By Joshua Tyler
| Published
In the lead-up to the release of Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, much of the discussion was centered around culture war issues. Chief among them was the movie’s decision to make the Silver Surfer a woman when people are used to the Surfer being a man.
One side argued that making the Surfer a woman was just more DEI pandering and a sure sign that the movie was creatively bankrupt. The other side argued that they wanted more DEI pandering and were excited to see another formerly male character go full girlboss. Both sides were wrong.
Once you see the movie, Silver Surfer’s change in gender makes sense. It’s clear they changed the Surfer into narrative reasons not to fill some ESG score-motivated quota, but because it made the movie’s script better.
If there’s one thing you can point to as why modern movies are inferior to the work of even the recent past, it’s the writing. Hollywood has sabotaged its ability to create decent scripts by crafting content with motivations other than good storytelling. But not this time.
Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) becoming a woman allowed the movie to give Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) something to do, other than run around setting things on fire. This is a vital component in developing his character and personality. It gives the Surfer a connection with one of our heroes, a vital motivation it would not have had, were it a man.
It’s impossible to discuss this further without spoiling Fantastic Four: First Steps, so if you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading here and watch. You’ll just have to trust me that it’s worth it.
Read No Further If You Haven’t Seen Fantastic Four: First Steps
One of Johnny Storm’s key character traits has always been that he’s sort of a ladies’ man. So, by making the Silver Surfer an attractive woman, those existing traits become relevant not just to Johnny’s character but also to the story.
Johnny’s attracted to her, and it motivates him to give her a chance when the other members of The Fantastic Four will not. He sets out to try and understand what she’s about, maybe even save her. That decision by Johnny leads to a connection between the Human Torch and the Silver Surfer that wouldn’t have existed if the Surfer were a man.
Ultimately, it’s that connection, that attraction between the two of them, that saves the entire planet. Johnny awakens the Silver Surfer’s humanity, leading her to land the final blow against Galactica and send him spinning off into oblivion.
The decision to gender swap Silver Surfer is one of the best narrative decisions in the film. It’s not the heart of the movie or anything, but it’s the most clever bit of writing the movie pulls off. That’s noteworthy in a modern world where script writing is a lost art, and most of what we watch is regurgitated garbage tapped out on a keyboard by some unqualified idiot who’s more interested in marketing and social engineering than good storytelling.
It’s amazing that Marvel pulled this off. The movie’s script has four different credited writers, and screenwriting by committee rarely results in good decisions. In this case, it did, and all four writers deserve credit for how solid their First Steps script is. Well done Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.
