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| Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 92 |
| Public Rating: 6.69 (29 votes) |
Director: Tim Story |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Science Fiction/Action/Adventure |
Year: 2007 |
| Writer(s): Don Payne and Mark Frost, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (characters) |
| Distributor: 20th-Century Fox |
| Reviewed by: Mel Valentin |
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Two years ago, the family-friendly Fantastic Four, a superhero/comic book adaptation of Marvel’s First Family, defied negative reviews from both critics and comic book fans to score $154 million dollars domestically and another $175 million dollars internationally. The film’s producers and, presumably, Marvel Comics quickly greenlit a sequel reuniting the four principal cast members, the director, Tim Story (Fantastic Four, Taxi, Barbershop), and one of two screenwriters, Mark Frost (The Greatest Game Ever Played), who worked on the first entry in a presumptive franchise. For the sequel, Story, Frost, and new screenwriter Don Payne (My Super Ex-Girlfriend) drew from the Fantastic Four’s forty-year history and selected the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Silver Surfer, an angst-ridden interstellar traveler and herald to the planet-eating Galactus, as the new villain for the Fantastic Four.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer picks up with Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), one of the smartest men alive and almost-as-brilliant Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) set to get married after a tumultuous courtship. Sue’s brother, Johnny (Chris Evans) is still a media-obsessed egocentric and Ben Grimm, Reed’s surly best friend, round out Marvel’s slightly dysfunctional First Family. Due to an errant experiment, Reed can stretch his limbs in all directions. Sue can turn invisible and project protective force fields. Johnny can turn himself into a burning, flying projectile, while Ben has been transformed into the Thing, an orange-colored mass of interconnected rocks. Together, they’re known as the Fantastic Four. Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), Reed’s ex-schoolmate, business partner, and romantic rival, was also caught in Reed’s experiment. Now hidden under a mask and cape to cover his metal-like skin, Von Doom plots the Fantastic Four’s demise from his family castle in Latveria.
As Reed and Sue’s wedding day approaches, massive geological and meteorological disturbances occur with increasing frequency, each time accompanied by a ball of fire and strategically placed excavations 200 feet in diameter and miles deep. At the military’s request, Reed sets up a sensor array to track the anomaly’s movement. Moments after Reed and Sue get over their wedding day jitters, the anomaly reappears over New York. Johnny gives chase and ultimately comes face-to-face with none other than Norrin Rad, a/k/a the Silver Surfer (voiced by Laurence Fishburne). The Fantastic Four soon learn that as powerful as the Silver Surfer may be (he controls cosmic power), he’s only the herald for Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds. The military, led by General Hager (Andre Braugher), isn’t content to let the Fantastic Four handle the Silver Surfer alone. They bring in the miraculously healed Von Doom to assist in capturing the Silver Surfer.
With a storyline that borrows heavily from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic mid-1960s run on the Fantastic Four comic book series, comic book fans were primed to see the Silver Surfer and, of course, Galactus, make the transition from the comics medium to the big screen. While the Silver Surfer, a combination of motion capture acting by Doug Jones, computer animation courtesy of Weta Digital, and Laurence Fishburne’s stentorian voice acting, looks every bit as impressive as the trailers and TV commercials suggest (as do every set piece involving the Silver Surfer), but when we finally get to Galactus’ walk on role in the climax, he, or rather it, is far from impressive, due not to the effects work but the producers’ poorly conceived Galactus. Yes, the rumors about Galactus’ appearance are all too true. If you look hard enough, though, Galactus’ visage does appear at one particular moment during the climax, but frankly it’s not enough and nothing approaching the purple-armored, antler and helmet-wearing Galactus comic book fans have come to know and appreciate.
Silver Surfer and Galactus aside, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is definitely better than its predecessor, but that’s not saying much. Sure the pacing is tighter, the humor more character driven, and the conflicts more grounded, but Rise of the Silver Surfer still has the same deficits as its predecessor, poor or shallow character development and motivations, a simple, undernourished storyline that focuses too much on the Fantastic Four’s status as superhero celebrities (rare among superheroes, the Fantastic Four don’t have secret identities) and not enough building up or following through on the latest global threat.
Then too there’s little that could be done to fix the Fantastic Four’s casting problems, a too young, too blonde, too blue-eyed Jessica Alba and a smirking, mugging Julian McMahon and his perfectly tweezed eyebrows. Ioan Gruffudd seems more comfortable this time out as Reed Richards (the stretching effects are still unconvincing, though). More positively, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis, both gifted with solid comic timing, provide much needed comic relief. But improved performances, an ambiguous, fascinating “villain” in the Silver Surfer, and tighter pacing (Rise of the Silver Surfer clocks in at 92 minutes) are barely enough to recommend Rise of the Silver Surfer for comic book fans or families willing to overlook repeat flaws. Everyone else will do better to revisit Spider-Man 2 or X2: X-Men United.
© Mel Valentin, 15th June, 2007
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