Film Review: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

In 1966, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four #48 kicked off what might just be the quintessential Marvel Comics story. A giant talking baby in a toga who lives on the moon comes and warns the Fantastic Four that a giant man in a funny purple hat is coming to eat their planet.

Then a silver guy on a surfboard, named the Silver Surfer, shows up–angsting like a dollar store Hamlet in his thought bubbles about what a crappy lot in life he has–to let them know his boss, the giant man in a funny purple hat named Galactus, is indeed totally coming to eat their planet.

The FF ain’t having it, so they fight the giant man in the funny purple hat, inspiring the Surfer to join them and, together, they save the day, leading to a Silver Surfer spin-off series, and about 500 more fights with Galactus over the decades.

As far as Hollywood adaptations go, this 41-year-old story is practically a readymade. Rewrite Stan Lee’s godawful dialogue, think of a more cinematic way to present the cosmic entities driving the conflict and drop tens of millions into special effects and you’re done.

It should surprise no one who saw 2005s Fantatic Four that returning director Tim Story fucked up everything he could about as badly as he could.

This Fantastic Four movie is only slightly less bad than it’s predecessor, and yet Story and Twentieth Century Fox do manage to get just enough right that it’s not the soul-crushing experience that The Punisher, Elektra or (shudder!) Daredevil was.

Rather, the FF movies are akin to the Ghost Rider one, occupying a middle strata between the good Marvel movies and the ones that constitute aesthetic crimes. And, most importantly, being okay with that. They don’t try to hard, they seem content to be full of clunky dialogue and embarrassingly bad plotting. Hey, it’s just comic books, right?

This sequel manages to get pretty much everything right that the original did, while continuing to get wrong everything that the original did.

In the right column are the four principles, Ioan Gruffud’s embarrassingly dorky geek Reed Richards, Jessica Alba’s perfect embodiment of Sue Storm’s one character trait (she’s really hot, and seemingly out of Reed’s League), Chris Evans’ roguishly cocky Johnny Storm, and Michael Chiklis’ gruff but charming Ben Grimm.

And the special effects, which here pretty much save the picture. (This is primarily where the film is an improvement over the original, because the original lacked the Silver Surfer.)

In the wrong column is Julian McMahon’s Doctor Doom. One of the greatest pop culture villains of the last century, it’s mind-boggling how they managed to suck all of the cool out of Doom. Instead of the imperious embodiment of evil from the comics and cartoons–remember, Star Wars‘ Darth Vader is just Doctor Doom in space–he’s become simply an annoying jackass, the co-worker you hate to be stuck on the elavator with.

The story? The Fan Four are struggling with their celebrity lives in an era of E! television, while interior tensions threaten their togetherness, like Reed and Sue’s inability to make it through an entire wedding ceremony without having to rush off to avert some disaster.

Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer, in all his hood ornament/bowling trophy glory, is flying around the world, causing disaster movie cliché’s and somehow bringing Doctor Doom back to life because, apparently “Galactus, the Eater of Worlds” isn’t as cool a villain as a smarmy guy in a cheap mask and Jedi cloak.

So let’s hear it for the special effects. The Surfer looks great (although if you’ve seen the preview, you’ve seen just about every cool thing he does), and despite being completely CGI, he actually looks more convincing than the Human Torch effects, or the idea that Evans’ and Alba’s characters share the same birth parents.

There’s a toy-ready “Fantasticar,” some swapping of powers among the Four which culminates in Evans being the Fantastic One, and Galactus itself is impressively cool-looking, if he gets too little screen time.

I’m sure there are purists who will lament the big G.’s appearance, but honestly, why would anyone really want to see a CGI version of this guy in the movie?

Other than the fact that it’d be, you know, hysterically, hilariously stupid-looking. And the Fantastic Four film franchise has more than enough hysterical, hilarious stupidity in it already.