Warning - Spoiler's Below!
It's been said again and again, when a comic book is made into a movie, there are going to be changes. The X-Men were taken out of their colorful outfits to be clad in dark leather uniforms. The Ghost Rider characters were merged together to make one uniform character in the Ghost Rider movie. Superman gets a son, Batman wears a rubber mask and face paint, characters are added, merged, changed, and ripped from different eras to ensure that the story makes sense. It's just the way it is.At first, I had great difficulties with this, and the latest Fantastic Four movie is no exception. There are many divergences from the source material. I had a conversation with a friend about Galactus before I had seen the film. He had and we talked about the rumors of Galactus being a giant cloud, which turned out to be true. My comment of he should be the giant man in a purple suit were met with outrage at the silliness of that image. Maybe he is right, it might look silly, but it would remain true to the source material. I'm sure they could find a way to still make him look cool and be like the comic.
Enough of my babbling, let's see how the comic and movie compare to each other.
Fantastic Four Comic To Movie Comparison
| Movie | Comic | |
| Dr. Doom | Electrical based powers, body made of metal. His face is healed after meeting Surfer. | Powers come from armor and magic. Face is still disfigured. |
| Silver Surfer | Similar to the comic. | A herald of Galactus who seeks out planets for him to devour. |
| The Thing | About the same size as actor Michael Chiklis, which is about 5’ 9”. | In the comics The Thing is around six feet, but usually seems taller. |
| Galactus | A cloud shaped being that feasts on planets for sustenance. Appears to be sentient, but never talks in the film. | Large humanoid in a purple outfit. Very powerful and often converses with his foes. |
| Story | The Surfer comes to earth to prepare it for Galactus, who would come seven days later and devour the planet. | The Surfer finds earth as a suitable planet and Galactus comes to set up his equipment that will drain the planet of its energies. |
| Galactus’ Defeat | The Surfer flies into Galactus and unleashes energy to destroy him. The Surfer appears to survive. | With the aid of The Watcher, the FF find the Ultimate Nullifier in Galactus’ ship. They threaten to use the device, which will destroy them all. Galactus agrees to leave spare Earth. The Surfer is banished to stay on this planet. |
