Quote:
Originally Posted by randomfellow
This Fantastic Four story does not take place in the same timeline/earth as the rest (well most) of the MCU. The iteration of Silver Surfer presented here is Shalla-Bal, who debuted in 1968's Silver Surfer #1. This is not a new character or random gender swap.
In the 1960s Silver Surfer origin Norrin Radd and Shalla-Bal are in love and Norrin Radd volunteers to become Galactus' herald in exchange for sparing his world and Shalla-Bal.
So to switch things up a bit for the alternate timeline in FF4 I assume that Shalla-Bal was the person that made the sacrificial deal to save her planet - and possibly a version of Norrin Radd. This is a pretty nifty way to introduce the Silver Surfer character to the MCU in a logical multiverse way, highlight an important Silver Surfer character from his original comic book past and also pave the way for a fairly likely introduction of the Norrin Radd Silver Surfer in the main MCU timeline. Overall this feels better to me than introducing the Norrin Radd Surfer as a supporting character, probably killing him off at the end of the film, and then just reintroducing basically the exact same guy again in the next appearance.
I'll be going into the film with tempered expectations but featuring an alternative timeline Shalla-Bal as the Silver Surfer is actually pretty cool to me (an admitted comic book nerd). Now Mr. Fantastic with a mustache.. oof
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I didn't say she was new or random. I said she was a gender swap and she is. It would be like introducing Jenny Cesare as the Punisher in the Netflix Marvel universe instead of Frank Castle. Even the woman playing Shalla Bal asked "isn't Silver Surfer a man?" lol
Pretending that this was anything other than a deliberate furtherance of Kevin Feige's publicly stated policy that "more than half of [MCU heroes] which will be women." would be extremely disingenuous, so let's not do that. BTW DC was planning to do exactly the same thing which is why I said Shalla Bal "is just a symptom of the same sickness" afflicting Hollywood.
Now that we've got that out of the way. None of the (real) reviews say that F4 is bad or a disaster. On the contrary it's supposed to be the best they have released this year. Although that's not saying much, it is still something. If the 3D is decent then I can see myself buying an MCU 3D disc which is something I thought I would never do again.