A Trap for Galactus in New York: 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' Is Now Streaming on Disney+
An official clip from The Fantastic Four: First Steps shows the team trying to lure Galactus into a trap in New York to save Franklin Richards, the son of Reed and Sue. The film is now streaming on Disney+, and the story behind the scene runs from Jack Kirby's designs to a very human family.
The short answer: An official clip from The Fantastic Four: First Steps shows the team trying to lure Galactus into a trap in New York to save Franklin Richards, the son of Reed and Sue. The film is now streaming on Disney+, and the story behind the scene runs from Jack Kirby's designs to a very human family.
The plan is as simple as it is desperate: lure Galactus into a trap in New York before he can reach Franklin Richards. That is the premise of an official clip from The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and the film itself is now streaming on Disney+.
The stakes are not abstract. Franklin is Reed and Sue's son, and the devourer of worlds has set his sights on him. Standing in the way are four people who are already four years into being the Fantastic Four: Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing. They face Ralph Ineson's Galactus and his Herald, the Silver Surfer, played by Julia Garner, in a vibrant world inspired by 1960s retro-futurism.
Feige frames the trap as a family decision. The four count everyone in their city as family and are willing to make sacrifices for them; the question the film asks is what happens when it doesn't seem possible to save both.
It's not powers. It's not strength. It's the ability to find a way through the impossible that makes a Marvel hero a Marvel hero. Kevin Feige, producer and President of Marvel Studios
That idea runs through First Steps, and it is as old as the team itself. In 1961 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby launched Fantastic Four #1 with Marvel's first super hero team, a real family with real problems, unlike their contemporaries, and that relatability paved the way for characters from Iron Man and Black Panther to Thor and Captain Marvel. The film meets the four four years into the job, settled into their fame and their powers so the story can stay on them as a family: they share a home, they get ready for bed together, Ben shaves. Small moments first, then Galactus sets his sights on Reed and Sue's son.
A devourer who isn't a villain
What makes the New York confrontation unsettling is who is on the other side of it. Galactus eats planets, but he is no mustache-twirling villain. He is a constant, and the fear comes from inevitability: a herald telling you to count your days gives the story, in Feige's words, "the greatest ticking clock in movie history."
He is not evil. He is a constant. He is, as Shalla-Bal [Garner] says in the movie, "as necessary as the stars." He's like a great white shark. A great white shark doesn't hate you; it's doing what it has to do to survive. Kevin Feige, producer and President of Marvel Studios
There is a precise hand behind Galactus' look. First Steps is threaded with tributes to Jack Kirby, from its Earth-828 setting to his words carried into the credits, and the character's design is based directly on Kirby's drawings. Inside Galactus' world ship, Feige recalled, he and the team kept tinkering with reference lines taken from the comics, saying to each other: "Not Kirby enough. We need more Kirby here." Feige calls Kirby one of the most influential and greatest artists and creators of the 20th century, and one who is not as well known as he should be; the film, he says, is a step toward fixing that.
From WandaVision to a space-age New York
Directing the film is Matt Shakman, who previously made WandaVision for Disney+, a series that mixed practical effects and cutting-edge technology. That work is why he got the job, Feige said: Shakman handled both the ambition and the tone, and First Steps aims for a similar register, embracing what some might call the silliness of a stretching man or a rock man without letting it turn kitschy, so that it feels real. The four leads, Feige has said, were cast as the best actors for the roles, and even so, he notes, it could not be taken for granted that they were already a family at the first table read.
Feige ties that 1960s setting to something specific: the space-age optimism of the early Lee and Kirby comics. Putting the team in their own universe also spared the film a harder question, since it never has to explain why they missed the Avengers' earlier battles. As Feige put it, the Fantastic Four appeared in comic storylines the movies adapted, from the Avengers to the Infinity Gauntlet to Civil War, "but they weren't in any of the movies because we didn't have the rights to them."
First Steps opened in theaters on July 25, 2025, bringing Marvel's First Family into the MCU 64 years after their comic-book debut. The world of the film has kept growing since: at Disneyland Park, guests have been meeting the four heroes in Tomorrowland, along with their robot assistant H.E.R.B.I.E., built for the parks in just 90 days, and members of the family also appear at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort and Disneyland Paris.
Now the story has come home to streaming. The clip lays out the plan; the film shows what it costs the four to protect one of their own. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now streaming on Disney+.