There's a page from the second issue of Marvel's Secret Wars -- the first one, from 1984 -- that has stuck with me for years. It comes after Galactus (the devourer of worlds) has been swatted from orbit to the surface of Battleworld by the Beyonder, to show off the latter's infinite power. Dr Doom comes upon Galactus as he stirs out of the resultant crater and, narrating aloud in the Mighty Marvel fashion, relates his recovery thus: "No mere mortal, forced to clamber awkwardly to his feet, his simply rises and sets himself upright!" And indeed the accompanying visuals show exactly that, as Galactus levitates into the air and raises himself 90 degrees back to his feet.
The reason this image lodged in my mind is that I think it's a perfect illustration of how Jack Kirby's space gods have generally been portrayed in the comics. While physically present and resolutely solid, they do not necessarily obey the same laws of motion or reality as other characters. Even in his very first appearance, related in the grandiloquently goofy style of 60s Marvel comics, Galactus can be toppled by an attack from the Fantastic Four but he does not fall, instead hovering above New York city as though the ground existed at a different level for him than everyone else.
This would go on to be one of the scenes adapted into Alex Ross' Marvels series, a glossy, high-end take on the early years of the Marvel comics. Ross forgoes rendering the energy field of Kirby's original, instead simply showing Galactus recovering his balance over the tops of skyscrapers, at once within the scene and separated from it. A neat choice, emphasising the effect of this moment.
Galactus does not tumble to the ground. He simply stops. For all that he is literally a giant bloke in a spectacular helmet, he is also weird and strange, capable of arresting the motion usually implied as we are guided one panel to the next.
It irks me that Fantastic Four: First Steps is utterly bereft of any similar moment. In many ways, Galactus in that film is very much on par with his original comics appearance, lacking much of the scale and grandeur that would be increasingly applied to him as a result of him becoming a foundational part of Marvel's cosmology. But as I watched him tromping around New York looking like a mediocre video game cutscene, I couldn't help be disappoint that no physical laws were being overtly broken.
Quite the reverse, in fact: First Steps is achingly determined to lend weight and presence to Galactus' visit to Earth. A tidal-wave washes up from the river when he jumps down off his throne beside the Statue of Liberty, the city shakes at his footsteps, tower blocks crumble as he brushes against them, and so on. The visual effects department clearly gave their physics engine a good work-out on this one.
Only . . . this is Galactus, not Godzilla. Not merely a kaiju but a being from beyond the stars. Even before taking into account that the New York he is smashing apart isn't rendered as real in any meaningful sense (being instead a sepia-daubed nostalgic mish-mash of pasts and futures that never were), this hardly screams 'universal power'.
It is entirely possible Galactus or any of the other Marvel space gods simply cannot work in live action. They are comic book creations and typically scaled to be almost incomprehensibly vast. At least the New Gods over in DC have a whole lot of family drama going on; the Celestials, Eternity, even Galactus himself after enough drift away from Lee's verbosity -- they have all become monolithic, frequently appearing silent and out of scale with everyone else, as a sign that the action has hit end-of-the-universe levels of escalation.
I'm not sure how to translate this to something that can interface with living, breathing actors. We already tried 'giant cloud of space-smoke' and that wasn't exactly a roaring success. Equally, I am certain First Steps is absolutely not an inspiring direction to take things. Once more, 'realism' as an aesthetic has either stripped away the things that serve to sell the drama in non-realistic media or literalised them so directly as to rob them of impact.
What am I supposed to make of a Galactus who can be inconvenienced by opening the vents at the back of his armour to let the lava(?) out. If that was meant to convey a good old Kirby Crackle, it didn't, and also made him look even more like a video game boss. (There is nothing wrong with video game bosses! But they do not adhere to the same logic as cosmic forces of vast age and power. Not even when they are meant to be one and the same.)
I dare say I am late to the party of bashing Marvel Studio's post Avengers: Endgame output. Mostly because I gave up caring about most everything Marvel related before Avengers: Infinity War was out of cinemas. You don't need me to tell you that these things amount to a lot of brightly-coloured sludge (if indeed someone has remembered how to bloody colour grade this week). First Steps is, like much of the MCU, a homogenised compilation of years of superhero history mulched down to act as the next bit of a conveyer belt that has seen the worst trends in Big Two comics brought to the big screen. Even the retro-futurism is the safest most boring version of itself possible.
Actually, let's hold on that a moment. When Warren Ellis pilloried the Fantastic Four in Planetary, he made them a product of an Operation Paperclip-style integration of Nazi scientists into US rocket programmes. I don't know if this was one of the ideas that the abusive bastard filched from someone else but it makes a lot of sense as an approach. The FF are the product of an age awash with obsession over atomic power and the propaganda of the Cold War. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are the all-American nuclear family (literally) fighting threats to law and order and civil (Western) society. A white, patriarchal, and thoroughly capitalist vision of advancement, exploration and invention who, as First Steps takes great pains to foreground, achieve public renown for their role as protectors of (white, patriarchal, capitalist) humanity. An amazing fantasy in which the US meaningfully won every stage of the Space Race, instead of very much not doing that.
Heck, Galactus is originally driven off by way of a mutually assured destruction, as the omniscient narrator (the Watcher, who is on the FF's side, naturally) allows Reed access to the 'Ultimate Nullifier'.
As Ellis demonstrated, there are ways to problematise all this with regards to the reality of the Cold War and American influence over the world at large. And I don't think that necessarily requires going to the extent of making the FF into overt villains like The Four from Planetary. Mark Waid, in an issue from 2002, introduced the concept that Reed manufactured the Fantastic Four superhero identity as a way to project his friends from being treated as freaks. This alone could be a great in-road to talking about conformity, the consequences of pursuing the goals of American ideology, and what it means to be different inwardly or outwardly. Trapping the characters in the stultifying amber of 1960s kitsch might be a great vector for those discussions.
The problem is, the MCU is itself a form of kitsch, just as overly sentimental and bland as any other, with no place for anything deep, novel, or bizarre. To envision Galactus as merely a giant bloke who interacts 'realistically' with an environment is to literalise the comics in the crudest way possible. This is the logic of the films since Iron Man and it has led to a very coherent style, one totally unsuited to convey an entity for the dawn of time who ends entire worlds to sate an all-consuming hunger. We are told this about Galactus. We even see a planet destroyed. But the spectacle is devoid of anything truly uncanny. He doesn't raise himself with a thought. He does not stand upon ground that isn't there. He doesn't even have square pupils.
Galactus is the devourer of worlds. A quaint apocalypse compared to some things Marvel comics have thrown about over the years, yet an apocalypse nonetheless. An incomprehensible event for anyone with a human understanding of the world. I don't know how best to portray that in live action. I really don't. But I think, if nothing else, it has to start with what our Victor was talking about when he commentated the recovery on Battleworld.
You need to show Galactus as far more than merely a large mortal, awkwardly contesting with the limitations of gravity.
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