A long time ago (and no, I won’t finish that sentence…), in the before times, I started writing a series of reflections on the Nature of a Hero. I added to that periodically through the subsequent years, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been motivated to re-consider these themes. Largely disappointed with what has become a mass market of superhero stories recently, I had forgotten the power that these stories can have in the lives of the viewer or reader. Marvel’s latest cinematic installment, Fantastic Four: First Steps, had brought me back to thinking about this theme, though, because it has a depth that has been missing in recent Marvel and DC films.
I’ve written a more general review elsewhere of the movie, and here I want to focus on the theological themes, but I’ll say up front that this is the first movie since the most recent Spider-Man installment in which I’ve truly felt as though I’ve seen an exploration of heroism. The character of a superhero is, at it’s surface, someone who has some sort of advantage over those around them, whether that be resources, abilities, or metahuman powers. They can do things that the rest of us can’t. In reality, those are only storytelling devices to get to the depth of the nature of a hero, however, as the constitution of a hero is ultimately the choice to take what they have use it for the better (usually in the defense of) those around them, often at great cost to themselves.
The Fantastic Four, as the team was originally concieved, is ultimately about family. The characters go through a life-changing crisis with each other that results in them gaining their abilities, and that crisis could have proven catastrophic. They get through it because they are there for each other, as a family, both in the biological and extended sense of the word. They are role models for how family members support each other, without question and without condemnation. They are heroes to each other first, and by extension, heroes to the rest of the world. This movie introduces the Fantastic Four to the MCU in a separate timeline, where they are the only heroes, and have been world-changing, positive influences to the world around them. The world-building shows a dream of a planet at peace because of their heroism, but the focus, established by a positive pregnancy test in the first scene, is inward, as a family unit. This is the state of their timeline when they are visited by the Silver Surfer, heralding the coming of Galactus and the destruction of the Earth.
As the plot progresses and the Fantastic Four encounters Galactus for the first time…not as adversaries, but as explorers…we’re suddenly gut-punched by a theological metaphor that’s difficult to miss. To spare the Earth, Galactus demands Franklin, Sue’s unborn child. Reed refuses. Insistent, Galactus uses the power cosmic to induce Sue’s labor then and there, and the heroes narrowly escape.
They return to New York, already being celebrated as heroes. When the gathered crowd is advised of Galactus’ demand and their refusal to pay it, the crowd becomes angry, demanding an answer to “are we safe?” There remains an uneasy tension as the Earth wrestles with the ethics of sacrificing one to save millions. The good of the many, as Spock tolds us decades ago, outweighs the good of the few. And so we watch Sue Storm fiercely protect her son from a public desperate to ensure their survival.
There’s no escaping a Christological metahpor here: the sacrifice of one’s child to save humanity. This is compounded by the fact that comics readers know that Franklin will grow up to possess a nearly omnipotent ability to re-write reality to his will. Of course, all metaphors break down at some point, and I’m not sure that this one in particular was intentional on the part of the writers, but it’s certainly there. Of course, Sue and Reed refuse to sacrifice their child, and any mortal parent would make the same choice, I think, hero or otherwise. This reinforces the higher level of love showed by Christ, “…in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NKJV).
There is a different spiritual theme that’s driven home, as well. Not necessarily theological, but spiritual in a more secular sense, is the focus on saving the family. Sue’s monologue to the gathered crowd is beautifully written, and she does something very important in this speech. She re-defines her family as all of those gathered. The important message here, and one to which I think our culture would do well to listen, is that we all have more in common than we think. What Sue does that’s so important in this scene is to break down the “us vs. them” mentality, and the result is a world-wide cooperation in a plan to save the planet that would seem to be an impossible dream in our world today.
The concept of heroic self-sacrifice enters the story at least one more time, as the Silver Surfer wrestles with her role in contributing to the deaths of billions of people on various planets in her role as Galactus’ herald. She accepted this role in a self-sacrificial gesture, choosing to be indentured into this servitude to spare her own planet and family, but appears to come to a realization of the lives she’s traded by the end of the film. Ultimately, she chooses to sacrifice herself in a more complete sense by defeating Galactus, pushing him through the portal and away from Earth instead of Johnny. Here, she chooses again to take someone else’s place in a heroic act, but in this moment, she chooses repentance from her lethal travels as Galactus’ herald.
Part of the reason I’ve been so enamored with this film is that it’s the first superhero film in some time that I’ve seen do what superhero stories should do: provide a metaphorical depth that causes us to theologically wrestle with the human condition or, at best, our relationship to God. At its core, this is the reason I’ve always loved comics and superhero stories, and it’s been absent in most movie ventures of late. I’m thrilled to see it return. I encourage you to see Fantastic Four: First Steps, and see how it causes you to think about these themes.