Marvel Studios revealed the official name for their upcoming Fantastic Four film during a presentation at Hall H at San Diego Comic Con 2024 this past Saturday: Fantastic Four: First Steps. According to director Matt Shakman the film will have a 1960s aesthetic but with a futuristic twist, “What you’ve seen from the ’60s and something more.” The film will star Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Ebon-Moss Bachrach as Ben Grimm/The Thing, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch. It’ll also feature one literally huge appearance in the form of cosmic world eater Galactus — the first comic accurate Galactus ever seen on the big screen in fact.
“I love Galactus,” Shakman (WandaVision, Cut Bank) said. “You know, when you’ve got Galactus, you gotta go big or go home, as you can see.” Attendees of the Hall H presentation were shown footage of the comic accurate Galactus, a brief close-up clip of the the purple-helmed planet devourer peering into the glass-paneled windows of a building — more specifically his enormous eyes.
Galactus has appeared in a Marvel movie before, 2007’s Fantastic Four: The Rise of Silver Surfer, but he was depicted as an amorphous cosmic cloud and didn’t have any speaking lines.
“We’ve got Ralph Ineson playing [Galactus], and he’s fantastic,” Shakman said of the British actor who played the massive Green Knight in 2021’s The Green Knight and Dagmer Cleftjaw in Game of Thrones.
Galactus creator Stan Lee said in an interview in Marvel Masterworks: The Fantastic Four Vol. 5 that, “Galactus was simply another in a long line of super-villains whom we loved creating. …[W]e felt the only way to top ourselves was to come up with an evil-doer who had almost godlike powers. Therefore, the natural choice was sort of a demi-god, but now what would we do with him? We didn’t want to use the tired old cliche about him wanting to conquer the world. There were enough would-be world conquerors in the Marvel Universe and in all the other comic book galaxies. That was when inspiration struck. Why not have him not be a really evil person? After all, a demi-god should be beyond mere good and evil. He’d just be (don’t laugh!) hungry. And the nourishment he’d require is the life force and energy from living planets.”
What do you think of the fact that Fantastic Four: First Steps will be the first film ever to feature a comic accurate Galactus? Are you looking forward to seeing the devourer of worlds on the big screen in comic accurate form for the first time? Let us know in the comments.
