Sorry, Galactus: Fantastic Four: First Steps Has A Serious Villain Problem
Watch out for your planet, Earthling: This article contains spoilers for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."
In a time-tested fashion of delivering the good news first, let's note that "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" does justice to the titular quartet. Pedro "I star in everything" Pascal makes for a charming, calculating Reed Richards who fully recognizes his "worst case scenario" mindset isn't very healthy. Vanessa Kirby's strong and capable Sue Storm keeps the team (and, more or less, the whole world) together, being the group's most powerful member in more ways than one. Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Ben Grimm has largely made peace with his rocky condition, offering nuggets of wisdom and powerful punches as needed. Joseph Quinn infuses Johnny Storm with a mixture of the character's traditional swagger and a surprising self-awareness. All in all, the Fantastic Four are making their world a better place, and even their potentially insufferable robot sidekick H.E.R.B.I.E. (Matthew Wood) pulls his weight just fine.
Unfortunately, there must always be things in a "Fantastic Four" movie that make no sense, which doubles as our bad news: Who, exactly, are they fighting? Sure, every Marvel fan knows Galactus (Ralph Ineson, doing a good job in a severely limiting situation), the gigantic planet devourer who's one of the key cosmic beings in the comics. Marvel's Galactus design for the movie is perfect, no notes. However, "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" sees fit to infuse his formidable threat with motivations that go above and beyond "just" wanting to eat Earth ... and by doing so, the film turns Galactus into a confusing mess of a villain.
Galactus targeting a baby as his planet-eating successor is convoluted and makes no sense
On paper, Galactus is foreboding enough. Julia Garner's Shalla-Bal seeks planets for him to devour, and he devours them. Earth is next. This, really, should be enough for go time. Yet, the MCU Galactus deviates from the script by focusing on Reed and Sue's son Franklin, declaring that he wants to claim the baby instead. When the Fantastic Four say no, Galactus states his intention to both take the baby and eat Earth.
Sure, adding baby-stealing to planet-eating is a perfectly admirable show of petty villainy. Even so, the reason Galactus wants Franklin makes little sense. His stated reason is that he sees Franklin as powerful enough to pass his eternal hunger to, which would enable Galactus to finally rest. The thing is, though: How would this all work? Would Franklin become a giant planet-eating baby, and Galactus would just ... retire to a space farm, Thanos (Josh Brolin) style? While we're at it, why target Franklin in particular? The MCU is full of gods, Celestials, cosmic beings, and even the cosmic hybrid Love (India Rose Hemsworth) from "Thor: Love and Thunder." Surely, a being who's older than the universe has encountered at least a few of these folks, and could have passed his hunger to one of them?
Maybe Galactus just doesn't have the juice to attack cosmic beings that aren't babies. After all, when he's cut away from his spaceship and its tubes, he's little more than a particularly ineffective kaiju who's hoisted into the other side of the universe with comparatively little difficulty. Or maybe, just maybe, "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" overthought things a bit when it comes to its main villain.
"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" is now in theaters.