ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Fantastic Four: First Steps PLOT HOLES EXPLAINED - Little Details You Missed

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

ScreenCrush The Podcast tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals.

Did you watch Fantastic Four First Steps and wonder why Galactus didn't just teleport Franklin up to his ship? Or that Reed was dumb enough to tell the whole world that Galactus just wanted his baby. Well, if you have questions like that, strap in because we're here to answer all of your questions and plot holes for Fantastic Four, the First Steps. Welcome back Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie, and thank you guys for sending us your questions on our Discord and our community page with lots of problems you have with the Fantastic Four. Now, some of these questions were hard to answer, but other questions were pretty stupid, and you guys should be ashamed to yourselves.

So, let's get started. Brad's on YouTube asked, does Norrin Rad exist in this universe? Who's Norin Rad? That's a great question. So, in the comics, TV series, and Rise of the Silver Surfer movie, The Silver Surfer is a scientist named Norin Rad, who is from Planet Zen Law. Shalabal is actually his wife. Just like we see in this movie, Norin offers his service to Galactus in order to spare his

home world. And later on in the comics, Shalabal does get powers. In fact, in the comics, she only became a co-Silver Surfer in a special alternate universe called the EarthX timeline. And if I can soapbox for just a second, the Silver Surfer's original origin, as imagined by his creator Jack Kirby, was that he was a being of pure cosmic energy

that Galactus created. And then this cosmic being learns the human emotion of love. Jack Kirby actually hated that Stan Lee later retconed this, and so do I. Kirby's original idea is much better. Person, answer the question. Sorry, yes, there probably was still a Noren RAD

in this universe. Otherwise, where did Shalabal's kids come from? I just want my kids back. And we also had lots of questions about the surfer chase sequence. Sky on YouTube says the whole time dilation near the black hole. They didn't stay near it that long and they used a wormhole to travel back. So it's honestly probably not a plot hole. It did cross my mind that months should have passed on Earth,

but I think the wormhole travel fills that hole because their technology is a lot more advanced than the tech of Interstellar. Okay, so just to get you guys up to speed, in the movie Interstellar, these astronauts travel to a planet that is close to a black hole, so that planet has a different gravitational field from Earth, which means that time moves slower on that world. Every hour we spend on that planet will be seven years back on Earth. This is why, after they're stuck on the planet,

Coop missed watching his kids grow up. But in first steps, the Silver Surfer is pulled in right next to a black hole. She's not pulled all the way in, but she does have to fight really hard to escape. See, the gravity near the black hole is much greater, so time passes differently. For her, she can break free in minutes or hours. But for the people on Earth, as she's doing that, a month or more passes by. That's relativity, folks.

Now, to answer the other part of your question, the Fantastic Four were able to arrive at that planet so quickly because they had a faster than light ring, but that ring was destroyed in this chase. This is why when they arrive home, the news does say that they have been gone for several months, because they didn't have the ability to create a wormhole to get home.

Instead, they had to reach a velocity close to the speed of light in order to reach Earth. But even then, if you were at the closest star to Earth, Alpha Centauri, and you'd traveled exactly at the speed of light, it would still take you four years to journey home. So this actually is like a real break in the movie's logic. But hey, this is also a universe where Pedro Pascal can stretch his arms like a rubber band. So maybe the laws of physics work a tiny bit differently here.

Now, I want to take a second to give you guys some bittersweet news. On Friday, October 10th, we are going to have our last live show at the tour in New York during New York City Comic Con. Doing these live shows has been a huge privilege for me. We have been all over the country performing to great crowds. And we've given you things like, can't get on the YouTube channel, like exclusive breakdowns, live Q&As, best of all, live facts with you guys, we just get to chill and hang out together and geek out. But it's also let us put together

a truly unique show. It's stuff that we couldn't really do on the YouTube channel because it's all about being live and in person and reacting to each other in real time. They have been an absolute blast. So we figured the best way to end the tour was during Comic-Con. So if you are already in New York for Comic-Con, you're going to be walking around all day, your feet are going to hurt. Don't worry that night at Friday, 6 o'clock at City Winery, we're there for you. You can sit down, rest, chill out, but the best part of the live shows is just getting to meet you guys face to face. Normally, this is how we talk to each other, right? I'm on a screen, you're wherever you are. You're probably pooping. Are you pooping? Don't bring your phone in the shower. If you're

pooping, don't poop in the shower either. So the live shows are great because it gives us a chance to, you know, meet and talk and share what we're thinking about all the weird geek stuff going on right now. So if you can, the ticket links are below. It's going to be so much fun. I can't wait for you guys. to see what we have planned for you. Now, back to the plot holes. Gabriel Rose asked, even if a slingshot maneuver could have gotten them to the velocity they needed, how the heck would they slow down when they reached Earth? That's a great question, nerd. When they break free of the black hole, this readout says they have 24.9% fuel. Now, that is not enough to reach close to the speed of light, so they have to use the gravity of the black hole to propel them, like James T. Kirk and

Star Trek 4. But doing this saves them fuel, and then they can use the remaining gas to slow their descent as they approach Earth. And we have tons of questions about Galactus, NYC-1TS on our Discord server asks, is Galactus's teleportation slash FTO travel not able to get him close to Earth? He gets to the solar system pretty quickly, but then takes several months to float in. He passed Jupiter and they had like months remaining, it felt like. Yeah, look, they don't really explain this in the movie, but I got a couple guesses. One, maybe his FTL, that's faster than light drive for the ship is so big that it cannot actually leap too close to the sun because of its large gravity well. But more likely, I think that that's just the pace that Galactus moves at. He is an immortal

cosmic being who has been around for billions of years. To him, the distance between Saturn and Earth is like crossing the street, so why rush? King Kong 34 say, why did Galactus only use brute force on Earth when he moved the Silver Surfer around like a puppet? That's a good point. Like when Galactus is in New York city, he behaves like a kaiju, but we do see him telekinetically manipulate the silver surfer. But here's the thing. Telekinesis is not one of Galactus's powers in the comics. I think he was only able to move around the Silver Surfer because he created her and her power cosmic was tied to him. And like I said, giant immortal space god, he would assume that brute force would be enough to capture one baby. John Estrada asked, how did the FF no Galactus will leave his massive starship and pick

Franklin up personally from Times Square? If he sent the Silver Surfer to do that job, Instead, their plan was screwed. Great question, and I have a couple of answers. One, remember, the Silver Surfer just tried to persuade him to leave the baby alone. So maybe he was thinking, I don't think I can trust the Silver Lady. But more importantly, think about this. This is the most important thing that has ever happened to Galactus. He has waited five billion years for this chance.

I don't think he trusts anyone or anything else with this task. He must absolutely be able to secure Franklin. because maybe he'll have to wait another 5 billion years for his next replacement to come around. It's been 84 years. So James Hudson, you asked, why didn't Galactus just beam Franklin to his ship like he beamed the Excelsior earlier in the movie? Again, the answer is he could not risk harming Franklin. Like, imagine you had to pick up a baby from the overpass over a busy intersection.

Would you use some kind of elaborate claw machine? No, you'd probably go down and pick the baby up. Now, we do see that Galactus's tractor beam can indeed pull, a reinforced armored spacecraft, but it might just rip a human baby body to shreds. Also, if he tried to beam Franklin up, he would then be pulling him up through the heat of the atmosphere. Not only would the baby suffocate and burn and die, but he would be giving the Fantastic Ford chance to rescue him while he was dangling in midair. Goofy Guy 74 is asked, by the way, goofy guy 74, I don't know if that means you're a guy who likes goofy or if you're a goofy guy.

Goofy guy 74 is asking, how is Galactus consuming planets without the ship now? Is he binge eating the planets of a backup solar system one handful at a time? Easy answer. Galactus does not need the ship or any machine to consume planets. He has been eating planets for billions of years before he ever had a machine. What you're saying is like saying cavemen wouldn't be able to eat because they didn't have an oven. As we see in Marvel Superhero Secret Wars issue 9, Galactus can eat a planet without the machine, but it's much more inefficient. And I should note, the same is true for space travel. Galactus can travel through the universe without his machinery,

but he expends a lot more energy and he moves a lot slower without his ship. J-bomber 44 in our Discord asks what happens to Galactus' ship now that he's been sent away? Is it just like hovering in front of the moon? So Galactus immediately would have summoned his ship to find him millions of miles away. And as Reed says, it will take him millions of years to make the journey back to Earth. So he's going to be really hangary when he finally gets back to Seoul. Hey, everybody. What's for dinner? I'm starving.

Tim's slick ass. Why did Galactus act like he couldn't say? scale up when Sue was backing him into the wormhole. If you mean why didn't Galactus increase his size, it's because he couldn't. That's not one of his power. Well, okay, it's kind of one of his powers. When Galactus's energy is spent, he does shrink. So presumably, after he eats, he does grow? But he's not like Apocalypse or Ant Man. He can't just grow. J.R. O'Tunes asks, does Galactus create incursions since he's from another multiverse? Well, no, he's from this universe. He's not like from a different universe. And like we saw in Multiverse of Madness, you can only cause an

incursion when you use the dark old dreamwalk. Brett's an incursion? Well, an incursion. Actually, take it away, Jim. I'll be seeing you again. Sorry, other Jim. An incursion occurs when the boundary between two universes erodes and they collide, destroying one or both entirely.

So Galactus wouldn't cause an incursion because he didn't even travel to another universe here. Now, we also had a lot of questions about the Fantastic Four themselves and the plot mechanics of this movie. For instance, Pacalido in our Discord asked, it's an obvious question. But what's the reason for Johnny going to space? Now, ordinarily in the comics, this is a tough one to answer. In the original comics, Johnny was just a teenager, Sue's kid brother. So the Fantastic Four really screwed up when they took this child on a dangerous test flight mission.

But in this movie's newsreel footage, Reid specifically says that these scientists are also his best friends. This is why Johnny is so good at working the ship's controls and how he can decipher the language of Zen Law. Chris Shanahan also had a great question. Unless I miss something, Reid and Johnny were receiving messages from space. from space with verbal messages in a language unknown to humanity and treated them as a curiosity rather than the paradigm altering first contact that it was. Now that's a great point, but one of our commenters, Serb 64, had a great answer to this one. I believe that Reid dismissed the message because he was scared of going back into space after what happened to them. And that is a great point. See,

this is also why Reid was slow to design new spacesuits and also why Johnny was so excited for the new spacesuits because Johnny was excited to go back into space. But Reed knew that if he deciphered the messages, this would mean that he would likely have to go back to space with his family, but he wasn't sure that he could protect them. So it's actually a really big deal when Galactus shows up and forces Reed to finally leave Earth again. Neo-QPA pointed out, they didn't really have to tell everyone to Galactus one of their child.

True, and this isn't the first time Reed Richards has overshared. Black Bolt could destroy you with one whisper from his mouth. But Reed would have never lied to the people. He is an honest, ethical person. But more importantly, I think that what we're seeing here is a product of the optimist. mystic retro future of this movie setting. Reid's also very pragmatic. I think he would understand that if the world had all of the information,

then the odds of them being able to find a solution would increase. Duck Bofa says, Reed Richards' genius would never allow him to build such an unintelligible robot. I think you're talking about Herbie, who I love? Shut your damn full mouth. And sure Reed would build that robot. He wasn't trying to build an AI. He just wanted help around the house.

Think less Ultron and more helper. Helper! Disable vocal function. Help her. Jennifer Zach Schweisky says, why did they have to leave the show at the end? I thought it was an emergency because why else would they leave their fans hanging like that? But they spent forever fiddling with the car seat and didn't seem to be in a hurry to get going.

Okay, that's a really good point. They did dip in the middle of a live broadcast, they disappointed a few of their fans, and apparently they had a crisis to avert. But then they played like a sitcom dad routine straight out of full house. Whoa, Joey, this is a living thing. You don't just stick in the pot? Use a meat rack.

But think about it, they actually could not leave until the baby seat was secure. If they're going to be flying at high speeds into danger, you don't want the baby's car seat to be knocking around back there. And let's face it, not being able to get a car seat in was the most realistic thing in this entire movie. Gigacrafty asks, why didn't Sue just hide planet Earth? Well, we see her struggle to turn the ship invisible, so Earth would have been just a bit much. It also wouldn't have even fooled Galactus. We see his X-ray vision could detect cosmic energy emanating from Frank.

so it wouldn't have mattered if he could see the earth or not. The better question is, why doesn't turning invisible make Sue blind? Well, because you're able to see because of light bouncing off the back of your eye and reflecting up to your brain. So if you're transparent, then the light would actually pass through you. Well, I don't know. Why isn't she blind when she's invisible? Well, the answer is because Sue is actually bending light to appear invisible. And instinctually, she bends the photons to bounce off of her cornea as they normally would. And speaking of Powers, Hyperion Sama says,

Mr. Fantastic barely stretches when the big man puts the stretch on him. He was like, oh no, I'm not super stretchy, like bruh, that is literally your only power and you can't even do it well. First of all, Rude. Reed's power is actually his intelligence, and his stretchingness is actually an extension of his intelligence. In the comics, Reed has actually been stretching for years, and he has learned to really stretch his body to its limits. But in the early days of the comics, he did not have this same stretching ability. So I would say in this universe, Reed does not appear to use his powers that much. So I can buy the Galactus is able to stretch him further than he normally goes. Also, how do we know that every time he stretches it doesn't hurt him?

You know, like Wolverine popping his claws. When they come out, does it hurt? Every time. And SM Ash Z asked Johnny absorbs flames in Fantastic Four, but in Deadpool, Johnny gets his fire absorbed by Pyro. Well, first of all, different universes, so nothing you say counts. But I should note that Pyro doesn't absorb fire, he controls it, so he's able to neutralize Johnny's powers. And in the comics, Johnny is also able to absorb flame into himself, like we see in the movie, which actually should neutralize Pyro's power to control fire.

But remember, we're talking about the lame Chris Evans human torch, so of course he gets his ass kick by a Z-list X-Man. John Estrada 294 says, why couldn't any of Reed Richard scans and devices detect Franklin's cosmic powers? Well, the movie actually answers this. Franklin's abilities hid his powers from scans. Now, I don't think in utero Franklin did this intentionally, because I don't think he was born with full consciousness like Aaliyah Atradis.

But his abilities naturally kept him massed from his dad, maybe because he has meant for some higher cosmic purpose that will be revealed in Doomsday. Spider Guy on our Discord asked, How did Franklin revive slash bring his mother back to life? Now, I love this question because I actually have an answer to it. Remember how Sue's eyes lit up with energy? That is very similar to what we see in Starlord's eyes when his dad's celestial energy overtakes his body.

So to me, this means that Franklin possesses similar abilities to the Celestials. Now, in the comics, Franklin has the powers to create entire universes, much like the Celestials who create stars, galaxies, and seed life on planets. So Franklin was able to save his mom because he has the literal power of the same gods who create life. Now, we also had a lot of questions about the teleportation bridges, which is fair, because, after all, this was a really silly plan to teleport the entire Earth. Ushendi asks, Reed is the smartest man alive, but can't think of an energy source powerful enough to generate the necessary power, sounds a little lame to me. You're lame. High five, Doug. No, but for real,

there is like real math to back this up. So we see in the movie that teleporting an egg takes out the power in the whole building. So I did some quick research. The kilowatt hours used by the Empire State Building are on average 1,783,980. Now that's just one building, and the average egg is only 49.6 grams. So imagine that's how much power it takes to transport just 50 grams. So when you figure that the mass of the Earth is 5.922 times to the 24th power kilograms, that means that it would take 215 billion times tense to 21st power of kilowatts of energy to move the Earth. And in 2008, the entire Earth consumed about 144,000 terawatts. So that means that to move the Earth you would need more than 1.4 times the amount of power than the Earth created in 2008.

So does that still sound lame? A lot of really smart people were working on this problem. And our lead editor Randolph Nubrato asked, in the lab, they had a separate unit for the location that they wanted to transport the egg to. So, in order to transport the Earth to another part of the galaxy, wouldn't they need another big-ass bridge where they wanted it to go? Well, Randolph, the answer is no. Dash to Great asks, why in the hell didn't Galactus just eat the Earth

after the Silver Surfer destroyed all their bridges? Once that happened, he could have eaten the Earth and naturally consumed Franklin as well. Movie over. Well, for one thing, Galactus wasn't trying to eat the baby. He's not a monster. He wanted to groom the baby to replace him someday. are like Rely Wanka. Exactly. Galactus is like Willy Wonka, which is why he personally had to show up on the planet. Samrat Creation says, why is nobody helping the Fantastic Four? No army, no shield, no government.

Why is it portrayed as if they were the only ones who could have handled this? Well, for one thing, there's no shield in this universe because there was never a hydra, so shield never formed. The Fantastic Four are the world's only superheroes. And there is no army. The Future Foundation got the entire world to agree to disarm, so Earth is now a utopia. Cooper Allen asked, where do Galactus and the Silver Surfer sleep? Do they just float in space holding hands like otters? Or is there some sort of bunkbed situation? Well, on the ship, they have separate sleeping quarters, except neither of them actually needs to sleep. But you know, we did a whole video about this about what's next for the Silver Surfer. And I really do hope that there is either a solo movie or a cosmic team up movie that she's a part of, either The Eternal's 2 or something else. Because look, Galactus is going to be pissed and she is going to have to escape from him. There are a lot of great surfer stories they could adapt from the comics. And finally, Sea Breeze asks, why transport New Yorkers underground right below Galactus instead of just away from the city? Seems like it to be a lot more efficient and safe. You clearly are not a New Yorker. If you have ever tried to get out of the city on a Friday, you know that mass

evacuations are impossible. Trust me, these people are safer in a whole underground than they are on the 495. Well, guys, that's all the plot holes and questions that you ask. But if you have more, let me know in the comments or at me on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads, or on our free to join Discord server. And if it's your first time here, welcome to the channel. Please subscribe, smash that for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Erie.