Silver Surfer’s Gender Swap is the best thing about Fantastic Four: Step One
Joshua Tyler | renew
Release of Marvel Fantastic Four: Step Onemuch discussion focused on the issue of cultural war. The most important of these is the decision of the movie, when people get used to surfers becoming men, silver surfers becoming women.
One side argues that making surfers a woman is just a harder effort, which is a sure sign of the film’s creative bankruptcy. The other side argues that they want more Dei Pandering and are happy to see another former male character become the full Girlboss. Both sides were wrong.
Once you watch a movie, the gender change of Silver Surfers makes a lot of sense. It’s obvious that for narrative reasons, they turned the surfer into a woman. This is done to fill in some quotas for ESG score motivation, but because it makes the scripts of the movie better.
If you can point out one thing, like why modern films are not as good as recent work, it is writing. Hollywood undermines its ability to create decent scripts by making content with motivations other than good storytelling. But not this time.
Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) becomes a woman and allows the film to do something for Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) except to get around the fire. This is an important part of developing his character and personality. It connects surfers with one of our heroes, a man, and a crucial motivation.
It is impossible to discuss this further without spoiling Fantastic Four: Step 1, so if you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading and watch it. You just have to believe me, it’s worth it.
If you haven’t read it yet, please don’t read it again Fantastic Four: Step One
One of Johnny Storm’s key characteristics has always been that he is a lady’s man. So, by making Silver Surfers an attractive woman, these existing traits are not only related to Johnny’s character, but also to the story.
Johnny attracted her, which inspired him to give her a chance, and the rest of the Fantastic Four would not. He set out to try to understand what she meant and could even save her. Johnny’s decision led to a connection between the Human Torch and Silver Surfer, which wouldn’t exist if the Surfer was a person.
In the end, it was this connection between these two that saved the entire planet. Johnny awakens the humanity of the Silver Surfer, causing her to deal a final blow to Galactica and free him from forgetting.
The decision of the gender-swapping Silver Surfer is one of the best narrative decisions in the movie. It’s not the heart of the movie or anything, but it’s the smartest way to write a movie. In a modern world, scriptwriting is a lost art, and it is worth noting that most of what we observe is junk dug up on the keyboard by some unqualified idiots who are more interested in marketing and social engineering than good storytelling.
It’s amazing that Marvel implements this. The film has four different writers in its script, and the committee’s screenwriters rarely make good decisions. In this case, it does, and all four writers should be praised for their solidity first step The script is. Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer did a good job.
