“Marvel’s Best Film in a Decade.” The Telegraph Said It. Deadline Called Pedro Pascal the MVP. Here Is the Honest, Complete Verdict on The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

The reviews are in. PEDRO PASCAL is being called the most valuable player of the MCU’s most anticipated relaunch. THE TELEGRAPH went further than anyone. But not every critic agreed — and the full picture, both sides of it, is more interesting than either the hype or the disappointment alone.

The embargo lifted. The reviews went live. And the consensus that emerged around The Fantastic Four: First Steps is — depending on which sentence you read first — either a triumphant MCU comeback or a perfectly competent film that nobody will remember in five years.

Both of those readings are present in the critical conversation. And both are worth taking seriously. Because this is, by any measure, one of the most important Marvel films in years — the first appearance of the Fantastic Four in the MCU, the opening move of Phase Six, the setup for everything that leads to Avengers: Doomsday in December. The stakes are not just cinematic. They are franchise-defining.

And at the center of all of it: PEDRO PASCAL as REED RICHARDS. The man who was doubted. The casting the internet debated for a year. The performance that Deadline called the MVP of the entire film.

The Pedro Pascal question — MVP or too safe?

The most interesting fault line in the Fantastic Four: First Steps critical conversation runs directly through PEDRO PASCAL‘s performance as REED RICHARDS — and it is a fault line worth understanding rather than dismissing.

The majority position, represented by Deadline, The Telegraph, and the film’s general reception: Pascal is the film’s most valuable player. Deadline called his Reed “a great scientist burdened by his analytical genius, forever condemned to play out the worst possible scenario in his mind in his quest to protect the world.” The Deadline review specifically noted one scene — Reed confronted by Sue for implying a sacrifice they had agreed was too high a price — as an example of Pascal doing “a fine job of articulating” the character’s particular flaw: the compulsive catastrophizing of a man who loves his family too much to stop calculating what could go wrong for them.

The minority position, represented most articulately by Popverse: Pascal’s Reed is “suave, likable, well-adjusted, and stylish” in a way that makes him “too normal” — that the film missed an opportunity to show the edges of a character whose comic book version is defined precisely by the tension between his extraordinary intelligence and his very ordinary emotional blind spots. Popverse argued that by making Reed consistently likable, the film denied itself the dramatic friction that makes the character genuinely compelling in the source material.

Both positions are defensible. And the interesting thing is that they are not actually disagreeing about what Pedro Pascal did. They are disagreeing about what the film asked him to do — and whether those instructions were the right ones.

“MVP, though, is Pascal, who, in a poetic inversion of Galactus’ destructive curse, plays Reed as a great scientist burdened by his analytical genius, forever condemned to play out the worst possible scenario in his mind in his quest to protect the world.” — Deadline, July 2025

What works — and why it works for this audience specifically

For fans who came to The Fantastic Four: First Steps through PEDRO PASCAL — through Joel Miller, through Din Djarin, through the man who dances through heartbreak and carries his mother’s name and puts his hand on his chest when the anxiety peaks — the version of Reed Richards the film delivers is, in many ways, the version they were hoping for.

This Reed is warm. He is devoted. He is a man who literally cannot stop imagining the worst possible outcome for his family because he loves them that much. He stretches his body across a retro-futuristic skyline not out of ego but out of the specific, exhausting love of a person who has identified protecting these people as the entire point of his existence.

The film opens with Sue Storm discovering she is pregnant. The story that follows is, underneath the Galactus plot and the Silver Surfer and the IMAX spectacle, the story of what it means to bring a child into a world that might not survive the year. What it means to be Reed Richards — the man who can calculate every outcome — and know that the only calculation that matters is the one where everyone he loves is still standing at the end.

That is not a boring story. That is the story PEDRO PASCAL has been telling in different costumes for his entire career.

The Telegraph’s “Marvel’s best film in a decade” verdict is, in context, striking. The last decade of MCU films includes Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — all of which have passionate defenders. Collin placing First Steps above all of them is either the boldest critical take of the summer or simply the most honest account of what the film achieves when it is working: a genuine, joyful, emotionally grounded superhero story that trusts its actors to make you care about people in blue suits facing a planet-eating god.

The honest verdict — where it lands

The honest answer to “is The Fantastic Four: First Steps good?” is: it depends on what you are asking of it.

If you are asking whether it is a visually stunning, emotionally engaging, well-acted, genuinely fun summer blockbuster with some of the best retro-futuristic production design the MCU has ever committed to — then yes. Unambiguously yes. The film looks extraordinary. The cast has chemistry that feels real and earned rather than constructed. PEDRO PASCAL makes Reed Richards likable and warm and occasionally heartbreaking in exactly the proportion the story asks for. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm is the kind of female superhero performance the MCU has been trying to produce for years. Joseph Quinn makes Johnny Storm audaciously uncool in a way that is somehow perfect. Ebon Moss-Bachrach brings unexpected pathos to a character made of orange rocks.

If you are asking whether it is a film that will redefine the MCU the way Iron Man or The Avengers did — then probably not. It is an excellent first chapter. It is doing exactly what a first chapter should do: introducing these characters, establishing their relationships, making you want to see them again. What it is not doing is detonating the franchise in the way that only the very best superhero films do.

The Pajiba verdict — solid B, good-but-not-great grilled cheese — is perhaps the most useful one for setting expectations. Go in wanting a grilled cheese. You will not be disappointed. You might even be delighted. And PEDRO PASCAL, as the man who made the whole thing feel worth caring about, is the reason you will come back for the sequel.

The film opens July 25. The doubters had their year. Now it is time to see the movie.

“I can’t believe I’m writing this — really quite moving performances from its four charismatic leads, being arguably the best of Pedro Pascal’s releases this year.” — Deadline. He was doubted. He showed up. He is the MVP. Of course he is.