@Bob Gray I mentioned my reasons why the gender swap was not a good move from a business standpoint. I will make an argument on why it sort of made sense from a creative and storytelling perspective.
There's a trend in the CBM world, popularized by Marvel Studios, to never let the audience see the same thing twice if they can help it. So that means skipping the origin story if it's remake or reboot. The same principle applies to some characters to make them fresh and not just copy-paste from the previous versions. Let's just say that there's mandate for this and we have to work with these parameters.
Silver Surfer appeared in the 2007's
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and was for the most part, a near-perfect live-action adaptation of the character. He was portrayed as a stoic, emotionless, guilt-ridden character. If you bring the same Norrin Radd in
First Steps with the same apathetic, impassive personality and knowing the limited scope of Shalla Bal's role in the film, there's a chance audience would have been underwhelmed and left with an impression that they've seen it all before. There was nothing new with the character.
How to make Norrin Rad fresh? One way is to drastically change his personality or appearance. That would have been a terrible direction to go in. So that's a non-starter.
If Norrin Radd was in
First Steps, Sue Storm would have been the more logical choice for one of the F4 characters that he will connect with. And we've already seen this relationship before in the 2007 movie. Plus if they paired Sue and Norrin, this would have offset the delicate balance of the team and the movie, inadvertently giving Sue an even more bigger role in the film and therefore inviting a lot of criticisms from haters.
Who else can they pair Norrin with? Ben Grimm? Mmm, maybe they can relate to each other because of their respective deformity but aside from that, I don't see much chemistry between the two. What about Reed Richards? Maybe they can connect on an intellectual or philosophical level but not much else. So that leaves Johnny Storm. Johnny is the only member that can fly and can keep up with the Surfer. But then it would get awkward when Johnny keeps on pestering to talk to the Surfer and audience would no doubt question Johnny's sexual orientation, which will lead to even bigger criticisms.
So from a storytelling perspective, Shalla Bal made sense because Johnny was the only option left for which F4 character to be linked with. This also gave Johnny a bigger role in the film and sort of a romantic interest in the film.
Not trying to win you over, just trying to let you see it from a different angle.
