“When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The family is the basic building block of any stable, healthy society. Thriving societies have a culture of strong, committed families. If you want to explain the breakdown of a society – take a society like ours for instance – you don’t really need to look much further than the breakdown of the families that constitute it. Nearly every social pathology can be traced back to a family problem of some kind. Communities with large numbers of stable, intact families are objectively better than those without. The trouble is, too many culture-shaping aspects of our society don’t seem to understand that. It is notable then, when a major Hollywood release not only highlights, but celebrates the goodness and worthwhileness of family. The latest major Marvel film, which I have finally been able to watch, does just that. Let’s talk about why Fantastic Four lives up to its moniker.

Fans have been waiting for a good Fantastic Four movie for a long time. A really long time. Back before the MCU existed they released one that did well enough to warrant a sequel. Chris Evans played Human Torch before he joined the MCU and took on his iconic Captain America role. No small amount of fun has been poked at that previous role over the years since. That pair was okay, but too cheesy to really be good. Lack so many Marvel releases, the villains just weren’t done well. They failed to make Doom anything as powerful or menacing as he is in the comics, and Galactus was a cloud. It was bad.

Then in 2015 they tried again, but it was so bad that it probably contributed to the final fall of Fox and their ultimately giving in to Disney’s Marvel Studios’ efforts to acquire the right to Marvel Comics’ first family to be able to actually bring them into the MCU. With this latest effort, most fans were agreed that in Disney’s hands we finally got a good Fantastic Four movie. Having finally been able to see the movie, I would have to agree. This one was really good.

For starters, it was up to Marvel Studios’ high production standards. There was no bad CGI that I noticed. The cast was tremendous, and perfectly fit the aesthetic of the retro-future New York from a parallel universe to our own. The story was compelling and the script was well-written. They also had one of the best film scores of any Marvel movie since Avengers. Galactus, the main villain, was well done and stayed wonderfully true to his comic design. He was underdeveloped and so were his motivations, but not as badly as so many other Marvel villains have been. Most importantly to me, they made the four members of the team really feel like a family. Family lies right at the heart of the film.

The main plot device, and what for me served to make the story so compelling, is Invisible Woman, Sue Richard’s getting pregnant. The movie actually opens with her taking a pregnancy test and then sharing the news with her husband, Reed, who is Mister Fantastic. The way they handled her sharing the news with him and their private celebration of the news made for an incredibly heart-warming, pro-life start to the movie. Then, the evident joy when they share the news with Ben Grimm, the Thing and Reed’s best friend, and Johnny Storm, Sue’s younger brother and the Human Torch, made the whole scene even sweeter.

The next part of the movie is a montage of Reed and Sue preparing for the arrival of the baby with the help of their robot servant, H.E.R.B.I.E. Just when everything looks like we could cut right to a happy ending, the Silver Surfer shows up to announce the coming end of the planet’s existence when Galactus arrives to consume all of its energy. The Surfer was the one major point of criticism the film received during its development because instead of going with the traditional male Surfer, Norman Rad, they opted for an obscure female comic variant, Shalla Bal. The only reason for that beyond adding unnecessary diversity to the story seems to have been to give Johnny a mild romantic subplot. In spite of the completely understandable criticism of the move, it actually worked. I suspect the decision will mean we will never see the Norman Rad surfer.

In spite of Sue’s being nearly full term in her pregnancy, the team – which in this universe seem to be the only superheroes on earth – quickly assembles to fly across the galaxy to confront Galactus head on. They have no idea what they are up against and barely escape with their lives, but they learn one thing. Reed and Sue’s baby is in possession of the cosmic seed. We are not told anything about what this is except that it will make him a being as powerful as Galactus himself. Galactus tells the family that if they give him their baby, he will spare the earth.

Their hard no results in a tremendous, galaxy-spanning fight sequence with the Silver Surfer as they try to escape Galactus’ clutches and get back home to make a plan for saving the planet. Along the way, Sue goes into labor from the strain (you think?), and actually delivers Franklin Richards as they zip across the galaxy at light speed. Franklin’s delivery may be one of the best, most compelling scenes in a Marvel movie I’ve seen short the famous Avengers, assemble scene from the climax of End Game. It honestly brought me to tears. The celebration of life was so profound, I’m a little surprised it made it past the Hollywood worldview filters.

In the end, the family manages to win. They save their city, their planet, and warp Galactus to the other side of the universe with the help of the Surfer who is finally moved by Johnny’s attempts to connect with her. This doesn’t serve to actually defeat Galactus. They don’t have anything like the power or ability to do that. It instead pushes the problem he represents to be something the earth will have to deal with sometime later. I predict that sometime later isn’t going to come in the MCU.

It was a little too convenient of a victory. But then, as the subtitle of the movie, First Steps, suggests, while this was more of a standalone Marvel movie than most are (you don’t have actually have to have seen any other Marvel film to be able to understand it…you just need a fairly broad knowledge of the comics), it was really all about introducing Marvel’s First Family into the MCU so they can help stop Doctor Doom next summer. Of course, Doctor Doom, played by Robert Downey, Jr. who last departed the MCU as Tony Stark after sacrificing his life to stop Thanos, is really coming to save Marvel Studios from the growing threat of irrelevancy, so maybe they don’t want to stop him after all? Disney is hoping that what is turning out to be a nostalgia-fueled romp gets their mojo back, but time will tell.

All in all, the movie is worth seeing. It was fun. It’s not going to win any awards, but then they almost never give awards to superhero movies because as much as those are the primary cash cow for Hollywood, the snooty actors guild still looks down on them as low brow entertainment. They’d much rather give awards to weird movies that no one has ever seen. And they wonder why the rest of the country doesn’t like them very much.

The real worth of Fantastic Four: First Steps for me, though, is the emphasis on the worth and primacy of the family. This movie celebrates life. It celebrates the life of the family. It celebrates new life. It celebrates marriage and having children and parenting. It portrays all of those as unalloyed goods and a joy in spite of the challenges they bring with them. In all of this, it echoes the Gospel in ways that are necessary in the face of a culture that has turned away from an embrace of family in some critical ways that will have an impact on our future. This is especially true among young women who by survey rank getting married and starting a family as among their lowest priorities. Interestingly, young men are now ranking those two things as near the top of their priority list. For women looking for young men who want to settle down and be good, faithful husbands and fathers, the fields are white with harvest.

We need more movies that intentionally celebrate marriage and family. Those kinds of messages won’t take root immediately, but the trickle-down effect over time will be impactful. We were made for family. As Paul reminds the churches in Galatia, God sent His Son at just the right time to open the doors for us to be adopted into His family. We serve a pro-family God. Let us cheer on and support projects that remind the culture of this in powerful ways. And let us live into it ourselves, making sure we are demonstrating by our own example why this is so good. The culture needs it.