Superheroes are a thing of the past in the latest iteration of Marvel’s Fantastic Four, the best by far of the company’s attempts to translate the long-running comic book’s appeal to the big screen. This it does not by trying to reinvent the wheel but, rather smartly, by addressing the elephant in the room, locating the action in a kitsch yet somehow timeless retro-future more befitting The Jetsons than The Avengers. It also benefits from a smart script and — 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.

Director Matt Shakman sets out his stall with a bold opening gambit that sees Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) discovering that she is pregnant by her partner Reed Richards (Pascal). Together with Sue’s brother Johnny (Joseph Quinn) and Reed’s best friend Ben (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), the couple are also celebrating five years of Fantasticness, which they do quite literally on TV’s The Ted Gilbert Show. This enables a quick and effective recap of the foursome’s origin story: during a routine space mission, an electric storm left each one of them with “cosmically compromised DNA” and their own special skillset.

Interestingly, the word “superpower” is never used — the conscientious Reed prefers the word “anomalies” to describe these changes — and the film quickly gets to work establishing a world — half real-life Manhattan, half EPCOT — where the Four have become the guardians of America (and, by extension, the world). The rejection of the s-word is important, since the Four’s abilities haven’t aged terribly well: Reed has become a real-life Stretch Armstrong; Sue can make herself invisible and project force fields; Johnny becomes a human torch at will; and Ben — aka The Thing, and the only who must live with his “anomaly” full time — is now a clay-like creature gifted with super-strength.

The perma-’50s vibe is incredibly well realized, and the sets are endlessly inventive: Cinema marquees in Times Square boast films with titles like Subzero Intel, Sunrise in Minsk, and The Emperor’s Twin (a Walt Disney production, apparently), plus adverts for Juicy Fruit chewing gum and Pop-Tarts. The background casting is equally inspired; this is a film in which serious men in black-framed glasses and homburg hats point at things that literally everybody else is already looking at and say, “Would ya look at that!!!” Similarly, the Four’s charitable trust — the Future Foundation — is quite a modest enterprise, more concerned with tackling crime at a grassroots rather than global level.

The peace is suddenly shattered by the arrival of a mysterious silver surfer — not that one, but a female lookalike. Known as The Herald and played by Julia Garner, she announces to the world’s media that the earth has been “marked for death” and will soon be consumed an entity she refers to as “The Devourer.” This turns out to be another name for Galactus, a surprisingly scary Marvel villain played with sinister sincerity by Ralph Ineson. Galactus is driven by an unassuageable appetite for destruction and, during an impressive showdown in space, offers to make a deal: Galactus will spare Earth if Reed and Sue hand over their as-yet unborn child.

Needless to say, they don’t, and when they return — in scenes that are wryly reminiscent of today — the citizens of New York berate them for their selfishness (“You said no???”). Nevertheless, much to his wife’s annoyance, Reed realizes that desperate measures must be taken to keep Galactus at bay, and so he devises a series of plans to save the world, using his own child as bait. This in itself makes a refreshing change from the usual baffling Marvel McGuffin, and even though the outcome is wholly predictable, there’s a definite frisson in the sight of The Herald’s liquid-metal hand trying to snatch Sue’s baby from the womb.

As expected (from recent Marvel movies, not Fantastic Four movies passim), the VFX are pretty extraordinary, and, for once, there’s even a clarity to the action, which is certainly spectacular on an Imax screen. The big draw, though, is the core cast. Kirby is a powerful Mama Lion, Quinn makes for an audaciously uncool Johnny, and Moss-Bachrach brings unexpected pathos to The Thing. 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.

RELATED: How to Watch the Marvel Movies in Chronological Order

That might sound heavy, but First Steps is admirably light on po-face superhero gravitas and rich in satisfying action-movie spectacle, notably when Galactus shows up in New York. The ending might seem pleasingly final, but watch for a predictable and quite unnecessary post-credits sting that sets up the Fantastic Four’s return with a cliffhanger and teases the return of a very familiar character. Well, it is a Marvel movie, after all.

Title: The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Distributor: Disney
Release date: Friday, July 25
Director: Matt Shakman
Screenwriters: Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, Ian Springer
Cast: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Paul Walter Hauser, Julia Garner, Ralph Ineson
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 1 hr 55 mins