‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ Stars Break Down the Film’s Retro-Futuristic Style

Marvel’s First Family is ready for its closeup.

Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps is almost here, uniting Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as they face their greatest threat yet. Set in a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world, First Steps picks up when the four have already established themselves as heroes, and they’re a close-knit team. But their family bond is soon threatened when they find themselves facing an interstellar enemy, one who threatens to destroy everything they’ve built.

Before the film hits theaters July 25, Marvel.com sat down with the titular quartet — Pascal, Kirby, Moss-Bachrach, and Quinn — for a behind-the-scenes peek.   

MARVEL.COM: Ebon, how did you react the first time you saw yourself fully rendered as The Thing?

EBON MOSS-BACHRACH: It was a slow process. It takes so many hours for them to [complete it], weeks and weeks of work, so it was a slow rollout. I saw it at like 20 percent done and then 40 percent done. It was kind of like a crude rock, where the sculptor was chipping away more and more. But I finally saw it a couple weeks ago because I’ve been working right up to the end. When I saw the fully realized Ben, as you can imagine I was deeply relieved. And it was awe-inspiring.

MARVEL.COM: Joseph, you had to spend a lot of time on wires to play Johnny. What’s the secret to actually looking cool while dangling in the air, hanging from a harness?

JOSEPH QUINN: I don’t know if you can. [Laughs] It’s certainly humbling being up on a harness. You’ve got to have quite good core strength, lumbar strength. That’s the one that’ll get you. It’s quite fun. We had some fantastic sequences where we were doing the zero-G stuff, and it was a laugh. I thought we were going to have quite a bad time when we were shooting it, but it eventually ended up being some of the most enjoyable stuff we shot, don’t you think?

PEDRO PASCAL: Absolutely.

MARVEL.COM: Pedro, you’re playing a character who is in many ways larger than life: He’s got stretchy powers, and he’s the smartest guy in the room. How did you want to make Reed Richards feel human?

PEDRO PASCAL: I find all of the characters to be so human, which is the great juxtaposition. They’re these genetically altered Super Heroes, and they’re a family unit. I just know that the only way to ground him to the world is through his family and his relationships to his family — mainly to his partner and the love of his life [Sue]. The way he really understands himself is through the love that he feels for his family, which is far more complex than astrophysics.

MARVEL.COM: This film also highlights how Sue’s super power isn’t just her invisibility. She’s also an incredible diplomat and communicator. Vanessa, what interested you about exploring that part of her personality?

VANESSA KIRBY: She has that quality in the comics. She seems to equalize the team a lot. But also coming up against different nemeses, she can be so fierce. I loved discovering [Sue’s] comics stuff with Doom or other super villains. She can be like a tiger mother sometimes, but I also love the fact that she’s this feminine presence — and the only feminine presence. But she is able to negotiate and navigate and make people feel seen. She has a very high emotional intelligence. That, for me, was something I really wanted to translate from the comics.

MARVEL.COM: One of the things that’s so spectacular about this film is the production design. The retro-futuristic style is so much fun. Did any of you have a favorite set or detail?

EBON MOSS-BACHRACH: There’s that Lower East Side block, that Yancy Street set. I think I was probably the only actor that worked on that, of the four of us. But there were so many details — like when you put fresh cement down and somebody runs up and draws a little heart or writes their name on the sidewalk. I can’t imagine that’s in the movie. No one’s ever going to see that. But that just informs the soul and the feel of the place.

PEDRO PASCAL: Times Square blew me away. The arrival of the Silver Surfer in a booming, nighttime Times Square on Halloween just totally blew my mind. Every piece of that set was functioning. All the cars, all the background players, all the details of all the storefronts and marquees… It just absolutely took my breath away.

Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in theaters July 25.