Review - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Yet another summer letdown)

I am a comic book liker. I’m not a fan, since “fan” comes from “fanatic”, and that’s not me. When I was in seventh grade, I started collecting comic books. My favorite marvel titles were Erik Larsen’s Spiderman, Rob Leifeld’s New Mutants (and later X-Force), Jim Lee’s X-men (it’s easy to see the pattern that I was in it for the art). At best I was “really into” comics. I regularly spent my allowance, and later my pitiful paychecks, on them and could probably hang with greater geeks in conversations that didn’t wander too deeply into abstract canon. All that said rest assured that I enter into this review, not as a raving fanboy, but simply as an average moviegoer well versed in the source material.

After a mildly exciting intro, showing the world shattering effects of the Silver Surfer, the movie quickly fell in to a boring, predictable pace. The jokes were stale and the character dynamics were just more of the same. I would go so far as to say that the first act of the movie came off like an ineffectual superhero comedy.

Fast forward to act two. The Silver Surfer crashes the fantastically trite wedding to offer the first excitement of the story, and the first good joke: as the surfer rockets over head, Mr. Fantastic turns to Johnny Storm to follow the new threat.
Mr. Fantastic (exasperated): “Johnny!”
Johnny (reluctant, tugging at his tuxedo lapels): “But this is Dolce”.

The chase scene between Johnny and the Surfer was awesome. When the Surfer phases through the Chrysler Building and comes out the other side in slow motion, posed on his board looking like a cosmic version of a Michelangelo, I got chills.
Throughout the following acts, it is clear that the Silver Surfer is damn cool. He is a man of few words and many powers. The actor chosen to voice the surfer is no stranger to playing an imposing, enigmatic hero. And in this case, the type casting paid off. The character was so intriguing, that I would have preferred to see a movie set in the deep dark reaches of space called: “Rise of the Silver Surfer”.

One scene in particular had the potential of being truly memorable. When the Invisible Woman finally has a chance to learn about the Surfer’s origin, the camera pans down to the Surfers silver torso. His metallic skin fades to show a celestial tableau illustrating the destructive horror of his cosmic master. But instead of a comic book inspired flashback to draw us into the lonely plight of the intergalactic wanderer, we are only shown a loop of the opening images of the film.

The last chance for this movie to really wow the audience was the reveal of the film’s Big Bad. The Silver Surfer is the Herald of Galactus; a devourer of worlds, the scourge of galaxies unknown to mankind. Galactus has set his sights on earth, and fans can’t wait to see the cosmic-god brought to glory on the 2-story screen. But here is the film’s final disappointment. In the comic books, Galactus is literally larger than life. He is humanoid in appearance (especially to humans) but with the stature of Mount Olympus itself. However the filmmakers chose instead to make Galactus appear as a storm twice the size of earth. If this movie were about a cosmic debris storm hurtling through our solar system, then this effect would have been superb. But in the context of this movie, I can’t help but feel that it was a cop out, a way to save on the sfx budget. The storm robbing Saturn of its dusty rings was an exciting touch, but it didn’t compare to the disappointment of seeing an omnipotent villain portrayed as a sentient cloud of debris.

The end of the movie was predictable: the heroes saved the day. But they didn’t save me from boredom.