Four's a crowd in the battle of superhero blockbusters

'Fantastic Four: First Steps' is weighed down by Marvel's aversion to risk (giving DC's 'Superman' the edge), while 'Bring Her Back' is a diabolical treat. Plus a fun mix of fart noises and Musk gags in 'Bad Guys 2'.

- Clarisse Loughrey

You can't fault the sincerity of this year's superhero films. Out with the cynical cameos, the nihilistic antiheroes, and whatever Madame Web was meant to be - it’s time now for hope with a capital “H”. It’s time for “saving a cat stuck up a tree”-type heroism, dreams of peace and solidarity, and, in the case of Thunderbolts*, maybe just a really big hug.

Marvel could never go all that wrong, then, with its First Family, the Fantastic Four (if you discount the time it really did go wrong with the unnecessarily dour 2015 film). Nor could it veer that far off track with its sleek, stylish retrofuturistic aesthetics and a cast as deliriously charming as Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn. In fact, all the ingredients are perfectly lined up here, and, in the right combinations, and with the pure wonderment of Michael Giacchino’s score, The Fantastic Four: First Steps does shimmer with a kind of wide-eyed idealism. And that’s lovely.

Yet it’s unfortunate for Marvel that First Steps comes a few weeks after DC’s Superman. That movie had a single writer and director in James Gunn, and is so very Gunn-ish to its core. Here, you've got four credited writers and a director like Matt Shakman, who may have delivered similar earnestness-plus-Sixties-nostalgia with the TV series WandaVision, but who hasn’t yet developed a strong enough voice to anchor such an incident-packed picture.

See, like Superman, First Steps has eschewed the origin story. We’re instead dropped into the middle of the alternative universe Earth-828 (what we’ve been watching so far in the MCU, to note, is Earth-199999): where beehives and Pan Am airlines reign supreme, gadgets could conceivably be called “doohickeys”, and even pregnancy tests come equipped with sleek chrome and blinking lights.