‘2001’ Inspired Film’s Retro-Futuristic Design

“The Fantastic Four: The First Steps” takes place on Earth-828, in an alternate Marvel timeline.

Set in Manhattan, the film stars Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic; Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, aka the Invisible Woman; Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch; and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, aka the Thing. With the timeline shift, director Matt Shakman made it clear that he saw the film being set in an optimistic future.

Production designer Kasra Farahani took that and ran with it, turning London’s Pinewood Studios into a retro-futuristic Manhattan by drawing influences from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and architects including Eero Saarinen and Oscar Niemeyer.

TIMES SQUARE

The Times Square set was a 15-week build and featured buildings such as the RKO Palace, Embassy Theater and other buildings that were a retro-futuristic vision of mid-century New York.

Says Farahani, “We came to this recipe where we figured about two-thirds of New York and Times Square would look more or less exactly like you’d see if you looked at historical pictures of Times Square from the ‘60s, but about a third of it would be different. And what would that be?”

The Forum, the RKO Palace and the Embassy Theater were faithfully recreated from history. Farahani says he created other buildings such as the Horn & Hardart automat, Leighton’s haberdashery and Whelan’s Drug Store. “All those were real things that you can see in reference to the 1960s, but then we added this layer of retro futurism,” he says.

“There’s a monorail system with this giant parabolic structure that looks like something that Eero Saarinen may have designed,” he says, referencing the Finnish-American architect behind St. Louis’ Gateway Arch. Farahani was also influenced by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, whose vernacular of parabolic curves and fins can be seen in the film.

“The other huge impact on the look of New York are the historically accurate vehicles. We have all these Checker cabs. We ended up collecting over 20 Checker cabs. But the magic comes when you mix in half a dozen retro futuristic cars that we built.

“We built two variations of a Panhard, but we added fins and retro futuristic details to it, and then we fabricated, on top of a chassis of a mobility scooter, these five bubble cars that you’ll see in the film. You have these glass domes, tiny, single-occupant cars zipping around in and amongst very familiar 1960s vehicles,” Farahani says.

The Baxter Building

The Baxter Building, the Baxter apartment, and Reed’s lab within it are very much inspired by the architecture of Saarinen and Niemeyer.

Says Farahani, “What I think is important about the work of those two architects is that their work is undeniably futurist and optimistic. Niemeyer designed and built Brasilia, which was supposed to be the utopian capital for Brazil. Saarinen famously did the TWA terminal and Dulles Airport and the St Louis Arch. All of which is so futuristic.”

For Reed’s lab space, Farahani says Stanley Kubrick was another influence in particular “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “I think that film captures an ideal in terms of something that feels very retro futuristic and yet very sophisticated and elegant and is grounded very much in a plausible world.”

In Reed’s lab, Farahani created defining features such as a vaulted ceiling. The lab also had three brightly colored circles, which designated different functions.

Farahani explains, “The red-orange circle, when you first walk in, that’s the messy area where Reed builds prototypes. The yellow circle in the middle is a space for contemplation and discussion. That’s where his chalkboards are that ascend and descend. The third area, the blue area, is his mission control, and that’s where he has the heavy computing tech, is he’s monitoring the status of the Excelsior or receiving transmissions from deep space, or analyzing specimens that he’s collected from space.”

In the film, Sue Storm and Reed Richards find out they’re expecting a baby. As it turns out, the timing was “crazy” for Farahani. When he got the call for the job, he wasn’t sure he could pull it off. “We were expecting our second child, and the baby was going to be born a month after they asked me to start this job.” He almost said no, but the studio gave him the time he needed and was accommodating to his needs. “Being in that headspace of having a newborn, as I was designing the Baxter apartment and the nursery, was specifically helpful in terms of being able to get my day-to-day experience out into it.”

Speaking of Sue and Reed, Farahani explains that the pair had made peace with the fact that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for them to have a child. So, early in the film, what later becomes the nursery is a little office that Sue uses. “It’s connected to their bedroom, and it has a partition so it can be closed off entirely. And so they’re not expecting this.” He continues, “And then the baby comes, and as people do, they adapt, and their priorities realign. She’s in a building that I imagine is the bottom half of the Baxter Building, which is essentially the Future Foundation, the organization that she heads up, so she can find an office.”

One detail he added in that was custom-designed for the film was the wallpaper. “It’s little rockets and planets and it’s fine scale. It’s all done in a very Eames palette because there’s a lot of warmth and whimsy in that palette of colors that we wanted to combine in the nursery.”

Overall, for the Baxter apartment, he wanted to create the feeling of a cozy nest for this family within a New York penthouse. “We brought in a lot of natural materials, as was the vibe of mid-century modern residential architecture. There are a lot of flagstones and a lot of plantings like ferns. So it’s like bringing nature in all of these things to help it to feel warm and human, as opposed to like a cold skyscraper that they’re living in.”