Latest news with #RalphIneson
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Fantastic Four' Credits Scene Confirms Franklin Richards' Role in ‘Avengers: Doomsday,' but It's a Big Risk
SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments, including the ending and post-credits scenes, in 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' currently playing in theaters. From the very first scene, the question of what will become of the child of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) looms over 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps.' When Sue tells Reed she's pregnant, his thoughts immediately turn to what it means for two people with superhuman DNA to procreate. Reed puts the fetus through every possible test he can, and nothing indicates anything is abnormal, so it comes as a shock when the massive, primordial, world-eating Galactus (Ralph Ineson) announces that Reed and Sue's child does, in fact, possess 'the power cosmic.' More from Variety Pedro Pascal Downplays Reed Richards Becoming the New Leader of the Avengers in 'Doomsday': 'That's a Little Bit of a Mislead' Box Office: 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' Makes $24.4 Million in Previews, Beating 'Superman' for Biggest of 2025 Sacha Baron Cohen Shocks Fans With Muscular Body Transformation to Play Marvel's Mephisto: 'This Is Not AI... Hard Launching My Mid-Life Crisis' Reed, Sue, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are too busy keeping Galactus from taking Reed and Sue's child once he's born — oh, and also consuming the entire planet Earth — to find out what it means for wee Franklin Richards to have the power cosmic. But they get a pretty strong idea after Sue dies using all of her power to push Galactus into a giant teleportation portal. As Reed, Johnny and Ben weep over Sue's body, baby Franklin reaches out to her, places his hands on her shoulders, and, after a few moments, Sue's eyes become filled with stars as she gasps back to life. Comic books being comic books, the boundaries of the power cosmic haven't been rigidly defined, but it is essentially the power of a god, with the ability to manipulate just about anything at will — including time itself. As a storytelling device, this level of almighty omnipotence can be dangerous: How can anything matter if your character can fix it all in a blink of an eye? To repeat: In 'The Fantastic Four,' Franklin saves his mother from death as an infant. Imagine what he'd be able to do as a toddler, or a teenager. Marvel comics have dealt with this problem by taking Franklin's powers away from him — sometimes he does it voluntarily, sometimes it happens with external restraints (often placed by Reed). But while the power cosmic itself can be deadly for drama, the fact that a child possesses this power has also proved to be a fertile creative engine in Marvel comics, attracting all manner of villains bent on manipulating Franklin into their own nefarious machinations. Which brings us to the mid-credits scene of 'The Fantastic Four.' Four years after the events of the film, Sue and Franklin finish reading the classic children's book 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' (which was first published in our reality in 1969). She gets up to find another book — H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot suggests Franklin's favorite, Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of the Species,' but Sue wants 'to go for something a little bit more fun today' — and as she walks back from the kitchen, she hears something…off. She walks slowly into the living room, activating her forcefield powers, and sees a man in a green, hooded cloak, kneeling in front of Franklin, as he brandishes a silver mask. Although we don't see the figure's face or hear him speak, this is obviously Doctor Doom, who will be played by Robert Downey Jr. in 2026's 'Avengers: Doomsday.' In the comics, Doom is an integral figure in the lives of both Franklin and his younger sister Valeria, as kids and adults — occasionally at the same time, through the magic of time travel and the multiverse. Given that 'The Fantastic Four' takes place on Earth-828, and we see their ship appear on Earth-616 in the post-credits scene in 'Thunderbolts*,' it's clear that 'Doomsday' will freely traipse the lines between time and space within the MCU. And now it appears that Franklin will play a critical role how that all comes to pass. On the one hand, this is a terrific way to bring the Fantastic Four into the larger MCU: It isn't about some abstract metaphysical danger, it's about their son, creating an emotional hook into a story that — with at least 27 major speaking roles — could otherwise become unwieldy. And unlike 2018's 'Avengers: Infinity War,' 'Doomsday' isn't benefitting from years of earlier blockbuster movies establishing the central villain and defining what's at stake for the characters. Audiences just aren't as invested in the Multiverse Saga as they were in the Infinity Saga, but a family desperate to save their child is an easy story to connect to. On the other hand, while Franklin's abilities seemingly outstrip everyone else in the MCU, he hasn't been established yet as an actual character beyond being a cute, towheaded preschooler. Hinging 'Doomsday' on our investment in an all-powerful cypher is doubly dangerous for a blockbuster movie — which is another reason to wonder whether an older version of Franklin from the future may show up in 'Doomsday,' as he does in the comics. (It is…curious…that Sue is reading a Franklin story about metamorphosis into a butterfly, followed by a reference to the man to discovered the theory of evolution. Most curious, indeed.) If the first post-credits scene in 'The Fantastic Four' is a portent for Marvel's future, the second was an homage to its past. After the final credits roll, a quote from 'Fantastic Four' co-creator Jack Kirby (no relation to Vanessa) appears on the screen: 'If you look at my characters, you will find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there.' Kirby's birthdate of August 28, 1917 appears next to his name, revealing that it corresponds to the Fantastic Four universe of Earth-828 (i.e. 8/28/1917). Then the opening credits of the in-universe Fantastic Four animated series plays, with a peppy theme song that evokes the Saturday morning cartoons of Marvel characters from the 1970s that inspired 'The Fantastic Four' director Matt Shakman as a kid. It's such a blast of nostalgic fun, perhaps Marvel should consider making that show for real. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? Final Emmy Predictions: Talk Series and Scripted Variety - New Blood Looks to Tackle Late Night Staples Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Office star recalls being ‘intimidated' by Ricky Gervais before joining the show
Ralph Ineson has claimed that he was 'intimidated' by Ricky Gervais when he first appeared in The Office. The 55-year-old actor, who stars in The Fantastic Four: First Steps as Marvel villain Galactus, first rose to fame in 2001 when playing the thoroughly unlikable Chris 'Finchy' Finch in the BBC sitcom. Finchy, a sales representative on the show with an incredibly offensive sense of humour, appeared in seven episodes of the comedy and is practically hero-worshipped by Gervais's character David Brent. Although 'Finchy' was a standout on the series, Ineson has revealed that he had personal doubts as to whether he could match the early high standards that the likes of Gervais, Mackenzie Crook, Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis had set on the show. 'I remember being really terrified. How brilliant they were, the central four, firing off each other,' the actor told The Guardian. 'I was slightly intimidated. My first thought was: 'S***, can I do this?'' Ineson, who was sent a VHS of The Office's pilot episode before filming his parts, decided to play the character as a Yorkshireman and used his own accent so he didn't have to worry about 'keeping up with the rest of them'. Although it gave Finchy a distinctive characteristic, Ineson said it was a 'big mistake' as fans, for years later, assumed 'that I wasn't acting; that was just my personality'. 'So having people thinking you're Chris Finch, looking at you with amusement, but also a bit of disgust, a bit of fear – he's just such a s***ter. It's not a nice skin,' he explained. Ineson also said that it proved difficult for his career as, for a long while, he 'just got offered w***ers, racists, misogynists and homophobes.' The actor's comments arrive after Ineson admitted that his role, as the gigantic Galactus in The Fantastic Four, got him in trouble with his wife. Speaking to Empire about preparing for the part, Ineson admitted that, in order to get into Galactus's headspace, he had to think large. This included driving through the tunnels of Mont Blanc in the Alps and 'imagining that was his windpipe and his trachea'. However, this type of contemplation did prove to be detrimental, at least in the eyes of his wife. 'I also went to a lot of tall buildings. We went to a wedding at the top of the Gherkin building in London, and I spent most of the afternoon just staring out, ruminating. I got in trouble with my wife – she was like, 'You've got to say hello to the bride and groom at some point!''
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I couldn't get rid of Finchy': Ralph Ineson on The Office – and becoming a Hollywood superstar at 55
How do you portray Galactus, a gigantic, amoral, immortal superbeing who thrives by draining planets of their energy? If you're making a film of any part of Marvel's Fantastic Four journey, your best bet is probably to depict him as a cloud. That's what happened in 2007, and even though fans complained about it a bit, it solved a lot of problems. Matt Shakman, director of the new The Fantastic Four: First Steps, cast Ralph Ineson, who still sounds faintly surprised by the move. 'I've been working for a long time,' he says. His first role was a small part in Spender, the Jimmy Nail vehicle, in 1991, and he's in a similar mould to Nail: tall with a handsome, rough-hewn face, a guy who looks as if he knows how to do guy stuff. 'I've been a jobbing actor for a long time,' he continues, with the same disbelieving, 'how the hell did I wind up in this huge movie?' tone of voice. 'There's no denying it's really nice to have a huge trailer. And it was huge. Bigger than mine and my wife's first flat.' (He married Ali Milner, a radio host, in 2003.) 'Nice trailers, nice cars, and a paycheck. But it's a privilege and an honour to be the first person to bring this character to life. Twelve-year-old me wouldn't have believed some of this shit. I don't have any snobbery about it. I loved it.' Then Ineson describes what it took to make this character, in terms I could already hear, after five minutes, were extremely true to form: stressing the industry and professionalism of everyone on set (including the two people whose job it was to blow cold air into each of his gauntlets between takes) except himself, the dude who just has to show up and try not to sweat. 'They had to shoot me on a white background, with lots of bright light, and I'm wearing this enormous costume, so it was incredibly hot and there was nowhere for the heat to escape. Obviously, Galactus can't sweat. So I had a Formula One pit crew of people around me.' It sounds like a nightmare, I suggest. 'For me, there's something quite masochistic about acting. Sometimes you only really get the good stuff when you're at the edge of something, either mentally, emotionally or physically. It unlocks stuff.' And then, mindful that he has skated way closer to pretension than he'd prefer, 'Occasionally I had to have the physio at my knees, because I'm 55 and falling apart.' His calling, as an actor, has been playing one bad guy after another, but he is one of the most personable people you could ever meet. Ineson grew up in Leeds in the 1970s, when he 'felt as if acting was something that was almost shameful, or maybe that's too strong a word. But it wasn't really something to be proud of, when I was a kid.' His parents were supportive in the sense that they would never miss a show, but nobody thought it was a serious career prospect, and after doing theatre studies at Furness college in Lancaster, he worked as a drama teacher at a sixth-form college in York. He got involved with the York Mystery Plays – a tradition that's been going, on and off, since the mid-14th century: a Bible story told every year, once performed on a roaming cart, then, by the time Ineson did it in 1992, at the York Theatre Royal. All the characters were played by the people of York, except for one professional actor, who that year was Robson Green. 'He was pretty lonely on his own, sat in his hotel. We'd go out for a drink and I ended up sharing a dressing room with him. And he said: 'You're not wedded to being a teacher, are you?' I wasn't, although I did enjoy it, but I hadn't been to drama school, I wasn't classically trained. He said: 'Go home and watch TV tonight, look at the characters you could play.' So I watched a soap, I watched the nine o'clock drama, and there were about five people I thought I could play.' He describes the next phase as a series of lucky strikes: meeting an agent through Green and getting the part in Spender, 'basically because I could ride off-road motorbikes – the character was a professional motocross rider'. Then another agent, more parts, but still 'I don't think I realised I wanted to be an actor until I'd been doing it for 20 years,' he says. 'Shoots were something I really enjoyed, but almost pretended I didn't. Then, I was sitting on a horse on the plains outside Santa Fe, dressed as the man in black, a posse leader' – that was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Coen brothers film. 'And I thought: 'This is exactly what I have always wanted to do.' I just didn't realise it until I was in my mid-40s.' But that was 2018, and quite a lot had happened in the years before that. If you feel as if you know Ineson personally, it will be because of The Office, in 2001, where he occasionally breezed in as Finchy, the boorish sales rep whom Ricky Gervais's David Brent hero-worshipped all the more for his proudly offensive humour. Ineson was sent the pilot episode on VHS, 'which is how long ago it was. I remember being really terrified. How brilliant they were, the central four, firing off each other. I was slightly intimidated. My first thought was: 'Shit, can I do this?'' When he first started out, he often felt as if he was on the back foot because he hadn't been to drama school. 'I don't know whether I would have suited it, but it felt like a big thing for the first few years, because that is all young actors talk about.' Slowly, he came to have more regard for his own idiosyncratic apprenticeship: 'For years I've had the chance to work on big productions without a lot of responsibility – mainly getting my horse to stand in the right place, being in that part of the screen, behind the main villain's left shoulder. You learn a lot about acting, doing that.' Anyway, feeling that he had to be on his mettle – which was fair, Gervais, Mackenzie Crook, Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis were explosively good together – he made a fateful decision. 'I thought: 'I'll use my own accent, I'll play Finchy as a Yorkshireman so I don't have to think about anything except keeping up with the rest of them.' That was a big mistake, because it meant that everybody, for at least 10 years, thought that I was Finchy. That I wasn't acting; that was just my personality. So having people thinking you're Chris Finch, looking at you with amusement, but also a bit of disgust, a bit of fear. He's just such a shitter. It's not a nice skin!' It didn't end with regular human interactions, either – 'career-wise, it was a bit of pain. I just got offered wankers, racists, misogynists and homophobes.' Before The Office, he was always having to recount his CV for people in the street – they'd come up and go, 'what have I seen you in?', and he'd have to size them up and figure out whether they remembered him from Goodnight Sweetheart or an episode of The Bill. He remembers thinking it would be nice to have something so major that nobody would have to ask. 'Be careful what you wish for, because then I got Finchy and I couldn't get rid of him for about 20 years. At least Galactus simply exists, he's a cosmic force. He doesn't do it out of malice. You can't really get much worse than Chris Finch.' He remains a big fan of The Office, which I smoke out by getting him to adjudicate between the British and American versions – he didn't watch the US one for ages, because he caught snatches of it and thought: 'No, they're doing it wrong.' Five years ago, his daughter watched the whole thing and he realised, 'it's different, but it is good. Because I have a slightly twisted sense of humour, I prefer the British Office, it's darker. You would actually let Michael Scott [Gervais's US counterpart, played by Steve Carell] look after your 18-year-old daughter, whereas I'm not sure you'd let Ricky Gervais's character look after your 18-year-old daughter. Same with my character, he's a lot darker than Todd Packer, the American version. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don't know. It's nastier underneath, which I kind of like.' The late 00s were taken up at least partly with the Harry Potter movies, in which he played the dark wizard Amycus Carrow. His son was 10 and his daughter was six when he shot Half-Blood Prince in 2008. It was the perfect age, you get the impression he'd have done it just so they could meet Daniel Radcliffe. He also got to hang out with Michael Gambon for days on end. 'He's the best storyteller in the world, ever. Joke-teller, raconteur, everything. He told me this joke that lasted a whole week; I could tell it in 15 seconds. It was one of the best weeks of my life.' Nevertheless, he had no lines at all, 'a supporting artist, basically'. The producers enticed him in with the next two books, in which there's more meat on Carrow's bones. But when they came to make the astronomically long Deathly Hallows, parts one and two, the plot had been very slightly tweaked to remove the pivotal moment when his character spits in Professor McGonagall's face and unleashes hell. 'I did three Harry Potter films without saying a single line.' As the father in The Witch, Robert Eggers's acclaimed, hypnotising horror movie, which won lots of indie film awards, including best director for Eggers at Sundance, Ineson felt that he'd got the first part with its own arc. This was 2015, when he was in his mid-40s, realising he actually was an actor, perhaps relatedly, at around the time the industry realised how good he was. He speaks so highly of his co-star, Kate Dickie – 'she should be a dame, she's that good,' he crescendoes a little surprisingly. But his collaboration with Eggers was intense. Ineson sat at the director's shoulder while the other actors were cast. 'It was a weird experience – it felt terribly unfaithful, as if I was cheating on my profession.' They worked together again on The Northman in 2022, which had a broader canvas visually and emotionally, but had the same feeling of The Witch, a film that had an immense amount of knowledge go into it, only a fraction of which you could pin down. 'I have got no idea how Rob has managed to read so much in his lifetime, it feels as if he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of almost every period in history.' If Ineson was never prepared, post-Office, to give in to being typecast as a wanker, he's pretty comfortable with being a supervillain. 'I think with my size, face and voice, 90% of the time I've been on the bad guy side of the line anyway. I would be fighting a losing battle if I was trying to get myself into romcoms. Some things are beyond the realms of casting.' If The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a turning point, the difference is mainly one of scale. 'Although I've been involved with big films before, I've never played a character that is this important to the film and the franchise,' he says, with an amount of trepidation. It's true – there are other people in the movie (Pedro Pascal! Vanessa Kirby!), but if the villain doesn't work, nothing does. 'So if it doesn't make a profit, it's my fault? Is that what you're saying?', he says, mock petrified. The film is already doing fine at the box office. He should relax.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I couldn't get rid of Finchy': Ralph Ineson on The Office – and becoming a Hollywood superstar at 55
How do you portray Galactus, a gigantic, amoral, immortal superbeing who thrives by draining planets of their energy? If you're making a film of any part of Marvel's Fantastic Four journey, your best bet is probably to depict him as a cloud. That's what happened in 2007, and even though fans complained about it a bit, it solved a lot of problems. Matt Shakman, director of the new The Fantastic Four: First Steps, cast Ralph Ineson, who still sounds faintly surprised by the move. 'I've been working for a long time,' he says. His first role was a small part in Spender, the Jimmy Nail vehicle, in 1991, and he's in a similar mould to Nail: tall with a handsome, rough-hewn face, a guy who looks as if he knows how to do guy stuff. 'I've been a jobbing actor for a long time,' he continues, with the same disbelieving, 'how the hell did I wind up in this huge movie?' tone of voice. 'There's no denying it's really nice to have a huge trailer. And it was huge. Bigger than mine and my wife's first flat.' (He married Ali Milner, a radio host, in 2003.) 'Nice trailers, nice cars, and a paycheck. But it's a privilege and an honour to be the first person to bring this character to life. Twelve-year-old me wouldn't have believed some of this shit. I don't have any snobbery about it. I loved it.' Then Ineson describes what it took to make this character, in terms I could already hear, after five minutes, were extremely true to form: stressing the industry and professionalism of everyone on set (including the two people whose job it was to blow cold air into each of his gauntlets between takes) except himself, the dude who just has to show up and try not to sweat. 'They had to shoot me on a white background, with lots of bright light, and I'm wearing this enormous costume, so it was incredibly hot and there was nowhere for the heat to escape. Obviously, Galactus can't sweat. So I had a Formula One pit crew of people around me.' It sounds like a nightmare, I suggest. 'For me, there's something quite masochistic about acting. Sometimes you only really get the good stuff when you're at the edge of something, either mentally, emotionally or physically. It unlocks stuff.' And then, mindful that he has skated way closer to pretension than he'd prefer, 'Occasionally I had to have the physio at my knees, because I'm 55 and falling apart.' His calling, as an actor, has been playing one bad guy after another, but he is one of the most personable people you could ever meet. Ineson grew up in Leeds in the 1970s, when he 'felt as if acting was something that was almost shameful, or maybe that's too strong a word. But it wasn't really something to be proud of, when I was a kid.' His parents were supportive in the sense that they would never miss a show, but nobody thought it was a serious career prospect, and after doing theatre studies at Furness college in Lancaster, he worked as a drama teacher at a sixth-form college in York. He got involved with the York Mystery Plays – a tradition that's been going, on and off, since the mid-14th century: a Bible story told every year, once performed on a roaming cart, then, by the time Ineson did it in 1992, at the York Theatre Royal. All the characters were played by the people of York, except for one professional actor, who that year was Robson Green. 'He was pretty lonely on his own, sat in his hotel. We'd go out for a drink and I ended up sharing a dressing room with him. And he said: 'You're not wedded to being a teacher, are you?' I wasn't, although I did enjoy it, but I hadn't been to drama school, I wasn't classically trained. He said: 'Go home and watch TV tonight, look at the characters you could play.' So I watched a soap, I watched the nine o'clock drama, and there were about five people I thought I could play.' He describes the next phase as a series of lucky strikes: meeting an agent through Green and getting the part in Spender, 'basically because I could ride off-road motorbikes – the character was a professional motocross rider'. Then another agent, more parts, but still 'I don't think I realised I wanted to be an actor until I'd been doing it for 20 years,' he says. 'Shoots were something I really enjoyed, but almost pretended I didn't. Then, I was sitting on a horse on the plains outside Santa Fe, dressed as the man in black, a posse leader' – that was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Coen brothers film. 'And I thought: 'This is exactly what I have always wanted to do.' I just didn't realise it until I was in my mid-40s.' But that was 2018, and quite a lot had happened in the years before that. If you feel as if you know Ineson personally, it will be because of The Office, in 2001, where he occasionally breezed in as Finchy, the boorish sales rep whom Ricky Gervais's David Brent hero-worshipped all the more for his proudly offensive humour. Ineson was sent the pilot episode on VHS, 'which is how long ago it was. I remember being really terrified. How brilliant they were, the central four, firing off each other. I was slightly intimidated. My first thought was: 'Shit, can I do this?'' When he first started out, he often felt as if he was on the back foot because he hadn't been to drama school. 'I don't know whether I would have suited it, but it felt like a big thing for the first few years, because that is all young actors talk about.' Slowly, he came to have more regard for his own idiosyncratic apprenticeship: 'For years I've had the chance to work on big productions without a lot of responsibility – mainly getting my horse to stand in the right place, being in that part of the screen, behind the main villain's left shoulder. You learn a lot about acting, doing that.' Anyway, feeling that he had to be on his mettle – which was fair, Gervais, Mackenzie Crook, Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis were explosively good together – he made a fateful decision. 'I thought: 'I'll use my own accent, I'll play Finchy as a Yorkshireman so I don't have to think about anything except keeping up with the rest of them.' That was a big mistake, because it meant that everybody, for at least 10 years, thought that I was Finchy. That I wasn't acting; that was just my personality. So having people thinking you're Chris Finch, looking at you with amusement, but also a bit of disgust, a bit of fear. He's just such a shitter. It's not a nice skin!' It didn't end with regular human interactions, either – 'career-wise, it was a bit of pain. I just got offered wankers, racists, misogynists and homophobes.' Before The Office, he was always having to recount his CV for people in the street – they'd come up and go, 'what have I seen you in?', and he'd have to size them up and figure out whether they remembered him from Goodnight Sweetheart or an episode of The Bill. He remembers thinking it would be nice to have something so major that nobody would have to ask. 'Be careful what you wish for, because then I got Finchy and I couldn't get rid of him for about 20 years. At least Galactus simply exists, he's a cosmic force. He doesn't do it out of malice. You can't really get much worse than Chris Finch.' He remains a big fan of The Office, which I smoke out by getting him to adjudicate between the British and American versions – he didn't watch the US one for ages, because he caught snatches of it and thought: 'No, they're doing it wrong.' Five years ago, his daughter watched the whole thing and he realised, 'it's different, but it is good. Because I have a slightly twisted sense of humour, I prefer the British Office, it's darker. You would actually let Michael Scott [Gervais's US counterpart, played by Steve Carell] look after your 18-year-old daughter, whereas I'm not sure you'd let Ricky Gervais's character look after your 18-year-old daughter. Same with my character, he's a lot darker than Todd Packer, the American version. Whether that makes it better or worse, I don't know. It's nastier underneath, which I kind of like.' The late 00s were taken up at least partly with the Harry Potter movies, in which he played the dark wizard Amycus Carrow. His son was 10 and his daughter was six when he shot Half-Blood Prince in 2008. It was the perfect age, you get the impression he'd have done it just so they could meet Daniel Radcliffe. He also got to hang out with Michael Gambon for days on end. 'He's the best storyteller in the world, ever. Joke-teller, raconteur, everything. He told me this joke that lasted a whole week; I could tell it in 15 seconds. It was one of the best weeks of my life.' Nevertheless, he had no lines at all, 'a supporting artist, basically'. The producers enticed him in with the next two books, in which there's more meat on Carrow's bones. But when they came to make the astronomically long Deathly Hallows, parts one and two, the plot had been very slightly tweaked to remove the pivotal moment when his character spits in Professor McGonagall's face and unleashes hell. 'I did three Harry Potter films without saying a single line.' As the father in The Witch, Robert Eggers's acclaimed, hypnotising horror movie, which won lots of indie film awards, including best director for Eggers at Sundance, Ineson felt that he'd got the first part with its own arc. This was 2015, when he was in his mid-40s, realising he actually was an actor, perhaps relatedly, at around the time the industry realised how good he was. He speaks so highly of his co-star, Kate Dickie – 'she should be a dame, she's that good,' he crescendoes a little surprisingly. But his collaboration with Eggers was intense. Ineson sat at the director's shoulder while the other actors were cast. 'It was a weird experience – it felt terribly unfaithful, as if I was cheating on my profession.' They worked together again on The Northman in 2022, which had a broader canvas visually and emotionally, but had the same feeling of The Witch, a film that had an immense amount of knowledge go into it, only a fraction of which you could pin down. 'I have got no idea how Rob has managed to read so much in his lifetime, it feels as if he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of almost every period in history.' If Ineson was never prepared, post-Office, to give in to being typecast as a wanker, he's pretty comfortable with being a supervillain. 'I think with my size, face and voice, 90% of the time I've been on the bad guy side of the line anyway. I would be fighting a losing battle if I was trying to get myself into romcoms. Some things are beyond the realms of casting.' If The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a turning point, the difference is mainly one of scale. 'Although I've been involved with big films before, I've never played a character that is this important to the film and the franchise,' he says, with an amount of trepidation. It's true – there are other people in the movie (Pedro Pascal! Vanessa Kirby!), but if the villain doesn't work, nothing does. 'So if it doesn't make a profit, it's my fault? Is that what you're saying?', he says, mock petrified. The film is already doing fine at the box office. He should relax.
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Galactus actor Ralph Ineson reveals the impressive practical costume he wore for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, but the wholesome story behind his homemade version might be even better
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. It's been no secret for some time that Ralph Ineson wore a full, practical Galactus costume to film his scenes in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and now, the actor himself has revealed a behind-the-scenes look from the blockbuster film showing exactly what the costume he wore on set looks like. Here's the post: Ineson's incredibly detailed MCU costume perfectly captures the essence of the comic book version (aside from his admittedly adorable Yoda socks). But that's not all. Included in the image is Ineson's own daughter who is wearing a Galactus helmet herself - one that she made by hand as a gift for Ineson when he got the part. For what it's worth, Ineson's Galactus is even more impressive in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, delivering what may be the most comic accurate portrayal of a character in the MCU, an especially great feat considering his funky Silver Age design. Indeed, the film captured Marvel's First Family just about as closely as may be possible in a film. And with its focus on the FF as a family, it's especially endearing that Ralph Ineson's daughter was so involved in her dad's time as Galactus. I'd be incredibly proud and excited too. What's interesting is that, in comics, Galactus does indeed have a daughter, Galacta, who has mostly been seen in alt-reality stories. She's recently gotten some attention thanks to her role as the announcer in the smash-hit video game Marvel Rivals. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is now in theaters, kicking off Marvel Phase 6. For more, check out our guides to upcoming Marvel movies and shows and how to watch the Marvel movies in order. Solve the daily Crossword
