The villains steal the show in 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps'

More than six decades after Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a superhero team to rival the Justice League, the Fantastic Four finally get a worthy big-screen adaption in a spiffy 60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism.

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Though the Fantastic Four go to the very origins of Marvel Comics, their movie forays have been marked by missteps and disappointments. The first try was a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget 1994 film that was never even released. But, after some failed reboots and a little rights maneuvering, Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the first Fantastic Four movie released by Marvel Studios. And a sense of returning to Marvel roots permeates this one, an endearingly earnest superhero drama about family and heroism, filled with modernist “Jetsons” designs that hark back to a time when the future held only promise.