The 37th entry in the MCU, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set in a world of its own – in every sense.
The movie’s Earth-828 is a planet set in another corner of the multiverse from the rest of the Marvelverse. Here, comic-book legends Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s 1961 creation the Fantastic Four comes back to action-packed life courtesy of WandaVision director Matt Shakman and his ridiculously charismatic cast.
Here’s everything you need to know about how – and where – the film’s Mad Men-meets-The-Incredibles version of 1960s New York came together.
What happens in The Fantastic Four: First Steps?
A tale of space travel, scientific discovery, intergalactic peril and motherhood, First Steps (re)introduces audiences to Kirby and Lee’s cosmically superpowered First Family: team leader Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal); world leader Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby); stompy rock man Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach); and boyish singleton Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn).
The quartet, zapped by cosmic rays on an earlier space voyage, are all that stands between humanity and Ralph Ineson’s perpetually peckish planet devourer Galactus literally eating the Earth. Presaging this fate is the Surfer Surfer (Julia Garner), Galactus’s herald in a scene in Times Square.
Where was The Fantastic Four: First Steps filmed?
Legendary industrial designer Syd Mead once called science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule’. The 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner contributor was a key influence on Shakman and production designer Kasra Farahani’s gleaming retro-futurist vision – and his definition of sci-fi sums up The Fantastic Four: First Steps perfectly.
This ‘Kirby meets Kubrick’ aesthetic of an alternative 1964 New York is full of flying cars, light-speed space ships and zippy monorails, a reality we’re still awaiting. Thanks to technology we do have – cutting-edge VFX and set design – this alternative metropolis came together 5000 miles away from the real Big Apple.
Here’s how they did it.
The movie’s alternative New York was created at Pinewood Studios, UK
After filming most of Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* in the US, the MCU was back in its adopted homeland of England for First Steps. A big chunk of the 85-day shoot was filmed at Pinewood Studios outside of London, kicking off in late July 2024. The vast majority of the movie’s ’60s New York locations – Yancy Street in the Lower East Side, Times Square, Reed Richards’ lab in the Baxter Building – were created via 30 sets across eight sound stages on Pinewood’s two backlots.
The alternative 1960s Times Square backdrops several key scenes in the movie, including the Silver Surfer’s doom-laden first oratory. Julia Garner gave the speech on a Pinewood tower in a Pinewood backlot. ‘The combination between the set design, the scale of the set, and also just shooting in Pinewood was really magical,’ she tells Thought Catalog. Real 1960s premises, including Horn & Hardart, Whelan’s, Leighton’s, RKO Palace, Embassy Theatre and Forum Cinema, were recreated on a set that was 22 percent smaller than the real-life locale.
Another key New York location recreated at Pinewood is the fictional Yancy Street (above), a riff on the real Lower East Side thoroughfare of Delancey Street where Kirby grew up. ‘We wanted Yancy Street to feel like part of the normal world, not the futuristic one,’ says set decorator Jille Azis. ‘When Ben Grimm visits, it feels like home – a place to escape the stress and reconnect with the past.’ The set had been used in Deadpool & Wolverine and was repurposed and redressed for First Steps.
Reed Richards’ lab was filmed on Pinewood’s S Stage
Reed Richard’s Baxter Building lab was a set built on Pinewood’s S Stage, recently used in Black Mirror, Warfare and Andor, while the Reeds’ penthouse was built across the studio on W Stage. Look out for colour-coding to demark the different areas of Mr Fantastic’s workspace: red for his hands-on tasks like robotics; yellow for brainstorming; and blue for mission control.
Modernist architects like Eero Saarinen and Oscar Niemeyer helped inform the tower’s stylish futurist aesthetic. ‘It was in a penthouse of a high-rise in Manhattan,’ says production designer Farahani, ‘so we drew a lot of inspiration from single-family-home mid-century architecture, especially from the West Coast.’
Mole Man’s Subterranea base was created inside Middleton Mine, Derbyshire
In First Steps, cult Marvel antagonist Mole Man lives below ground with his acolytes, the Moloids. Played by Richard Jewell and Black Bird’s Paul Walter Hauser, he’s an enjoyably ambivalent presence: borderline besotted with Sue Storm but generally done with everyone else’s shit. His realm, Subterranea, was constructed in the spectacular lead and limestone mine in England’s Peak District.
A 725-foot section of the 32 miles of mines was dressed to reflect this strange community of below-grounders, with pipes and other weathered industrial fittings added and a bus shipped in as Mole Man’s HQ. Middleton Mine is firmly on the Hollywood map these days: it was also used for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’s climactic scenes.
Baxter Building interiors were filmed at Palacio de Congresos de Oviedo, Spain
The Asturias city of Oviedo is the latest Spanish location to feature in the Marvelverse, following Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Eternals and Spider-Man: Far From Home. Over four days in The Palacio de Congresos, a futuristic 2011 building designed by Spanish-Swiss architect Santiago Calatrava, was used for scenes set in the lobby of the Baxter Building and the assembly hall of the Future Foundation, Sue Storm’s UN-like institute.
The real New York was used for the CG backdrops
Of course, you can’t recreate the entirety of the Big Apple on a Buckinghamshire backlot, and photography of the real New York was shot for VFX plates.
And one location that doesn’t feature…
Lulworth Cove, Dorset
The natural limestone arch on England’s south coast – one of the UK’s most recognisable beauty spots and a filming location for Nanny McPhee, Wilde and the Carey Mulligan Far From The Madding Crowd – was closed, along with surrounding beaches, for filming for two days in June 2023. Thwarted tourists will be frustrated to discover that the scene – which involved Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm – doesn’t feature in the finished movie.