Although Galactus technically appeared in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, it was in the form of a planet-sized cosmic cloud that never uttered a word. With the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps on the 2025 movies schedule next month, we’re finally getting a faithful adaptation of the Devourer of Worlds, who’s being played by Ralph Ineson. Needless to say that Galactus will be a huge threat, figuratively and literally, in the upcoming Marvel movie, and I’m even more pumped to see the magnitude of this after reading teases about it from producer Grant Curtis and director Matt Shakman.
These teases were heard when CinemaBlend visited the set of The Fantastic Four: First Steps last year. At this point, Ineson’s casting as Galactus had been public knowledge for several months, but we had yet to see any kind of official peek at the antagonist who debuted in the pages of 1966’s Fantastic Four #48. Starting off, here’s what Grant Curtis had to say about what we can expect from Galactus when he comes to the movie’s 1960s retrofuturistic Earth:
The most epic of the most epic that you could imagine? Because that’s the global stakes we’re dealing with. The universal stakes we’re dealing with. And it’s not a spoiler that Galactus … when Galactus’s gaze comes across your planet, you’re not in a good spot. And so I think that that’s as big of a scope and skill you could ever ask a villain to bring with him or her. And that is what Galactus brings.
Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards inadvertently gets their attention in his attempt to “stretch the bounds of space.” For those unaware, Galactus doesn’t devour planets for sport; he needs to do so in order to survive. This is one of the most powerful entities in this MCU universe, if not the entire multiverse, so if he notices your planet, it’ll take nothing short of a miracle to prevent him from fulfilling that task.
the Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday, but I still worry that their Earth could be destroyed by the time The Fantastic Four: First Steps is over. It won’t be much longer until that question is answered, but until then, here’s what director Matt Shakman had to say about this depiction of Galactus:
(He’s) daunting to these characters, of course. And daunting to this world. Because he’s larger than life in every possible way. He is 14 billion years old, and maybe a thousand feet tall, depending on a good day, . But, you know, he’s a wonderful, classic Fantastic Four villain, and we wanted a chance to explore one of the greats – one of the great villains.
As someone who read the early Stan Lee and Jack Kirby Fantastic Four comics as a kid, I’m looking forward to finally seeing Galactus properly realized on the big screen. There was a time when I thought he could succeed Thanos as the MCU’s overarching big bad, so it’ll be interesting to see how Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Ben Grimm and Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm neutralize Galactus on their own, assuming that’s even possible. Maybe they’ll just have to make due with warding him away from Earth, similar to their first encounter with him in the comics.
In addition to Galactus and Silver Surfer, the titular stars of The Fantastic Four: First Steps will also clash with Mole Man, though it hasn’t been officially confirmed who’s playing him. See the superhero team in action starting July 25.