After positive review scores for both The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman, the villains behind this summer’s big Marvel and DC blockbusters are having some fun over who’s the best bad guy.
Ralph Ineson, whose gigantic stature and booming voice can be found in Fantastic Four this week, co-starred alongside Nicholas Hoult, aka Superman’s Lex Luther, in last year’s Robert Eggers-directed Nosferatu remake. And now, the pair have bonded further, as each currently serve as the main antagonist in this year’s comic book movie tentpoles.
“I sent [Hoult] something off social media that said that he gave the all-time greatest superhero villain performance, and I said, ‘Hold my beer,'” Ineson told The Hollywood Reporter.
Hoult apparently laughed in response, and said, according to Ineson: “It’s hardly fair. You’re a cosmic entity; I’m just a guy.'” That doesn’t sound like Lex Luthor at all — maybe Ineson is the better baddie?
“I said,” continued Ineson, “‘Fair enough, but I am fighting four of them.’ And then he said something like, ‘But I get an upset tummy when I eat spicy food.’ So I think he’s given up on the man-on-demigod battle.”
There we have it then! Galactus is a bigger bad guy than Lex — though I think we all knew that already.
Earlier this week, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige praised Superman and said the film was living proof there was no such thing as “superhero fatigue” among theater-going audiences, despite a string of recent poor-performing movie entries. (Instead, Feige said, audiences had grown tired of comic book film makers prioritising quantity over quality.)
“I liked it a lot,” Feige said of James Gunn’s Superman. “I love you just jump right into it. You don’t know who Mister Terrific is? Tough, you’ll figure it out. This is a fully fleshed out world.”
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a family dramedy that only stops working when it tries to be too much of a superhero movie,” IGN wrote in its The Fantastic Four: Fest Steps review, which returned a ‘Good’ 7/10 score.
