Fantastic Four goes retro: why the nostalgic look of Marvel’s reboot is more than just an aesthetic choice

With The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Marvel puts audiences straight into a world bursting with color, chrome and 1960s space-age ambition. This is not a quiet reboot. This is a brilliant vision where every detail, from the shimmering suits to the vintage tech, flashes like a signal from another time.

Matt Shakman embraces retro with full force. His film radiates the energy of an era shaped by rocket ships, moon landings and the dream of impossible futures. The excitement comes from more than just familiar characters. It comes from the sheer visual power of an alternate Earth built on optimism and bold design.

What makes this choice electrifying is the layered conversation between past and present, between how the 1960s imagined the future and how today’s world reflects that imagination back at the screen. Let’s break down why this matters and why The Fantastic Four is shaping up to be one of Marvel’s most visually daring projects yet.

When Marvel meets the Jetsons: a future imagined by the past, reimagined by the present

At first glance, the gleaming suits, bright color palettes and sleek gadgetry of The Fantastic Four: First Steps seem like a direct nod to the comic book stylings of Jack Kirby. But underneath that, there’s something else, a cultural memory that traces back to the same 1960s optimism that gave birth to The Jetsons.

While Hanna-Barbera’s futuristic family embodied the hopes, dreams and sometimes naïve assumptions of what tomorrow might look like, Marvel’s new Fantastic Four taps into that same well of imagination, but through a double filter. It’s not just how the 1960s saw the future, it’s how we, today, look back at how the 1960s imagined the future.

Matt Shakman’s comments about wanting the film to feel like it was made in 1965, “the way Stanley Kubrick would have made it,” capture the serious cinematic tone, but the aesthetic overlaps with the playful, space-age optimism of The Jetsons. Shakman said,

“We’re not just doing the '60s, we’re doing retro-future '60s. It's part what you know from the '60s, but part what you’ve never seen before.”

The domed cities, floating vehicles, chrome surfaces and bubbly architecture were all hallmarks of that era’s pop culture, and they whisper through the design choices here, even when the stakes are cosmic destruction.

This layered retrofuturism makes the film not just an homage, but a cultural conversation across time. We’re watching a modern Marvel blockbuster that lets us marvel at the dreams of a past that never fully arrived, yet still shapes how we imagine space, technology and heroism.

A conversation about technology: then and now

In the 1960s, technology was imagined as a savior. The future was filled with push-button solutions, instant meals, robotic helpers and shiny machines designed to make life effortless. The Jetsons promised a world where technology fixed everything.

But The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrives in a very different cultural moment. Today’s audiences know that technology brings risks, unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas.

The Marvel universe itself has been shaped by stories of tech gone wrong, from Ultron to Kang. Shakman explained his choice to ground the visuals:

“I really wanted to go with as grounded a version of space as possible. So, no wormholes. Their tech is very much retro-future, but it's also booster… It’s a combination of Marvel and Apollo.”

By wrapping this new Fantastic Four in the optimistic designs of the past, the film plays with tension: can we still believe in a future where machines are on our side, or have we learned too much to trust the dream?

The influence of 1960s design on how we picture space

The aesthetics of The Fantastic Four: First Steps are more than a stylistic exercise. They reflect how the 1960s shaped our collective imagination about space. Back then, real-world space exploration was breaking boundaries, and that energy fueled science fiction’s look: smooth surfaces, modular designs, glowing panels and elegant suits.

Even today, when we picture astronauts, spaceships or far-off planets, traces of that era remain. The film taps into this shared visual language, reminding audiences that our visions of the cosmos are deeply rooted in the mid-century dreams that first captured the world’s imagination. As Shakman put it,

“I really wanted it to feel like it was made in 1965, the way Stanley Kubrick would have made it. Within reason. [We’ve] used old lenses, and taken an approach to filmmaking that feels more of the time. Of course, we still have a lot of CG.”

Designing the retrofuture: behind the visual craft

Matt Shakman chose a vintage look with intention and precision. In interviews, he explained how the team used old lenses, practical effects and physical miniatures to create a texture that feels handcrafted instead of overpolished. This visual language merges the experimental spirit of the 1960s with the precision of modern filmmaking.

The impact shows up in every layer of the production. The Fantastic Four suits capture the era’s belief in sleek, functional heroism, translating Jack Kirby’s comic designs into real-world materials. The sets offer tactile, detailed environments, filled with buttons, dials and switches inspired by Apollo-era spacecraft. Lighting choices draw directly from mid-century sci-fi cinema, where color and shadow help carry the emotional tone.

By focusing on these carefully built visual elements, Shakman shapes a world that feels nostalgic and fresh at the same time, immersing the audience in a Marvel universe where the past’s dreams of the future gain new, vivid life.

A future of bright simplicity versus today’s moral weight

The world imagined in the 1960s often saw the future as streamlined, efficient and bright. Stories from that era, like The Jetsons, presented technology as a source of convenience, smoothing daily life and promising a happier tomorrow.

In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the future carries far more weight. The heroes face cosmic dangers, personal sacrifice and difficult moral choices. The bright retro style doesn’t erase that tension. Instead, it sharpens the contrast between the cheerful optimism of past visions and the complex realities that define modern heroism.

This layered approach invites audiences to reflect on how much our cultural imagination has shifted. Do we still believe in effortless progress, or have we learned to see the shadows behind every bright idea?

Why The Fantastic Four: First Steps retrovision works

The Fantastic Four: First Steps delivers more than Marvel playing dress-up with the past. It offers a carefully crafted vision that reconnects the MCU to the optimism, ambition and visual daring of an era that shaped how we still picture space, technology and heroism. Shakman summed it up simply:

“We are our own universe. Which is wonderful and liberating. There’s really no [other] superheroes. There’s no Easter eggs. There’s no running into Iron Man or whatever. They’re it, in this universe.”

By embracing retrofuturism, the film positions itself as both a tribute and a reinvention, reminding audiences where these characters came from and why they still matter today.

This choice gives The Fantastic Four a unique place in the Marvel universe. Surrounded by stories that often explore power, loss and responsibility in darker tones, this film lights up the screen with a different kind of energy. It celebrates imagination, acknowledges the weight of the present and dares to believe in a future where style, heart and cosmic adventure can still go hand in hand.