Director Compares ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ to Kubrick, Reveals Space Race Was an Influence: “It’s about JFK and optimism.”

Marvel is really preparing for the premiere of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which is set for July 25, 2025. The movie is expected to deliver and the fans are hyped, seeing how the movie has a lot potential to become the best Fantastic Four movie of them all.

At the recently-held CinemaCon, we found out that Sue would be pregnant in the movie, and the fans had a polarized reaction to that fact, but Marvel is continuing even further with the revelations.

In a recent interview, director Matt Shakman talked about the movie’s influences and said that even one of the biggest legends of cinema, Stanley Kubrick, would be proud of it.

As it seems, the movie is going to have a Cold War feel. “This is very much about the spirit of the Space Race. It’s about JFK and optimism. It’s imagining these four going into space instead of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,” Shakman explains. “This idea is that they are the most famous people in America, because they’re adventurers, explorers, astronauts — not because they’re superheroes. And they come back and they’re superheroes on top of it. But primarily they’re astronauts, they’re family.”

And while the movie won’t be an origin story, it seems that some aspects of that origin will be incorporated in how the characters are portrayed. But Shakman wanted to keep it grounded.

“I really wanted to go with as grounded a version of space as possible. So, no wormholes. Their tech is very much retro-future, but it’s also booster rockets. It’s a combination of Marvel and Apollo 11. I really wanted it to feel like it was made in 1965, the way Stanley Kubrick would have made it,” he explains, revealing that they “used old lenses, and taken an approach to filmmaking that feels more of the time. Of course, we still have a lot of CG.”

He also reiterated the fact that the movie will be a standalone story, and while the titular group will cross over with other aspects of the MCU, the story itself will not be tied to anything directly.

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