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Marvel Finally Got The Fantastic Four Right, But This Character’s Powers Were a Complete Disappointment

August 2, 2025

It can now be said that Marvel has finally gotten the monkey off their back and made a good Fantastic Four film. With the success of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, both financially and critically, audienceshave seemed to agree that a faithful and entertaining version of Marvel’s First Family has officially made it to the big screen. The ’60s style and intergalactic visuals did justice to Marvel’s godfather, Jack Kirby; the core four were all well-cast and had beautiful chemistry together; each member had at least one moment to shine and convince us why the MCU should be grateful that they’re now involved. But, for me, something I couldn’t look past is how little we get to see Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) do his signature powerset of stretching his body. Noticing this absence sent my brain down a rabbit hole where I asked myself: Will we ever see stretching powers done right in live-action?

Pedro Pascal’s Mr. Fantastic Rarely Uses His Powers in ‘First Steps’

Image via Marvel Studios

While we do get to see Mr. Fantastic do the thing that makes him so fantastic, we only get to see it happen in relatively small bursts. It never extends further than him stretching out his arms or legs to either reach across the room or crawl up a building or swing around a city block, all things Spider-Man does on a regular basis. We never get to see him do any of the truly crazy stuff that Mr. Fantastic has been known to do with his body, like turn into a parachute or a boat or morph into another person. If you can get past the dated CGI, even the inferior Fantastic Four films from the 2000s thought up unique things for that version of Reed (Ioan Gruffudd) to do, like reaching his arm under a door or wrapping himself around a villain like a blanket or turning his body into a hose to redirect water. The only time we see the body of Pascal’s Reed doing anything truly imaginative is when he takes a lot of damage and floats down to the ground like a popped balloon, and he didn’t even intend to do that! As much as I’d like to be cynical and accuse Marvel Studios of creative laziness, I think the most likely reason behind this limited demonstration is something more practical and almost existential.

Human Brains Can’t Process Bodies Doing Unnatural Things In 3D

Our human brains have an inherent sense of what does and doesn’t look right when it comes to the human form on-screen. We know what a person’s face or skin should look like, hence why we have such harsh reactions to poor attempts at CGI people or de-aging on people’s faces. The uncanny valley is a cruel mental trick, and my genuine worry is that seeing a human body stretch to unrealistic proportions in real life is simply too much for our monkey brains to handle. Even when the CGI is hitting and is on point, there’s still an inherent “yuck” that comes from watching a person’s limbs crack, snap, and bend in ways they’re not supposed to. This is why the love for body horror transformation is so strong, because in those films, it’s supposed to be disturbing and upsetting to watch a body do such feats, whereas seeing Mr. Fantastic turn into a pretzel is supposed to be lighthearted and vibrant.

It doesn’t help that some of the dodgiest CGI in First Steps is around Reed’s stretching powers. There’s a shot in this film where Reed’s body gets stretched out to its breaking point, and it looks like Pedro Pascal’s head photoshopped onto a PS2 character model, and I legitimately went “woof” out loud in the theater. It’s well-known how overworked the exhausted VFX artists who work on Marvel films are, and with how quickly First Steps went from shooting to finished film, it feels like the VFX artists had to prioritize other larger-scale elements (like, say, the space sequences or Galactus himself). Or, even more plausibly, the production team genuinely thought up so many different stretchy ideas for Reed, tried them out, and just went “ew…never mind.” That’s just a theory that won’t be proven until the art book inevitably comes out and we at least get some cool concept art, but it still resulted in Mr. Fantastic feeling quite shortchanged when it comes to superheroics.

Stretchy Powers Only Work In Animation, Not Live Action

This whole conundrum reminds me of the wise words of the Disney legend Howard Ashman, whose creative insight and magical lyricism were a core factor in making Disney’s Renaissance era what it was. There’s a famous clip of him giving a lecture to animation students, in which he breaks down how one of the best things about animation is how it allows the human brain to accept wild concepts and stretch its disbelief even farther than if it were live-action. Not only is it a swift condemnation from beyond the grave of Disney’s current rapid depletion of their most esteemed works with the pointless live-action remakes, but it also tacitly explains why seeing Reed Richards use his power in real life is such a doomed prospect. Basically, it’s going to look like absolute garbage, or it’ll be a complete nightmare to witness, like something out of The Thing, but in the middle of a family film.

This is one of the many reasons why The Incrediblesis still the best Fantastic Four film, as it being animated allows for Brad Bird to indulge far more in the fantasy of the fantastic than even a good live-action MCU film could accomplish. We can see Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) turn into a boat or use her limbs to uphold an entire RV without wanting to vomit. Whereas we may have to be resigned to the fact that seeing Pedro Pascal’s mortal coil do stretchy tricks is not actually what we want.