous-but-ever-dependable Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/ Mr Fantastic, a scientific genius with the power to stretch his body like elastic. Pascal pops up in so many things nowadays that it seems incredible that he hasn’t been in the MCU before, but he’s always a sign of something good and often the best thing in it – whether he’s brandishing a spear in Game of Thrones, protecting a kid in The Last of Us, or um… brandishing a spear and protecting a kid in The Mandalorian. Richards is married to Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm/ the Invisible Woman, who can – you’ll be surprised to hear – turn invisible, as well as create forcefields. Kirby is an excellent actress, who stole scenes in some of the more recent Mission: Impossible films and received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Pieces of a Woman. Sue’s brother is Johnny Storm/ The Human Torch, played here by Joseph Quinn, able to set his body on fire and fly at superhuman speeds. Quinn is best known for rocking out as metal-lover Eddie Munson in season 4 of Stranger Things, but also appeared opposite Pascal in Gladiator 2. And finally there’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Richards’ best friend Ben Grimm, aka super-strong rock-man The Thing. Moss-Bachrach is most famous for playing Richie in The Bear (and the first FF teaser trailer appropriately showed The Thing cooking dinner in the kitchen). The villain is gigantic planet-eater Galactus, played by Ralph Ineson – a great character actor who has appeared in everything from The Office (UK) to The Witch. And rounding out the main cast is Julia Garner as a gender-swapped Silver Surfer. Garner was excellent in Aussie backpacking drama The Royal Hotel and will next be seen in the hotly anticipated horror Weapons. Some fans have complained about the gender swap, but that seems a little ridiculous to me – if you can accept that a character is a silver-skinned alien who travels through space on a surfboard to announce to planets that they are about to be devoured by a giant cosmic being with a silly hat, it shouldn’t be that much of a stretch to accept that the same character can also have breasts.
Galactus is a huge character in the Marvel universe (both physically and in importance), so he should be a suitably exciting threat for the Four’s first MCU entry. And Ineson’s casting suggests that he will be fleshed out as a proper character instead of just stomping around and letting the Silver Surfer do all the talking for him – although any characterisation at all will be a big step up from the angry cloud of 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. But the real joy here will be in seeing the FF themselves. For all their powers, they are famously a family first, with all the love and squabbles and rivalries that go along with that. The trailers have leant into this, with Johnny teasingly trying to get The Thing to say his famous “It’s clobbering time!” line (if he doesn’t say it somewhere in the film after all that build-up I’ll be very disappointed) and a lot of attention devoted to the swelling bump in Sue’s belly. Reed and Sue’s son is a big deal in the comics, so this could be setting up major MCU plotlines for way off in the future.
If this is as good as it deserves to be then it could bring the MCU back on track as the lynchpin of the summer blockbuster slate. In any event, it should be well worth watching on a big screen.
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps on IMDB
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps on Rotten Tomatoes
The Bad Guys 2
2022’s The Bad Guys flew under a lot of people’s radars, but was actually a hugely entertaining little film. Its stars – the impossibly smooth big bad Mr Wolf (Sam Rockwell), old school gangster Mr Snake (Marc Maron), master of disguise Mr Shark (Craig Robinson), hacker extraordinaire Miss Spider (Awkwafina) and angry psychopath Mr Piranha (Anthony Ramos) were maligned by society as the bad guys of every story, so they did what was expected of them and became criminals. But when Mr Wolf gets a taste for the endorphins of doing something good, he sets about trying to change his friends’ ways. This sequel picks things up a few years later, with the gang struggling to cope as good guys, when they are roped into a big heist by the Bad Girls – Danielle Brooks’ Kitty Kat, Maria Bakalova’s Pigtail and Natasha Lyonne’s Doom. Will they be able to foil the plot and emerge as heroes, or will they be tempted back to the dark side?
Like a lot of Dreamworks’ genre movies, this franchise wears its influences on its sleeve – the likes of Reservoir Dogs and Ocean’s Eleven run in its veins. It uses the same 2D-3D animation blend that was championed by the Spider-verse movies, and while it’s not quite as creative in its use of the medium as those films, it gets the levels just right for the tone it’s trying to convey. Sam Rockwell is perfectly cast as Mr Wolf – the sort of character that I guarantee without needing (or wanting) to google it will have inspired some disturbing fan art in certain corners of the internet. But the new cast also looks great – Brooks and Bakalova have both received Oscar nominations in the last few years, while Brooks’ Orange is the New Black co-star Lyonne is excellent in everything she appears in.
If you’ve seen the original, you’ll likely be looking forward to this already. If you haven’t, it’s well worth tracking down and then watching this on the big screen before it goes. It’s a perfectly timed release for the school holidays and the perfect way to keep kids of all ages entertained for a couple of hours.
- The Bad Guys 2 on IMDB
- The Bad Guys 2 on Rotten Tomatoes
If you only see one film this week…
Marvel’s First Family are finally coming to the MCU, and it’s going to be awesome – The Fantastic Four: First Steps is my film of the week.
Still in cinemas and worth a watch
- Superman
- Friendship – Fans of I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson will not be disappointed – the humour here is very much on the same lines, full of ridiculous overreactions and surreal madness. Robinson’s character Craig is constantly digging holes for himself and then blaming others when he falls into them, but there are moments where he drags his loved ones down with him which give the film some unexpected heart. The highlight for me was one of the funniest drug trips I’ve ever seen in a film. The climax, and the way it resolves itself, is perfect – showing that despite everything else that’s happened, true friendship never really goes away.
- Jurassic World: Rebirth
Trailer of the week
I’ve got quite a busy week this week so I’m writing this on Monday, so there may well have been a bigger and better trailer by the time this gets published, but it won’t be too much more exciting than the first full trailer for Predator: Badlands. Following a predator on his first hunting trip, this places the near-unstoppable alien on a planet where he is at the bottom of the food chain, and has to prove himself worthy of his species. Along for the ride (literally at some points) is Weyland-Yutani android Thia (Elle Fanning), serving as a reminder that this is part of the same universe as the Alien movies and opening the door to another potential crossover, either in this film or an upcoming one. This is directed by Dan Trachtenberg, who revitalised the Predator franchise with the excellent Prey, and once again looks like he’s found a thrilling new spin on the formula. We’ll be able to see who is the predator and who is the prey when Badlands hits cinemas in November.
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