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The new Fantastic Four movie is the best of the generally awful Fantastic Four movies to date. If you had the good luck to have missed the 2007 "Rise of the Silver Surfer," which focused bizarrely on wedding preparations for the union of Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman, you may not care that in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," this super twosome is preparing to welcome a baby. That's right. I feel you making plans to skip this installment of the stumbling FF franchise as well.

But hold up, there. "First Steps," which benefits from the fresh directorial energy of Matt Shakman, who honed his Marvel chops helming the "WandaVision" series, doesn't feel like a standard Marvel movie of old. Despite its reported $200-million-plus budget, the picture doesn't exhibit the money-torching production mania of a traditional MCU picture. Oh, there's plenty of CGI, of course (some of it surprisingly primitive), but there also appears to have been a major outlay for set decoration -- with its space-age sweep and cuddly geometrics, the movie's retro vibe might have been personally put together by the mid-century designer Eero Saarinen (architect of the super-futurey TWA terminal at New York's JFK airport and also an influence on the look of "The Jetsons," who are also here evoked).

Because not everyone has followed the Four since they made their Marvel debut 60-odd years ago, director Shakman and his writers knew they had to do some flashing back. But they're economical about it, quickly sketching in the galactic radiation catastrophe that gave the team its supernatural powers, with aero-scientist Reed Richards (workaholic Pedro Pascal in his seventh movie of the last 18 months) becoming the stretchy Mister Fantastic, his wife-to-be Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) going transparent and hurling energy bolts as Invisible Woman, Sue's brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) bursting into flames as the Human Torch, and Reed's all-purpose buddy Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) morphing into the boulder-clad creature called the Thing.

What most distinguishes the movie from the traditional run of superhero product is its willingness to tell a kinder, gentler story at a less-than-usually over-cranked pace. It kicks off with Sue discovering she's pregnant. This quickly comes to the faraway attention of the evil and ginormous space villain Galactus (Ralph Ineson), whose mission is to roam the universe eating worlds. Galactus dispatches his advance man (well, advance entity), the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner, way overqualified for this sort of stuff), to inform the team that their world will soon be destroyed -- although he later offers to suppress his natural inclination to eat the planet if she'll turn over the son she's expecting upon his birth. Sue is not gonna do this, of course -- but what can she do?

There are a few shoutouts to classic characters from the Four's comic-book universe -- among them Red Ghost and one of his rambunctious Super-Apes, and the devious Mole Man (Paul Walter Hauser), lord of Subterranea, who gets a few lines as well. There's also a quick glimpse of the team's Fantasticar, but it doesn't take us anywhere.

The movie has a genial air about it, as if acknowledging that it's not all that big a deal. But as we learn at the end (the Marvel mid-credits scene is back!) there's more to come. Maybe it'll be a little livelier. Whether you'll be caring by the time it arrives is the usual open question.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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