Are the Fantastic Four Leading a Planet-Wide Cult in Their Universe? - Reactor

There are always points in movies—even the more realistic ones—where the audience is asked to ignore the constraints and quirks of filmmaking as a process. 

This applies to matters great and small: Maybe there’s a plot hole that the audience largely ignores. Or we pretend that we don’t know it’s bad for a sword blade to make the “sching!” sound when pulled from a scabbard (metal-on-metal is bad for weapon upkeep). Or maybe we just forget about how the human body reacts to trauma, so we can watch characters repeatedly punch each other in the face with comically few lasting effects. Whatever the cause, the contract is that the audience allows for a lack of realism in order for the story to continue. You can’t really enjoy most forms of fiction without it.

Choosing to bend those precepts until they break is always a fascinating thing to witness. In fairness, one person’s break is always different from another’s, but there are limits to this, as a rule. And it is this limit that leads me to ask:

Are the Fantastic Four a cult?

This isn’t meant as a tease, I’m genuinely asking. Perhaps their entire planet has been drugged? Or their history lends itself to easy global indoctrination? There’s just sooo much lead in everything on Earth-828, and no one has noticed? Please, I’m just trying to understand.

While the opening ten minutes of the film is admittedly adorable, here’s what we learn from it: A group of scientists go into space and come back with incredible powers beyond anything the world has ever seen. They’re so good at what they do that the world essentially… caves to them as an ultimate authority. Sue Storm is able to convince the entire planet (minus Latveria) to demilitarize because she’s, uh, real good at making the argument for it? When potential villains pop up, like Mole Man, Sue and crew convince him to be cool! And give him enough concessions so he’ll stop trying to sink Manhattan further into its own garbage patch.

The world adores them—so much so that aside from Latveria’s absence at the global summit, we don’t hear a single dissenting or indifferent opinion about them. They are in cartoons and advertisements and docu-specials. Reed Richards is the Bill Nye of his generation, teaching science to children on TV. Sue establishes the Future Foundation, and appoints Lynne Nichols as Chief of Staff—which would be such a cool thing to do if the woman ever did anything on screen that you’d expect of a high level executive. Instead, Nichols introduces the Fantastic Four to the press and follows them to all their public engagements, behaving more like a lower level publicist.

At no point in time do we discover whether Nichols’ appointment was a major historical moment, by the way. Because Earth-828 is specifically designed as a retro-sparkly backdrop on which the audience can project feelings of unproblematic nostalgia without ever once plugging reality into the equation. Is it actually the 1960s here, as the visual aesthetics would suggest? Possibly, but who can say? If it is the ‘60s, is the Civil Rights Movement currently apace? Doesn’t look like it. Women’s lib? Eh. What about the Stonewall Riots? Oh, there do no appear to be any queer people in this world, as far as the film is interested in showing them to us. Are we meant to infer that this is some sort of utopian alternative to the world we occupy? Probably—but if that’s the case, why did Sue Storm have to tell the world to demilitarize at all?

Let’s pull another thread: Where does the Fantastic Four’s money come from? They live in a giant skyscraper with their team logo plastered on it, and their resources are seemingly bottomless. Reed designs anything he can imagine, and taps into the city’s resources for his experiments. The group has a private space rocket they can launch from a populated city center, and a flying car. The film could have easily made sense of this by suggesting even one of the team came from money, or by endeavoring to explain how the Future Foundation plays into finances.

With none of those explanations provided, let’s consider the more likely alternative: public subsidy. Did Sue demilitarize the world only to turn around and ask every nation to funnel their former military budgets into the team and the new technologies Reed was bound to provide? Don’t cults usually demand resources from their converts?

But the baby, I hear you cry. It can’t be a cult, surely, because the world turned on our team the instant that they knew Galactus wanted Franklin Richards and they neglected to give him up. That makes the whole premise work well enough to ignore the extraneous strangeness, yes?

Except that turn is, again, global in nature. It’s not like we watch debates where folks argue for and against the decision the Fantastic Four made—the entire planet abruptly turns on them, to the point that Ben is getting shouted at on the streets of his old neighborhood, and an angry mob appears at their HQ. And this change of heart is pointedly also never questioned, even though said change is, don’t forget, “Hey, maybe we should ask those people who keep bettering the planet to sacrifice their infant child to a space giant!”

You know why no one thinks that turn is unreasonable? Because this is a cult. It smacks entirely of ‘our gods/god-speakers have betrayed us, ergo they are false.’ As far as we’re aware, it doesn’t occur to anyone in the entire world to defend the Fantastic Four as human beings because that simply isn’t how they’re viewed.

But it’s okay: Sue is always ready and available to reassert their hypnotic sway! She steps down from her lofty skyscraper into riffraff below—into an angry mob while holding her baby, which is one helluva choice to make given the state of things—to tell them all about how she views family. You see, the Fantastic Four haven’t betrayed anyone because even if Sue won’t give up her child, she’s not about to give up Earth either. (Which would seem to be a given because it’s not as though the public knows the team technically has the ability to launch into space on their private rocket and escape? But let’s not even go there right now…)

And just like that! The world believes again. No talking, no qualifying questions, no apology for being weird about the baby—we’re all cool here now, thanks. Then Reed comes up with the plan to stop Galactus, a plan that involves the cooperation of all nations on an absurdly massive scale, and the world sits in one of Sue’s Special United Nations Panels to tell everyone what resources are needed and how they should be distributed. And I’m sure the film wants us to think that we’re witnessing a beautiful coming-together-amid-certain-destruction flurry of action, but again, all we’re actually being shown is:

The Fantastic Four say ‘jump!’ and the whole world says ‘absolutely, may I have another!’

We don’t witness average people building anything, or working together to combat internal darkness—we witness structures appearing across numerous skylines in a planetary “Yes, and” to the Fantastic Four. When Reed realizes his plan is going to take all the world’s electricity, they institute a global curfew on energy, and everyone complies, just like that. That plan doesn’t wind up working anyway, but the Fantastic Four do pull it out of the hat and save the world, so no one is particularly bothered over the details. Their saviors remain untouched and untouchable. (Sue died for a second, but it’s not like anyone knows that happened.)

There’s a twofold terror in the insidiousness of this premise. The idea that the world would simply do what needs doing because we were asked nicely by wiser minds is already laughable in the most heartbreaking ways imaginable: In our own world, we couldn’t get folks (with the ability and means) to stay indoors or wear paper masks during the first waves of a global pandemic that is still ongoing. Reports on the massive energy output and waste created by A.I. generators do nothing to curb their use. People argue in realtime on social media over whether the next impending weather disaster will actually affect them. Taxes and funding allocation for public works is forever subject to debate. You’re telling me that the entire planet would band together and do what four costumed scientists tell them to do?

But the inverse suggestion being made here is far more frightening: That Earth-828 is a “better,” more utopian place because the people in it are malleable, docile—to an extent only dreamed of by the rich and powerful in our own world. First Steps shows us a world that is the precise opposite of what this year’s other superhero releases—Daredevil: Born Again, Thunderbolts*, Superman—are offering: A world where everything could be nostalgic, comfortable, good… if only you surrendered your will to “heroes” who want what’s best for you.

Sorry, but I’d rather not live in that world. Or be entertained by it. It sounds a little too much like another word that starts with “F”…