Modular, retro-futuristic production design is The Fantastic Four: First Steps’s greatest asset. Whereas many Marvel films lack a signature style beyond “shot in front of green screen,” the studio’s latest film has all the charm of a children’s drawing of the future: flying cars and cute robots and Technicolor space travel. The costumes, too, are chic throwbacks: men in jackets and ties, women in blocky skirts, headbands as far as the eye can see. There’s just one glaring outlier amid this 1960s-inspired aesthetic: Sue Storm has beach waves.
Even if you’re not familiar with the concept of beach waves, you’ve certainly seen them: in movies and TV, onstage, out in the real world. Beach waves are an especially modern hairstyle, often credited to a Dyson Airwrap or a similar curling iron. The style involves curling the bottom half of a person’s hair (rather than, say, curlers that go all the way up to the scalp), allowing their locks to look like they’ve maybe emerged from saltwater and dried under a gentle breeze with more volume than they may otherwise have. Obviously, no one’s hair really looks like this at the beach, but beach waves are pervasive on screens big and small: Rachel Brosnahan’s Lois Lane has beach waves in Superman; Cate Blanchett has beach waves in Black Bag. Every single character Blake Lively has ever played has beach waves — she has a whole line of hair products that promise an identical look.
Sue Storm’s beach waves would be unremarkable if the movie were unequivocally set in 2025 or the near(ish) future, but to see this aggressively modern hairstyle against a ’60s backdrop invites a strange cognitive dissonance. Other female characters in the film, like Storm’s friend Lynne (Sarah Niles) or The Thing’s love interest, Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), all have undeniably ’60s hairstyles: straight with blunt bangs and exaggerated outward flips at the ends. Is the film set in the past? The future? All we know is that First Steps is set on Earth-828 — an alternate universe — where every woman has the same kind of hair except Sue Storm.
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Weird hair for Sue is not exactly new to the Fantastic Four as an enterprise, lest we forget Kate Mara’s wig in the 2015 film adaptation. Jessica Alba’s version of the character ten years before had hair that can only be described as “just let out of a ponytail.” Canonically (or at least as drawn by the legendary comics artist Jack Kirby, to whom First Steps is dedicated), Sue’s hair resembles a shoulder-length version of Farrah Fawcett’s feathery waves. Maybe Vanessa Kirby would have looked silly in a wig like this, but First Steps is often a silly movie. There’s a robot who makes tomato sauce! Let’s instead assume that when the Fantastic Four got exposed to whatever cosmic particles made them fantastic, those particles also gave Storm beach waves. Mr. Fantastic can stretch, Johnny Storm can fly and shoot fire, The Thing is a big strong rock, and Sue Storm’s powers are her invisibility shield and perfectly tousled beach waves. It’s the only logical explanation.
