"I herald his beginning. I herald your end. I herald Galactus."
Such ominous words can be hard to live up to, but the Silver Surfer's introduction to her master in The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a perfect encapsulation of the threat that Galactus represents. He's not known as The Devourer of Worlds for nothing, after all.
Yet even so, the sheer scale of his size and might isn't as easy to convey in person. Ever since Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced Galactus in Fantastic Four #48, the cosmic alien has become a pillar of Marvel storytelling, heralding doom for our heroes over and over across the past six decades. Onscreen, it's been a different story, though.
With his skyscraper height and funky Kirby-designed helmet, the iconic version of Galactus that's persisted for 58 years and counting in the comics always seemed harder to imagine on film. He's kind of trippy if you think about it, an abstract force with a wacky outfit.
Clouded judgment
That's why Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer tried to work around that design with a now-infamous take on Galactus that ended up portraying him as a giant cloud. Yep, a cloud. And just like that, it suddenly became a lot harder to take the Silver Surfer and his ominous warning seriously.
If I'm being kind, you could argue the trash cloud idea did have some potential. After all, Galactus is supposed to be a cosmic being who came into existence before the formation of reality itself, a sheer force of nature who defies everything you thought you knew about the cosmos. There's something Lovecraftian about this abstract notion that can be hard to capture in the form of a humanoid-looking man, no matter how big or strong he might be.
Plus, you have to remember that special effects in 2007 weren't as capable as they are now (MODOK's ghastly CGI in Ant-Man's Quantumania notwithstanding). Had director Tim Story attempted a comic-book faithful depiction of Galactus, the result might have looked closer to something out of Roger Corman's low-budget Fantastic Four movie from the 90s.
But unfortunately, the Galactus cloud didn't pay off. In fact, it bombed harder than The Thing dropping out of the sky to get his clobber on. And in doing so, it completely derailed Rise of the Silver Surfer's final act after the film had spent so long teasing Galactus's scary arrival.
This was par for the course, though, back during Fox's reign in superhero cinema. There was still a fear in the noughties that mainstream moviegoers wouldn't be open to the wackier side of comic book storytelling. That's why we ended up with the X-Men donned in black leather instead of their regular flamboyant costumes, for example.
All you can eat
A few years back, Story opened up about this problem (h/t comicbook.com), explaining why studios were more hesitant in a pre-MCU world:
"The ones in charge were afraid of what that could be because, you have to remember, even Marvel has gone through quite cleverly and successfully introduced us to superheroes being in space, and at the time that was never dealt with. So, as a being from space, there were those in charge who weren’t ready for what that could be. And, so, you know, that’s not the interpretation it should have been. But coming up, there will be some good stuff."
Eighteen years later, mainstream audiences have become far more used to seeing outlandish character designs like Galactus on screen. Just look at cosmic entities such as Arishem the Judge in Eternals or even the likes of Rocket Raccoon and Howard the Duck in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Thanks in large part to the work put in by Marvel's ever-expanding cinematic universe, there's now space for comic book movies to be far more faithful in their interpretation of characters like Galactus, and it's paying off.
Just look at the new Galactus in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Together, director Matt Shakman and his team have done the impossible and given us a Galactus who actually lives up to the Silver Surfer's hype. Holding back from showing him fully in the teasers did have us worried, but it turns out we had no reason to be.
This Galactus is a bona fide threat who never comes across as silly or dumb. You can feel the weight of every movement, every stare, which makes him feel more believable and therefore more dangerous. This is a threat that's worthy of Marvel's First Family and their first outing in the MCU.
Much of that success is down to actor Ralph Ineson, who doesn't just voice a CGI version of Galactus but actually embodies him physically too, acting on set with his fantastic co-stars. It couldn't have been easy to figure out the logistics of working out that scale especially, but it was worth the gamble. Just like Tom Hiddleston's Loki pulling off those giant horns, which would have once been considered too silly for film, so too does Ineson and that even bigger headpiece.
There's a reason why this iconic Galactus design has endured in the comics, to the point where it's long been impossible to imagine him looking any other way. And now, thanks to The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the same is also true on screen as well. As Iman Vellani puts it in her Letterboxd review of the film, "My big hungry boy has been liberated from cloud purgatory!", and I, for one, couldn't be happier.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps is out now in theaters. For more, check out our Fantastic Four: First Steps review, and our breakdown of the oh-so-exciting Fantastic Four: First Steps post-credits scenes.
