Care, Authority, and the Limits of Visibility: Sue Storm, Postfeminist Containment, and the Reconfiguration of Heroism in the Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Abstract

This article examines how The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) reconfigures cinematic heroism by positioning Sue Storm as the strategic and moral centre of Marvel’s First Family. Prior scholarship on female superheroes has concentrated on Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Black Widow, leaving Sue Storm, one of the genre’s oldest and most consistently marginalised figures, critically under-theorised. Addressing this gap, the study develops a set of theoretically informed analytical parameters, that draw together narrative authority, care as competence, and reclaimed visibility, each read against the cross-cutting risk of postfeminist containment. These parameters synthesise Butler’s theory of gender performativity, Gilligan’s ethic of care, and feminist organisational and leadership theory with Banet-Weiser’s critique of the “economy of visibility.” Using a qualitative design that combines close textual analysis of the film with a reflexive thematic reading of a defined corpus of professional criticism, the article argues that First Steps grants Sue diegetic institutional authority, treats her care as functional competence, and reclaims her signature power of (in)visibility as presence, while binding that achievement to maternal legitimation. The film simultaneously grants Sue leadership and tethers her power to motherhood, reproducing a postfeminist pattern in which empowerment is celebrated even as it is contained. Read against a comparative sketch of recent female-led superhero films, First Steps appears distinctive in elevating a legacy ensemble character through institutionally earned rather than inherited authority, while remaining subject to the genre’s recurring containment mechanisms. The study concludes that legacy female characters can be narratively rehabilitated without origin rewrites, but that visibility alone is an insufficient measure of feminist progress. Situated within debates about the social self in post-digital societies, the analysis also considers how promotional paratexts, platform-based fan discourse, and professional criticism jointly mediate the character’s public meaning. Implications for genre scholarship, franchise storytelling, and future intersectional research are discussed.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Societies, 2026 · DOI ↗