Summary
- Galactus, as an unsympathetic and mindless world-eating villain, can break the stale trend of complex and morally ambiguous MCU villains.
- Galactus’ lack of nuance and motivation makes him a true and irresistible threat that cannot be negotiated or reasoned with.
- The Fantastic Four’s triumph over Galactus would be a fitting introduction to the MCU and showcase their ability to overcome an excessively powerful adversary.
If the Fantastic Four’s belated arrival in the MCU finally brings arch-nemesis Galactus back to the big screen, the world-eating villain can break a Marvel villain trend that is threatening to get stale. Galactus would be the biggest threat to Earth since a Celestial tried to break through the crust, leaving the biggest elephant in the MCU room that nobody seems particularly interested in.. And while the Eternals were available to avert that particular disaster, Galactus is an entirely different prospect to a baby Celestial.
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Galactus debuted in 1966’s The Fantastic Four #48, and was introduced by the creative duo as an unprecedented escalation of Marvel’s supervillain trope. Lee and Kirby wanted to avoid another supervillain who simply wanted to conquer the Earth and their answer was to make him a God, dispensing with the idea of morality and simply making him hungry. And while Galactus’ incredible size and initially mute status (at least in his first comics appearances) will present the MCU with logistical problems, the specificity of his threat to Earth will throw out most of Marvel’s villain formula.
The MCU Has Too Many Sympathetic Villains
While some MCU villains are purely evil, Marvel Studios has a preoccupation with introducing complex villains who confront traditional ideas of morality. The likes of Loki, Thanos, Zemo, Killmonger, Ego, the High Evolutionary and Scarlet Witch have complicated backstories explaining their villainy, whether because of their own experiences or because of zealous belief that they are saving the universe from itself. Just as Lee and Kirby needed something different in 1966, the MCU needs to dispense with the idea that every villain should either want to burn the world because of some personal wrongdoing or rebuild it because of its flaws.
More recently, villains like the Flag Smashers, the Clandestines, and Secret Invasion‘s disappointing Skrulls all had a point: they were rebelling against the world order for their own preservation. And while that could have added depth to their stories, it’s no accident that they are some of the most underwhelming villains in the entire MCU. Something different is needed, and Galactus’ disrespect for any sort of conversation on morality is the answer Marvel need.
Galactus’ MCU Difference Makes Him The Best New Threat
When he inevitably arrives in the MCU, Galactus doesn’t need to be sympathetic or nuanced. He needs to be a force of nature who can’t be reasoned with or understood – and without apparent weakness, making him a true threat. Any villain that is presented as perversely sympathetic inherently comes with room to negotiate with them, even if Marvel projects mostly have them crushed under the boot of justice anyway. You cannot negotiate with a world-eating demi-God whose only motivation is grotesque hunger. Evil doesn’t even come into the equation for Galactus – as Lee and Kirby explicitly intended – he is an almost irresistible threat in the truest sense.
Galactus is not nuanced, or even remotely sympathetic and his singular focus of eating planets without an “excuse” makes him different to the ones who are apparently committed to a “Greater Good” of rebuilding or avenging something. He is terror incarnate, and the kind of world-leveling threat that would shake the MCU’s villain formula to its very core. Previously, that intangible horror somewhat notoriusly led to the misjudged decision to turn him into a big cloud of gas in Rise of the Silver Surfer, but the less said about that the better. And of course, what better way to have the Fantastic Four announce themselves to the MCU than to have them overcome such a ludicrously over-powered villain?