“We all know the story,” talk show host Ted Gilbert (Mark Gatiss) says in trailers for The Fantastic Four: First Steps. “Four brave astronauts head up into space and come back forever changed.” The world-famous quartet of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), siblings Sue (Vanessa Kirby) and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) were changed by cosmic rays, with the space-age pioneers of the Excelsior exploring the final frontier years before the 1969 moon landing. But when exactly does Fantastic Four: First Steps take place?
A new featurette touting the production design and practical sets of the Matt Shakman-directed Fantastic Four reboot — set in a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world developed by the First Family’s Future Foundation — reveals that First Steps is set in 1965.
In the new footage below, the Fab Four are called into action during an appearance on The Ted Gilbert Show, with the theater’s marquee promoting a celebration of “four years of the Fantastic Four.”
That puts the Fantastic Four’s origin in 1961, the same year that Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, and the Thing debuted in the pages of The Fantastic Four #1 from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. In fact, a commemorative manhole cover that can be seen in previous footage dates the Fantastic Four’s first appearance — saving New York City from Giganto, a gigantic green monster from the Mole Man’s Monster Isle — as August 8. (The comic’s debut issue is cover-dated November 1961, but was published on Aug. 8, 1961.)
“On this place, on this day, the 4 saved the city on the eighth day of August,” reads an inscription on the manhole cover honoring the four “scientists, adventurers, explorers, imaginauts.” It’s there that the Four stand when Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) heralds the arrival of the planet-devouring Galactus (Ralph Ineson), as seen in the film’s final trailer.
In the comics, by 1965, the Fantastic Four faced the likes of Mole Man, the shape-shifting Skrulls, the diabolical Doctor Doom, and foes like Puppet Master, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Red Ghost, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, Molecule Man, the Frightful Four, and Dragon Man. Reed and Sue wed in 1965’s Fantastic Four Annual #3, and Norrin Radd (a.k.a. Silver Surfer) and Galactus made their first appearances that same year.
“We’re not just doing the ’60s, we’re doing retro-future ’60s,” Shakman said at Comic-Con 2024. “It’s part what you know from the 1960s, but part what you’ve never seen before.”
Unlike Fox’s 2005 Fantastic Four and 2015’s Fant4stic, the first Marvel-made Fantastic Four film isn’t an origin story. (Marvel Comics will explore the cosmic-powered quartet’s very first exploit in the Future Foundation-authorized Fantastic Four: First Steps comic book, the official prequel comic on stands July 9.)
“More than just the visual aesthetics, the ‘60s to me are all about optimism,” Shakman said. “It’s about looking to the stars and dreaming about traveling into space. It’s about how with the right heart and the right mind, you can do anything — which is what the Fantastic Four is all about.”
Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens only in theaters July 25.
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