In the game known as the streaming wars, Disney+ came out swinging, bringing with it a massive library of movies and TV shows—with new ones being added all the time. Watched everything on Netflix? Disney+ has a seemingly endless selection of Marvel movies and plenty of Star Wars and Pixar fare too. Problem is, there’s so much stuff that it’s hard to know where to begin. WIRED is here to help. Below are our picks for the best films on Disney+ right now.
For more viewing ideas, try our guides to the best films on Netflix, the best films on Amazon Prime, and the best shows on Apple TV+.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Is the third time really the charm? In the case of the Fantastic Four, the answer is a resounding yes. Following two previous, and largely disastrous, attempts to bring the superhero quartet to the big screen—first when Tim Story did it in 2005, then when Josh Trank tried in 2015—Marvel seems to have figured out the formula for making their so-called “First Family” stick. The film stays true to the original comics with its period 1960s setting and finds astronauts Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) navigating the challenges of becoming both celebrities and superheroes after cosmic ray exposure gifted them with superhuman abilities. Just as the world starts finally feeling normal again, and Reed and Sue prepare to welcome their first child, the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) descends and announces that Earth is set to be destroyed. It’s a typical comic book movie setup that is elevated by both the newness of these characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the likability of the actors playing them. A second film is already in development, but we’ll see the foursome pop up in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, too.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
When a traveling carnival comes to a small Midwestern town, two best friends—Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson)—suspect that something is not quite right. They soon discover that the carnival’s mysterious boss, Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce), has nefarious plans for the townspeople and enlist the help of Will’s dad (Jason Robards) to help them stop him. Rad Bradbury wrote the screenplay for Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on his own 1962 novel, and the film was a rare foray into dark themes for Disney at the time, but developed a rabid cult following over the years. It’s been incredibly difficult to find for decades, so its arrival on Disney+ has fans rejoicing.
Thunderbolts*
Though it failed to do Avengers numbers at the box office, leading many to label it a flop, ticket sales don’t always tell the full story—especially when it comes to the MCU. Florence Pugh reprises her role as Yelena Belova, a Black Widow–trained assassin who gets caught up in a sabotage plan concocted by corrupt CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When Yelena and her fellow killers-for-hire realize they’ve been duped into killing each other to clean up de Fontaine’s mess, they instead band together—with the help of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Yelena’s dad/super soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour) to seek revenge. At this point it’s not really a spoiler to note that the asterisk in the title was meant to denote the placeholder title, as the group is rechristened the “New Avengers.”
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