Superman vs Fantastic Four - Review

July was battle arena for DC and Marvel

Supermansweeney

Mr. Fantastic, Mr. Terrific, Ms. Teschmacher

Why is Superman the better movie? Because Fantastic Four stays entirely cramped within the Marvel formula. Disney plays it safe with FF, and I don't blame them after all the money-losers they've had lately, one after another, but star actor Pedro Pascal looks like he's being smothered, and we barely see him using Mr. Fantastic's stretch-skills. It's in there, but, wow, for a "Fantastic Four" movie to not be the mother lode of stretching from its erstwhile leader makes you wonder if Disney can parse the 64 years of material they're handling. And I'll go further than that, this is a color-themed movie that tells you exactly what its about: powder blue and white, the classic "she's having a baby" color scheme, because this movie is about giving birth to Mr. Fantastic Junior, not the Fantastic Four. What's the problem with that? Hang on, I'll tell you.

And Superman? Gunn pushes his way outside of the super-formula a bunch of times, and he typically does that in all his films, to reach out of the genre formula he's working in and liven-up things with his humor and to do the same old super-stunts but try to make it happen from a new direction. I appreciate that, and as much as watching Galactus stroll through a city was fantastic, Gunn has put together a better (as in more fun) script that does the same things better (such as a giant kaiju strolling thru Metropolis). It's not all surprises, in fact it mostly adheres to formula, for example watching Mr. Terrific do the easiest character lay-up throws in cinema by just walking through every disaster and problem and playing it "cool," all the same it was funny but also accomplished what that hero had to do to help save the day.

By comparison, The Thing and Johnny Storm are mostly knick-knacks on the shelf that get picked up and put onto the board every now and then (and it is a big plus for the film when they're there, probably because we're expecting a team movie and whenever it drops gear into being such, it improves. It just won't stay in that gear, though!), but all of the consequential matters of Fantastic Four First Steps center on the "she's having a baby" plotline. Hence the problem: the baby doesn't bother to appear until almost the end of the movie. There are plenty of films made which rachet up the tension about mothers-to-be (finally) having the actual birth, but FF buries that tension under the Galactus invasion and whether the Silver Surfer (who, CGI-wise, looks like a throwback to 1984's Terminator. In fact they're probably dating) will be a destructive force for Sue Storm and the crew to fear.

In Superman, all of the main cast is indispensable to the story and to defeating the bad things about to happen plot-line, and I think this is summed up by how Gunn has Eve Teschmacher (played by Sara Sampaio) probably being the main lynch-pin of defeating Lex Luthor. That a second or third tier character in the cast is the seed for beating the villain, and you hardly notice it unless you think through all the dynamics of the story, and since the script is portraying her as a neurotic laugh-magnet, its not immediately obvious to anyone that the "bimbo" out-thought the "smartest man in the room" (Luthor) and also did what all the other heroes couldn't do, either. The character not only pulls a prank on the villain, but Gunn pulls a prank on the superhero formula (and on the Richard Donner era Superman. Gunn also puts in another visual in-joke: the Corenswet Superman battling a "DNA double" who looks like the Henry Cavill Witcher).

Superman isn't miles away the better film. Both movies are done competently (not something you can take for granted anymore from Hollywood) and the craftsmanship on both are ahead of what's been hitting the bijou for the last several years from these respective studios. A big plus is that there's no story confusion in either film (like many recent super-movies) from being edited to death, but both films are obviously missing important footage and both are certainly pared down from something longer. Superman, for example, the first third is weirdly out of step with itself, as if something central is missing. Fantastic Four comes right out of the box headed straight for birthin' babies, and the straight line it follows simplifies everything. To his credit, Gunn tries to juggle a lot more story objects, and, after getting past the wobbly beginning, he smoothly handles everything having to do with story advancement and keeping the cast straight for we popcorn eaters. Fantastic Four, though, simply can't do the whole story in the amount of run time it has, there are unsettled story strings left dangling, and if they put out an extended version, that'd certainly help.

Both films are cursed by the dumb-assery of CGI. Both have giant crowds in the streets dumbly watching as things become lethal with monsters and falling debris and they just stand there, curious and concerned for the trouble but they don't run and they don't duck when loud ka-booms sound, which if you've ever been around crowds that encounter danger and loud noises, they react like a herd of gazelles spotting a pride of lions: time to go.

Both Clark Kent and the Fantastic Four work out of big buildings in a city, but hilariously, the FF building is practically empty except for the FF itself, and you have to wonder, who keeps it all clean and spotless? When they go out through their giant lobby, there's not even a security guard, something that building needs badly as the ongoing story shows. The Daily Planet building, though, is more realistically populated and Gunn is able to move around larger groups of people and fill out the screen with a much more realistic portrayal of a city in background, just not counting, as already mentioned, the utterly stupid NPC figures that stand around in the street waiting to be crushed by giant things.

Both films needed to be competent if the superhero genre is going to continue from Marvel and DC, and in that area they've succeeded. The fear these would be the same screwed-up productions with their inner-confusion splashed all over the screen like so many other recent films didn't materialize. For the month of July 2025, Disney/Marvel and Warners/DC got back into the crowd-pleasing business.