Movie Review: The Fantastic 4 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Walking into the movie theater having seen the trailer for The Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer about 30 times, I was as giddy as a school boy. My anticipation for this movie had slowly grown to epic proportions ever since I first found out the surfer would be in a live action feature film. I re-read all my Silver Surfer comics, spent hours trying to unlock the surfer in Marvel Ultimate Alliance for Xbox, and I even broke out my Silver Surfer action figure in numerous staged battles between him and Beta Ray Bill on my living room floor.

With the coolness of the trailer, as well as the title character, I thought there was no way this movie could possibly go wrong. Boy was I wrong. Leaving the theater after the movie the only thing I could think about was how mad I was that I’d spent ten bucks to watch that crap. For non-comic book fans, this movie was a tedious, incoherent bore. For comic book fans it is simply an atrocity.

Easily one of the worst comic book inspired movies ever made (right up there with the first Fantastic Four movie and Batman Forever) Rise of the Silver Surfer is 89 minutes of tedium. The movie, like its predecessor, seemed needlessly rushed. Why not make this a 2 hour plus movie and take the time to slowly and thoroughly introduce the characters, especially for the myriads of movie-goers who have no clue about the origin of the Fantastic Four, or who are clueless about who the Silver Surfer is?

The main reason the movie won’t sit well with fans of the comics is the numerous pointless changes the producers make to the comic book storyline. Why is Sue the one that helps the Surfer decide to save humanity instead of Alicia? One of the coolest parts of the comics was when the surfer beat up the Thing and stole his blind girlfriend right out from under him. Alicia seems to have “a thing” for bizarre looking characters. She is the only character in comicdom (or anywhere for that matter) who would leave a giant rock man for a silvery bald space surfer. It also created some great tension between the surfer and the Thing, who would later have to team up to find a way to stop Galactus.

And don’t even get me started on Doctor Doom. Here’s a villain who wears a mask because his face is damaged (one scar) and in the comics we only see his real face twice. Twice in almost 50 years! But in this movie we see him without his mask more than we see him with it! And no longer is Doom the dictator of Latveria, but a billionaire industrialist (Lex Luthor?). Do these people know what movie they’re making?

The Silver Surfer was portrayed as being much weaker than he is in the comics. Why the hell are his powers tied to his surfboard? Where does this concept come from? Just read Silver Surfer vol. 3, issue #1 if you want proof that his powers aren’t tied to his board. In that issue his board is damaged and the surfer is able to repair it. He has even been shown to re-create his board after it is completely destroyed! He can remotely convert his board to energy, he can recall it to himself, hell, with the power cosmic the surfer can do pretty much anything. Its sad to see him in a movie where the writers have little or no understanding of the character or his abilities. If they didn’t want to read the comics, a simple wikipedia search or a five minute interview with a fan could have told them everything they needed to know about the surfer. Enough to make a bad ass movie.

In any event, another issue with the movie is Galactus, or rather, the absence of Galactus. I realize that the producers felt that Galactus was a little too “cartoonish” to be included in a modern day, cutting edge movie, but isn’t that the main problem with movies these days? What happened to a little imagination? Why does everything have to be so realistic these days? Gone are the golden days of the movies (namely the eighties), where one could time through travel in a Delorian, or fly into space in homemade spacecraft built out of a seat from an amusement park ride, a washing machine window and a television. Nowadays every movie has to be “realistic” with corresponding “scientific” explanations as to why one can travel in time, or through space. No longer is it acceptable to have a giant space man in a purple suit flying around in space eating planets. Its simply not realistic enough. Hence, we are left with a vague cloud with an object the shape of Galactus’s helmet as the final bad guy in the movie. And just how is the surfer able to stop the world devourer anyway? He flew into him? What?

Let me just say, the Silver Surfer and Galactus are two of the greatest characters that the incredible team of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee ever came up with together. The noble hero who was forced to serve a giant, purple clad, planet-munching space traveler by leading him to countless other inhabited worlds to feed on in order to keep him from eating his own planet (where the love of his life, Shalla Bal lived as empress). This movie completely ruined the chance the bring these characters to life and tell the story of how the super powerful Silver Surfer is moved into sparing a planet simply because of the heroes who help him find the nobility he has lost in the ages that he had traveled from planet to planet seeking out his master’s next meal. With all that said, the movie is worth seeing if only to see the surfer snuff out Johnny Storm and drop him into the earth’s atmosphere from outer space.

Our Rating: