The Fantastic Four cast leant on unlikely Marvel star for advice

Yahoo

5 days ago

There aren't many people in the world who can relate to being in a Marvel movie, but the Fantastic Four: First Steps cast knew who to turn to when they needed someone to talk to about the unique experience, they tell Yahoo UK.
The film introduces Marvel's First Family — Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) — into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and follows their battle to protect Earth from dangerous new foes. Julia Garner and Ralph Ineson portray the film's villains, the Silver Surfer and cosmic being Galactus, and both make their debut alongside the Fantastic Four.
The pressure of bringing these characters to life on the silver screen felt immense, but given the secrecy around the franchise it wasn't something they could divulge to just anyone — so instead they found the people who would understand.
Ineson reveals: "I worked with Willem Dafoe recently, and when I got the part in this, we had a chat about it." Dafoe famously delivered perhaps one of the greatest villain performances of all time in a superhero film as the Green Goblin to Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man.
"He said some interesting stuff about finding your thing in the middle of all the madness, and I think that that's what it's about. Whether it be the size of the project, the budget, the fan base, the costumes, there's a whole craziness to doing a Marvel movie, but you have to keep that kernel of truth that makes any bit of acting good and elevating it to the top stuff.
"And so you've really gotta do the work exactly as you would on any other kind of project, but you've gotta make sure you do your bit amongst all these amazing, talented artists, designers, directors, cinematographers. They're all creating this amazing film, you've just got to make sure you keep the space to do your bit really truthfully in the middle of all that."
Garner had a similar approach when she took on the role of Shalla-Bal, as she adds: "I have friends who have worked in Marvel and they've done motion-capture, they've done all that stuff. I haven't, this was my first time, and there's definitely truth to what [Ralph is] saying, [it's about] just finding something that's going to ground you because in general with movies there's a lot of distractions and there's always reminders that you're in a movie.
"This isn't real, whether it's a Marvel movie or it's like a little indie movie, it's still movie. So you have to find things that ground you and make you feel like it's a reality like it's really real.
"But also I guess with the motion capture the experience is very different than wearing a costume, going in for hair and makeup every single day and mentally prepping, everything moves much faster because you don't have hair makeup and you don't have a costume."
"The rhythm of doing voice work or motion capture work is very exhausting," Ineson adds. "Because you're constantly on, on and on."
Taking an exciting new step for Marvel
The Fantastic Four have been a regular fixture in cinema, with Marvel's First Family being brought to life twice already in 2005 and 2015, respectively, for very different takes. These were made by 20th Century Fox when the studio owned the rights to the characters, and now it's time for Marvel to have a crack at it and make it feel different and new.
If anyone could do it, though, it would be Matt Shakman, who helped catapult the studio's Disney+ era to greatness with the exceptional WandaVision — a bar the studio has struggled to reach ever since. The director had a difficult job on his hands to make the Fantastic Four work, but he tells Yahoo UK how he was given the creative freedom to make something truly his own.
"I think what's great about Marvel is they're willing to take risks," the filmmaker says. "Everything from Guardians of the Galaxy to Thor: Ragnarok, to Black Panther to WandaVision. The chance that you can slip this idea of superhero movie but you can go in so many different directions, what makes the Fantastic Four so special is because it's a family.
"They're the first family of Marvel, they saved Marvel in the '60s by doing this radical idea of making a comic book about a real family, and I think people have related to it for 60 plus years for that reason."
And the movie needed the right cast to make it work, which they found in Pascal, Kirby, Quinn and Moss-Bachrach, he adds: "They're all such brilliant actors and they have such wonderful chemistry together. Each one of them brought humanity to their characters, which I think is the biggest part of it.
"I think there needs to be grounded, real, authentic, emotional truth in everything that you do, and the bigger the canvas the more important that authenticity and that emotional grounding is needed. And all four of them are just great actors with incredible range."
Facing backlash over female Silver Surfer
Part of what has made this Fantastic Four different to what's come before is its take on the Silver Surfer, who has been gender-flipped, or more specifically, an existing female villain has been tapped to be the classic character instead of the expected Norrin Radd.
Backlash was rampant when this change was revealed, and Garner shares how difficult it was to face that: "First of all, it's a lot of pressure because you want to respect the fans as well. We were talking about that earlier, but it's different because this is Shalla-Bal, so it's a different Silver Surfer. I was just very excited to play this character, and hopefully it resonates with people. I'm hoping for the best!"
The other big bad, pun intended, is Galactus, and Ineson was the only possible candidate for Shakman, he admits: "He's got the greatest voice in movies. I was trying to figure out who should be a 14-billion-year-old space vampire who's 1000 feet tall, and it's Ralph.
"We built a suit for him. We shot him practically, we filmed him in a way that you film miniatures with a lot of light and certain optics so that he feels huge, he feels like Mount Rushmore and that's how we approached it."
Ineson wasn't surprised by this, as he jokingly adds that he's always been seen as perfect for villain roles rather than heroes: "They look at my face and hear my voice and they're not getting hero."
Garner says it was the same with her: "Nobody ever asked me to play a hero, they're like 'ohh villain'. They look at me, they're like 'yeah, villain'. I don't think I've ever been cast as a hero."
The challenge was making the world feel unique, but Shakman felt Marvel gave him a good starting point: "What's been so great about this is we've been just creating our own universe.
"It's Earth-828, its own universe, they're the only superheroes in it, there's no other Marvel superheroes coming into it that you've seen before. And so it was special, it was our own corner of the MCU that we got to build and develop, and then where they go from here is exciting and you know the future is bright for them."
Fantastic Four: First Steps premieres in UK cinemas on Thursday, 24 July.