The reboot of "Fantastic Four" started off well but it fell flat (despite Pedro Pascal)

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In a retrofuturistic American fantasy, frozen somewhere between the radioactive optimism of the 1960s and a parallel New York, the " Fantastic Four" live as a superheroic family. Four years after massive exposure to cosmic rays, they are endowed with powers as grotesque as they are grandiose: Reed Richards stretches his neurons like his limbs, Jane Storm dissolves into invisibility, her brother Johnny bursts into flames like a punk Icarus, and friend Ben Grimm, a stoned golem, flexes his granite muscles. Together, the quartet must thwart the evil plans of Galactus, devourer of worlds, supported by the silver surfer Shalla-Bal.

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It took a certain amount of nerve to imagine this epic after the industrial fiasco of 2015. At the time, Josh Trank, a young filmmaker seeking introspection for the previous installment, was crushed by the Hollywood machine. Fox, wary of the film's darkness and eager for an "Avengers"-style blockbuster, imposed casting, cascading reshoots, and a watered-down "happy ending." To the point of producing a schizophrenic feature film, devoid of cohesion, catapulted into the pantheon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's greatest shipwrecks.

With "First Steps," Matt Shakman, a television craftsman well-versed in pastiche ("WandaVision," "Game of Thrones," "House"), returns to his roots. Those of pioneers Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the original creators of the comics. Here, the chrome of the flying cars gleams like in an Electrolux commercial; the maxi-volume buns are tousled at the speed of light; the orange Formica becomes the androids' playground, like in a Philip K. Dick dream on acid. But beneath the vintage veneer, the Marvel mechanics remain: calibrated, readable, consensual.

Supervillains, like the cyclopean Galactus, draw from the bestiary of kaiju, crossing the Godzilles-esque excess of Roland Emmerich with the aesthetic tics of the latest "Star Wars" trilogy. Evil, from now on, becomes a stellar abstraction: the more enormous it is, the more it crushes humanity, the more reassuring it is and the less frightening it is. Despite a few good lines dipped in irony, a credible Pedro Pascal as a literate superhero, or some excited space escapades, Marvel's narrative heaviness reasserts itself. This reboot, although promoted as a new beginning for the launch of Phase 6 of the franchise, ultimately falls flat like a lukewarm soufflé. Or rather—to stick with its colorful imagery—like a neon Jell-O that tastes like a wafer.