The Fantastic 4: First Steps

Matt Shakman sets the film outside the main Marvel continuity, on a world numbered Earth-828. The number is Jack Kirby’s birthday, 28 August 1917, and the closing credits carry his own line about finding him in his characters. The story opens at the celebration of the team’s fourth anniversary. There is no origin sequence; they are already famous and get no introduction. Cinematographer Jess Hall used the Alexa 65 as his primary camera and shot roughly 85 shots in the full IMAX frame. Super 16mm archive material, shot on vintage ARRI S cameras as reference at first, stayed in the film with its own aspect ratio. Panavision built custom lens sets for it, one named 2001. Galactus is not a digital creature. A full wearable suit of armour was built for Ralph Ineson, who says most of his work was played in costume rather than motion capture, with air conditioning fed into the armour between takes. The Surfer is Shalla-Bal, played by Julia Garner, not Norrin Radd. Shooting ran at Pinewood and on location in England and Spain; it grossed 521.9 million dollars worldwide. A good fit if you want to arrive mid celebration with nobody introduced and the design outweighing the performances. Not for you if Galactus building his weight out of scale instead of speed reads as slowness.