From Ryan Cordaro

What I like to see is healthy competition. If you’re not on a lot of social media, the movies are going to be very cutthroat this coming July. Three massive movies, all potentially some of the biggest of the year, are coming out within weeks of each other. One of them, the next Jurassic World movie, Rebirth, is actually dropping its first trailer tomorrow. The second is Superman, which has its own admittedly very strange backlash, but I’ll be there for that. What I meant by “healthy competition,” though, is the rivalry between Marvel and DC. DC is finally heating back up again, and while I know that filmmaking shouldn’t be a full-on competition, I want to see Marvel get hungry again. Hopefully, reintroducing the Fantastic Four will be the big jumpstart the MCU needs.

Believe it or not, Marvel has actually released a synopsis for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. It reads that First Steps introduces Marvel’s First Family with a “vibrant backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world.” It also goes into the new threat of their world, and their biggest challenge. While maintaining their family, they “must defend Earth from a ravenous space god called Galactus and his enigmatic Herald, Silver Surfer.” I’m sure people are going frame by frame to see what else they can get from what the plan is, but we also know that this iteration of the Fantastic Four is set outside of the main MCU timeline. Since they’ll all be key players in the next two Avengers movies, I’m curious to see how they all get involved. I’m mainly just shocked that they’re not exactly hiding anything right now, at least not anything that I can notice. I’m really hoping that this is a winner.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, the upcoming Eddington), Vanessa Kirby (The Crown, the upcoming Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning), Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One, Gladiator II), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, The Punisher), Ralph Ineson (Nosferatu, the upcoming Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein), Julia Garner (Ozark, Wolf Man), Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell, Inside Out 2), John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire, the upcoming Opus), and Natasha Lyonne (Orange is the New Black, Poker Face). Robert Downey, Jr., who was announced to come back to the MCU as Victor Von Doom, is expected to appear, but isn’t confirmed.

Disney will release First Steps in theaters on July 25th, 2025.

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