Ineson is a great cast for Galactus. I think at least half of the Fantastic Four casting choice are fucking inspired.
But I am sitting here bracing- because I know Doom is coming and if they fuck that up this whole things crumbles like a house of cards.
I am not a huge Fantastic Four guy, but there is no project I've thought more about than how to adapt FF into a proper film- because it's been done so poorly repeatedly. Fan4stic was so bad that it made public opinion flip on the other movies and everyone started talking about how they were good actually.
The two guiding lights I'd point to for modern FF are Hickman and North. Hickman is who gets brought in by Marvel when something isn't fucking working and needs to get fixed. I know some people have gotten tired of the Krakoan age of X-men that he spun up but they don't remember how absolutely DIRE it was before that, X-Men comics were BAD across the board. Hickman's FF run is what showed he could do that. He took things seriously, built heavily off the lore, and very importantly brought the kids in. Making Reed into a dad is the missing piece that makes that character sing, so including his son and daughter as actual characters is now vital to the mix. North on the other hand is the current writer and is best known for doing the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. His run is episodic and fun. It makes me understand what the original appeal of these characters was and makes the whole "action scientist" thing work.
And the important thing for both of them, is that they commit. Everyone is living in a weird, wild world and despite how zany things are, it remembers the stakes are real. We don't need a wink to the audience because Dr Doom has teamed up with a T-Rex variant of himself and now they will rule over both worlds. We get what is both cool and ridiculous about that. You don't need to joke about how there's a bug in purple armor called Annihilus. It's all ridiculous, and at it's best when people are joking about how weird the world is- we also understand how much they love it. They didn't choose to be empowered, but they all chose to be explorers of the unknown.
And the thing that kills adaptations of it, moving it between page to screen. Is the embarrassment. It's looking at all this weird stuff and going, oh this is silly. Isn't this silly. And it is! But while the fantastic four is many things- it is never cynical. It wears its heart on its sleeve.
Like the whole reason folks are excited by this announcement art is the fact that it feels genuine. Bright colors, big smiles, fun outfits. They are already the fantastic four, so an exec doesn't have to suggest they cringe through figuring that out. Hell, they even have HERBIE, their robot sidekick. This doesn't guarantee it will be a good movie, but this is a great place to start from and shows that they at least understand what is fun about the characters.
