ROTTEN TOMATOES: Has the Voice of "Galactus" Been Cast?

Has the Voice of "Galactus" Been Cast?

by Scott Weinberg | April 13, 2007

In the comic book world of "Fantastic Four," Galactus is also known as "eater of worlds," so I'm guessing he's a giant evil planet or something. (Sounds cool.) Recent gossip indicates that the voice of Galactus will be provided by an actor very well-known in science fiction circles. And that actor's name is...

Laurence Fishburne? Hey, sounds good to me. He used that overpoweringly commanding voice to excellent effect in the "Matrix" flicks, plus he recently did the narration for "TMNT," in case you didn't notice. On top of all that, Laurence Fishburne is just plain old cool.

We're gonna fight Morpheus??

Unfortunately the same report indicates that someone, somewhere at some alleged test screening thought that "Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer" was not a very good movie. Good thing most of us like to decide these things for ourselves. "FF2" opens on June 15th.

Source: AICN

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(1-19 of 19 posts) | Reply

Matanuki writes:
on Apr 13 2007 04:20 AM

My man Fish is in it, I'm there.

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jeremyd4 writes:
on Apr 13 2007 04:41 AM

what? not James Earl Jones? Get out of here!!

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Thundaar writes:
on Apr 13 2007 07:14 AM

I am a big Laurence Fishburne fan - but that is not the voice I had in mind for the big guy. However, Cowboy Carl is pretty much the best thing in everything he does so I am sure he won't disappoint.

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Erick Peterson writes:
on Apr 13 2007 08:36 AM

[b]You're guessing?[/b]
Why are you guessing? The character has been drawn hundreds of times in comics! Surely you could find a picture on the interweb!

He looks like a square-jawed Caucasian caught in the explosion of a Mayan costume shop. Oh, and he's really big.

As bad as the first one was, I'm more or less trusting a test audience that says this one isn't any good either. It's a waste of Fishburn's talent and time to work on this project. But then it wouldn't be as much of a waste as TMNT.

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liono86 writes:
on Apr 13 2007 09:19 AM

Fantastic Four wasn't a bad movie at all. Sorry for it not being as serious or living up to Spiderman or X-Men. It was still rather enjoyable.

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PlanBFromOuterSpace writes:
on Apr 13 2007 10:24 AM

[b]Weinberg: Not a very good guesser[/b]
Didn't he cite Wikipedia as his source on all of his information on Galactus in one of his previous articles? "Guessing" isn't very good reporting, and most of us are probably more qualified to lead a discussion on this topic than he is. I can take any bit of news and say "This sounds cool!" without adding any sort of insight whatsoever. Is RT hiring?

Anyway, I think that Fishburne's voice will be fine, as he has a big commanding voice, and Galactus, as most of us know, is a big commanding dude.

I enjoyed the first Fantastic Four quite a bit, and I certainly think that the franchise seems to be better suited for an all ages kind of audience, as even Spider-Man seems to be getting a bit too dark for the kids. Not that a world-devouring giant is THE ideal villain for a family film, but I'm thinking that FF2 will be a fun movie and that it will at least LOOK good. Honestly, I'm actually looking forward to FF2 MORE than Spider-Man 3 at this point I think, mostly because we HAVEN'T been too bombarded with every little detail of production. I'm sure Spidey will be great, but in the end, I'll probably be thinking "Well, that's exactly what I thought it would be. Stupid Internet...".

Oh, and to ANYONE that thinks that Fishburne is slumming or wasting his time, I have 2 words for you: "Biker Boyz"

And as a bonus, 4 MORE words (or rather, 3 words and a number): "Assault on Precinct 13"

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filmfascist writes:
on Apr 13 2007 10:31 AM

haha look at how they aryanized Jessica Alba.

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IMAmoose24 writes:
on Apr 13 2007 10:34 AM

Fantastic Four was not a very good movie. Can't believe I paid to see it. There is more promise for the new one.

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Iamcool2007 writes:
on Apr 13 2007 10:38 AM

[b]I won't belive that test screening thing[/b]
I mean it is coming from AICN who hate tim story, fox and most of the actors involved in the movie.
Harry started similar campaign 2 months in advance when the first flick came out so he is doing the same.
And the thing is he gets money from studios to write good stuff and claims himself to be a very true fan but nah he is a hypocrite.
Fox pays him nothing and so he hates all their movies unless the movie has some big director attached to it.

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sharpless writes:
on Apr 13 2007 11:02 AM

Yeah, please take all of 10 seconds and research something as easy to figure out as what a comic book character looks like. I'm sorry, but it's just kind of inexcusable.

But enough nerding for me. I like Fishburne. He fits. The first film was atrocious, but this one is shaping up to be a potential improvement. I hope.

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lonechicken writes:
on Apr 13 2007 11:08 AM

Disappointed. Opening the link to this news item I was hoping to read that the voice is Chewbacca. Very well known voice in sci-fi circles.

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Matanuki writes:
on Apr 13 2007 01:58 PM

In reply to this comment (#861337)
Bro, if this film is half the quality of TMNT then it's at least a worthy sit. The first Fantastic 4 film lacked vision, and that's coming from a big F4 fan. I hope Fish's presence has that magical impact that it usually does.

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Erick Peterson writes:
on Apr 13 2007 04:43 PM

[b]FF #1 awful[/b]
I was a big fan of the books as a kid. For many years, they were my favorite comics. But it was the science fiction that I enjoyed, the exploration into other universes, the confilcts with megapowered aliens that would test their intelligence as much as their strength. I watched the movie in hope of a little nostalgia. What I got instead was a dummied down version of the X-men, a bunch of anxiety-ridden morons whose biggest beef was dealing with their new celebrity status. Simply awful. And that ending? Don't get me started.

You know, it could've been good. Michael Chabon pitched an idea for the movie that would've been fun and intelligent, a bit similar to one of his novels, but still fresh.

That Fishburne is great, as shown by his better films, is proof that he is wasting his time when he takes gigs in awful films such as this. To his credit, though, he's in fewer bad films than many actors of his quality.

Oh, and TMNT was terrible.

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Matanuki writes:
on Apr 13 2007 05:22 PM

In reply to this comment (#861347)
My man, I am the last one you have to convince that Fantastic 4 was aweful. But TMNT was not. I'm not sure what everyones beef is with that film.

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Erick Peterson writes:
on Apr 14 2007 09:16 PM

[b]The problem with TMNT[/b]
You may be the last person that needs to be convinced that TMNT was awful. Almost everyone else agrees on this. Its weakness is the same of FF, an overblown CGI nightmare that shows no evidence of having been worked on by an actual writer. FF makes the mistake of doing an origin story, which stresses the weakness of the original stories. TMNT, though thankfully ignoring the worst bits of the source material, goes wrong in ignoring the strength of the turtles, the humor. It's inexcusable to have an unfunny film about a group of anthropormorphized amphibians that live in a sewer with a half-human rat.

My only hope for either of these properties is that they will stop having sequels for the next ten years and then be rebooted with new films that are more understanding of the characters being used. This worked for comic films Batman and Superman, however not with Punisher.

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PlanBFromOuterSpace writes:
on Apr 15 2007 09:10 AM

[b]Mistake of doing an origin story?[/b]
As far as the FF go, you sort of HAD to do an origin story for the first film. Sure, you have characters that might be somewhat familiar already to a mianstream audience via exposure through cartoons, comics, etc., but that doesn't mean that you can just throw characters out there right in the middle of something and assume that people are going to follow or care about what's going on. A film, a first film in a franchise anyway, needs to be a stand-alone thing, as to many people, it WILL be the first thing that anyone pays attention to with these characters. You also can't leave it completely open-ended, as there's never any guarantee of a sequel. Actually, as far as sequels go, I've actually enjoyed the follow-ups more than I've enjoyed the first installments. I AM someone who's already very, very familiar with a lot of these characters, and while it is sometimes a bit of a chore to wait through a rehashed or revamped origin, because I already know the basics of who's who and what's what, it doesn't necessarily make the film less enjoyable. Am I going to complain about the first hour? No, because it's Act 1, it's the set-up, and just because I'm a part of the relatively small percentage of people that already knows a similar version of the story inside and out, it doesn't mean that the 12-year old on the other side of the aisle, or their parents for that matter, are on the same page. The sequels have been more interesting to me, because by that point, everyone DOES have an idea of what's going on, and you CAN start into the actual storytelling right away. Does that mean that the first one was bad? Well, maybe if it just plain wasn't any good, but certainly not because they actually went through the trouble of telling a complete story.

As I was saying about sequels not being a total given, I really hate when a film doesn't live up to expectations and the filmmakers say "Well, we were saving this for the sequel" or "We always planned on drawing this out for a bit and you're REALLY going to see some action in the sequel!". This happened with "Superman Returns". The movie was 2 and a half hours long, cost something like 300 million dollars, and there wasn't a single fight scene. Superman spent the whole movie catching things that were falling out of the sky and the biggest action setpiece (and best part of the movie) was a third of the way into the film. They couldn't take the time to make the movie more interesting? They can talk and talk about how great a sequel will be, but that first one sure was an expensive misstep, and they might not get a chance...at least not with the same resources at their disposal.

Fantastic Four, with about an hour less, did so much more at probably half the cost, and it was what it was. Some people really liked it and some didn't, but it got it's second chance for a reason. Also, there were some things that HAD to wait for a sequel, as you can't be introducing major supporting characters and the biggest threat in the universe on the FF's 3rd day on the job, and it's nice that they're using the first film as a springboard and using what's been established rather than just fighting Doom again, minus the origin story.

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Thundaar writes:
on Apr 15 2007 02:33 PM

I think FF was a light hearted movie. Not serious enough for some fans.

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Erick Peterson writes:
on Apr 20 2007 03:22 AM

In reply to this comment (#861350)
[b]origin story[/b]
I'm not quite convinced about the need to do an origin story. Even if I didn't know anything about the characters, I'd rather jump right into the action. If necessary, a few lines could be thrown in, nothing too much. Look at Leone's Westerns. In the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, how much do we know about Eastwood's character? By the end of the pic, we don't even know his name. And no one is complaining about that. Where did he come from? Why is he such a fantastic gunslinger? No one cares. FF could've been similar. Instead, filmmakers managed an origin that was even worse than the original, which no one thought possible, and then they made that the whole lousy film! Amazing!

Here's another comparison: Darth Vader.
Star Wars: A New Hope---NO ORIGIN. Vader becomes a cultural icon, one of the greatest film villains ever.
Star Wars prequel trilogy---ORIGIN. Vader is in no way interesting.

This is not to say that origins are bad, just that they can be avoided with good effect. And a bad origin is much worse than none at all.

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wpsexywolf writes:
on May 07 2007 11:37 PM

[b]The Surfing Fish[/b]
www.imdb.com lists Fishbourne as the voice of The Silver Surfer, not the big G.

(Reply to this)

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