Saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer yesterday, although not on purpose. (We were originally supposed to catch Arthur and the Invisibles at the French Film Festival at the Shang, but did not find the rather dismal 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes very encouraging. On the other hand, it’s been 13 years since Luc Besson made a decent movie; why do I even bother?)
Now, I should probably say that I didn’t think the first Fantastic Four was a total waste of time (unlike say, Spider-man III), although I need to qualify that further by saying that it was really due to extremely low expectations. Spider-man II was a phenomenal movie … very nearly my favorite comic films of all-time, so III was a major letdown. The Fantastic Four, meanwhile, have never quite been my cup of tea, and as such, I go into each FF movie expecting it to suck.
Don’t get me wrong though. Both FF movies were crap. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see either one again. However, they also didn’t make me want to jump out of my seat, rip my shirt apart, curse the Marvel universe, and run screaming out of the theater (again, like Spider-man III did).
If you’ve already seen the first FF, the sequel is more of the same. The FF is easily Marvel’s most archetypal superhero movie franchise. Loved and revered by their fans, impervious to emotional weakness, facing down world-threatening enemies on a daily basis … these guys are postcards with super-powers. In the movie’s overly-long opening scenes, we are reintroduced to the Fantastic Four at a random American airport. They’re signing autographs left and right while watching themselves on the news. Later, we see what is apparently Reed and Sue’s nth attempt to have a proper wedding ceremony without some new crisis erupting in some remote part of the world. It’s a media circus; there are thousands of fans waiting outside the Baxter Building for news. Of course (and we know this from the trailer, so I’m not spoiling anything), the Silver Surfer chooses this as the perfect moment to make an appearance and ruins everything.
As an aside: both Spidey III and FF II featured their principal characters dancing. Apparently it’s a newly-revived comics tradition, you know, like Batman used to do. For some reason though, I thought that Tobey Maguire’s dance number was absolutely horrific, while Ioan Gruffud’s was only mildly nauseating. (There’re those lower expectations again.)
A couple of minor, spoiler-laced comments:
1. The Silver Surfer likes making holes. Throughout most of the middle-third of this movie, the Surfer goes around making these huge 200-meter holes in the ground and generally laying waste to well-known landmarks. Why he does this is never adequately explained. I was under the impression that he was making giant tunnels to the center of the Earth to allow for easier access upon Galactus’ arrival but why were they not spewing magma then?
2. Galactus is a cloud. People who aren’t familiar with Galactus should probably know what he looks like in the comics:
Cool huh? And totally un-cloud-like. To be fair, there is one version of Galactus, used in the alternate-universe version of the Fantastic Four penned by Ellis & Millar (in the Ultimate Extinction series) in which Galactus is depicted as a hive-like alien race bent on destroying the Earth. Still not a sentient gas cloud, but a bit closer than the classical mega-robot Galactus.
I have a number of issues with the cloud Galactus, the most important being that it’s visually boring. There is no sense of dread seeing this massive gas cloud approach the Earth (it has about the same amount of dramatic tension as the killer ice in The Day After Tomorrow). The secondary issue is how far this really falls from the comic book mythology: Galactus is one of the 5 cosmic forces that bring balance to the universe. Like Shiva in Hinduism, Galactus is a destroyer. In this movie, there’s no clear reason for his (its) arrival, and no clear reason how the Surfer could become the herald of a gas cloud that doesn’t even communicate.
3. The Fantastic Torch. In a very peculiar showdown between Doom and the Human Torch, Johnny absorbs the combined powers of the entire team and becomes what I can only describe as “The Fantastic Torch.” This is a strange thing to do, and is totally audience-pandering; the movie fans love Chris Evans a bit too much, and the screenwriters capitalized on that fact shamelessly. I’m not saying it wasn’t interesting, but the motivation behind it was just a little too obvious for me to become completely comfortable with the decision.
Over all, I’d probably give this movie a 2.5 out of five. Kids in a certain age group will love it to death, just because it’s got cool fights and visual effects up the wazoo, and comic fans who aren’t total purists will probably be able to forgive its various misrepresentations. If you don’t fall into either of these two categories, my advice is to stay well away.