According to one big-name MCU producer, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy secretly inspired The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The Fantastic Four 2025 movie is set to finally bring Marvel's First Family into the MCU proper, under the tutelage of Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn's Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss Bachrach's Ben Grimm. The new Matt Shakman Marvel Studios film has been described as a new beginning for the MCU, ushering in the next era of super-powered storytelling for the brand.
Fantastic Four: First Steps is taking notes from one of the greats, apparently, at least that is according to veteran MCU producer Grant Curtis. As part of a recent interview, Curtis revealed that one of these significant influences was Sam Raimi's three Spider-Man movies.
Speaking with Collider, the renowned MCU producer shared that there are similarities between Raimi and Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman, positing that both filmmakers "always went back to the source material" and asked "why" each character they were working with was "so popular:"
"One of the beauties of that and that I see in Matt Shakman is Sam always went back to the source material and said, 'there's a reason why Peter Parker and Spider-Man has been so popular for so long,' and we have nothing to do with that 50 plus years at that time."
Curtis added that Fantastic Four will, like Spider-Man, "embrace" their character's long comic book history and tell a story as authentic to the source material's essence as possible:
" And Matt always looked at it the same way. There's a reason this IP has been popular for 60 years. Let’s embrace it. Let's not run from it. Let's challenge our screenwriters to tell the coolest Galactus story."
Fantastic Four: First Steps will, in a lot of ways, look like a classic comic book come to life, taking place in an alternate retrofuturist 1960s following its titular team as they contend with the emergence of the world-eating Galactus (played by Ralph Ineson).
First Steps stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn as the central cast of Marvel heroes, backed up by Julia Garner as the mysterious Silver Surfer and Matthew Wood as H.E.R.B.I.E. The new Marvel Studios epic comes to theaters on Friday, July 25.
Fantastic Four's Influences On Full Display
While most of the modern superhero movie industry owes something to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, it is exciting to hear that The Fantastic Four: First Steps is directly inspired by the Doctor Strange 2 director's trio of wall-crawling adventures.
Sure, the Fantastic Four will look and sound different from those early 2000s Spider-Man films, but they share some common connective tissue. Those similarities seem to come primarily from how hard they hammer down to the very core of their respective characters.
Every one of the all-time great comic book movies has nailed one thing: getting the essence of the character they are adapting.
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man did that. Tim Burton's Batman did that. The list goes on and on. And now, after some Fantastic Four adaptations may have missed the mark on that front, it is time for Marvel's First Family to get the same treatment.
So, while Spider-Man honed in on the delicate dance of balancing Peter Parker's life and that of his web-slinging alter-ego, First Steps is doing the same with the theme of family that the Fantastic Four has represented since their introduction in 1961.
If Fantastic Four (2025) can shoulder that familial theme and knock its super-powered narrative out of the park, then it too may cement itself as one of the all-time greats.
