One of the script’s main aims is to make itself understood even by those who haven’t done their homework. To that end, the basics of the Fantastics’ backstory are conveyed in a tightly condensed flashback. The action then gets under way and doesn’t stop. Naturally, none of it makes sense. Sense has never been the point with this lot. What matters is director Matt Shakman’s success in maintaining the tongue-in-cheek tone that distinguishes Marvel movies at their most likeable. When we catch up with them, Mr Fantastic, his wife, Sue, the Invisible Woman, her brother, Johnny, the Human Torch and their craggy friend, the Thing, are now celebrities, having been made famous by their life-saving powers. And because the film is also out to emphasise the human side of being superhuman, Fantastic, alias Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), and Sue (Vanessa Kirby), are expecting their first child. The production design harks back to the 1960s, but the decade has been given what the director, Shakman calls a “retro-futuristic” look. Roughly translated into English, this means the era has been embellished by some of the futuristic theories fashionable at the time. And it does work, mining plenty of wry laughs out of the nostalgic highlights. For the Fantastics, all is going well until the Silver Surfer, a perfectly sculpted metallic woman riding a space-going surfboard, appears out of nowhere to announce that her master, Galactus, the devourer of planets, has fixed on Earth as his next meal.