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FANTASIC 4: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007)
Earth: the REAL Big Gulp The previous Fantastic Four movie was a modest hit, the kind of movie nobody really liked but somehow, everybody saw. It wasn't good, but it wasn't offensively, obnoxiously bad or anything – it's the kind of movie where if your ten-year-old nephew saw it and loved it, that wouldn't be enough to make you seriously wonder if he's retarded. I mean, he's only ten, he doesn't know how old these gags are. So it wasn't like Spider-Man 3. Rise Of The Silver Surfer is much the same, buoyed by a quick running time and a good story up to a point. Nobody but the most die-hard comics purists will be able to whip up the vitriol to truly hate this movie, though for the rest of us it largely passes by unnoticed and indifferent. The Fantastic Four are celebrities now, and don't even have secret identities they can retreat to when they want to chill out in anonymity – they're superheroes full-time, and everybody knows it wherever they go. (an early scene has them flying coach) Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Chick are trying to get married but everything keeps going wrong, Thing no longer seems to have self-image issues, and the Human Torch still quite enjoys being the Human Torch, though he's starting to worry that even though he easily scores with any woman he gets near now, he may end up growing old alone and OH SHUT THE FUCK UP HUMAN TORCH. Seriously, I have no patience for people like that. All this pretty much sucks. There are a few quarter-hearted gags about their many corporate sponsorships (even the flying car that Mr. F is working on, apparently by himself, is a Dodge) and the paparazzi, but their relationships with each other basically add up to Stupid Juvenile Shit. Shit like, walking in on your fiancee when he's enjoying his bachelor party, or arguing about who gets to drive the flying Dodge. Add to this inconsistent effects (Mr. F's stretchy limbs look 10, maybe 15 years behind the times), and the movie starts looking like it's going to be a chore to sit through. Things liven up a little with the arrival of the Silver Surfer, who scientists learn has left a dead world behind in every stop on his trip (we can see from earth that these planets are dead and/or destroyed...speed of light, anyone?). His arrival on earth is obviously bad news, not least because a pass by the fictional country of Latveria awakens Dr. Doom. Up to a point, the story of the Surfer and his mission and the effects of his presence on the earth is pretty good, especially compared to all the shit with the wedding, and ohmygod we're never going to be able to normal lives, and waaaah I'm afraid of being alone. The movie totally had me when he was talking to Invisible Chick, who for once asks some good questions of the first alien she meets. It all turns around when the Surfer gets captured by the evil torturing government though, when they proceed to torture him. Nobody seems to understand, IT'S A FUCKING ALIEN!!! You not only don't know torture could even work, but you don't even know how to start doing it. Why is that guy about to inject him with something? What do you inject an alien with, when nobody knows if it even knows what pain is? After the torture scene things really go to shit, when the Surfer decides (why now?) that maybe he should do something about all the trouble he's causing. What he does is...how do I avoid spoiling something that's such a foregone conclusion? You really think the earth is going to end up as Galactus-chow at the end of this movie? It's PG. Given the Surfer's motivation, one just wonders, why didn't you do that before? Like, any time before, before drawing doom upon countless civilizations? Stupid Silver Surfer. Inevitably, there's the Stan Lee cameo. When I said what I said about his cameo in Spider-Man 3, I didn't say exactly what he said, I was just saying what it was LIKE, to make a point of how blunt and obvious and movie-stopping these cameos are getting. Here, he actually, literally says what I said he said. Stan - obviously your presence in these movies are becoming increasingly distracting. Do what Hitchcock did, make us look for you if we care, and focus on the movie if we don't. And please, the time has come for Marvel to take a bit more of an interest in the movies it's allowing to be churned out. The quality is not what it used to be. For all that though, the second Fantastic Four movie is a mild improvement on the previous - if that was a high red, this is a low yellow. And it is, after all, part of the whole point of cinema to show me a couple of moments which make me stop, rewind, watch again, and mumble to myself, "Well that's some majestic shit." Galactus might be a big tornado instead of a dude in a purple helmet, but he's a really, REALLY big tornado. (c) Brian J. Wright 2008 BACK TO THE F's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |