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Oh, the tumultuous journey Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four has had to reach the big screen. It all started with the ill-fated Roger Corman-produced version back in 1994, a film made for the sole purpose of retaining the rights purchased during the Marvel bankruptcy years. It was never meant to see the light of day, but has lived on thanks to bootlegs and a nice documentary called Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman’s The Fantastic Four.Then 20th Century Fox acquired the rights and, after years of development, the 2005 version was released. It was actually pretty good, and it did well enough at the box office that a sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, came out two years later, with a plan to maybe give the Silver Surfer his own film. That, along with any more FF films, were scrapped when the sequel ended up subpar in both quality and box office.As much as comic book fans would like to, we can’t forget the 2015 debacle. Due to all kinds of behind-the-scenes problems, this movie was maybe even more doomed than the 1994 version, if that’s possible. Now that Disney has charge of both Marvel Studios and (the renamed) 20th Century Studios, the Marvel properties Fox owned can be integrated into the MCU. Which leads us to the latest version of this team: The Fantastic Four: First Steps.It's 1964 on Earth-828 (for reference, Earth-616 is the main universe where the MCU takes place), and the Fantastic Four have been keeping the planet safe since they returned from a space mission four years earlier, newly saddled with superpowers. Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) has just found out she’s pregnant, and her husband, Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), is nervous. More than your average father-to-be, since there’s no telling whether or not their powers will affect the baby.The other two members, Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), are ecstatic about becoming uncles. Unfortunately, their elation is interrupted with the arrival of Silver Surfer Shalla-Bal (Julia Garner), the herald of Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the Devourer of Worlds.She announces Galactus will arrive soon to destroy the Earth. When the Fantastic Four travel into space to try negotiating, Galactus has only one demand: He will spare the planet if Reed and Sue give him their baby.Full disclosure, but I have never been the biggest fan of FF. I always thought they were better used as support characters for the rest of the Marvel teams rather than strong enough for their own titles. There have been some runs of the comics that have proven me wrong, but not enough to fully change my opinion.That being said, this Fantastic Four film is exactly that: Fantastic! With its brilliantly conceived retro-futurism design, its characters excellently portrayed and solid script, this is an excellently realized version of the team.Even though this is smack dab in the middle of the MCU, and will eventually be beholden to all that’s come before it, First Steps is an experience similar to James Gunn’s Superman, a fresh enough take on something established, making it feel like the start of something new.Being such an imposing and all-powerful being, Galactus is a difficult villain to introduce and deal with in film. Rise of the Silver Surfer sort of dropped the ball, not only having him obscured by clouds, but also by assuming a standalone Surfer movie was a definite. He’s a tough character to defeat, and I think First Steps does a very good job of dealing with this problem.The actors all do a terrific job with their characters. Pascal brings both a strong leadership quality to Reed, as well as an underlining tone of constant concern. Kirby imbues Sue with intelligence and leadership equal to Reed’s, as well as a great deal of warmth and heart to counterbalance his professorial stoicism.Quinn plays Johnny as not only the group’s resident (pardon the wordplay) hothead, but he also shows how intelligent Johnny can be, even if the rest of the team brushes him off, at times. Moss-Bachrach deserves the most kudos here. His ability to portray the many layers of Ben from underneath all of that CGI stone is second only to that of Mark Ruffalo’s nuanced version of the Hulk.As long as Marvel can figure out what parts of their formulae made Thunderbolts* and First Steps such good, fun and successful comic book films, the MCU might just be able to get back on track.