Movie Review: Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer [2007]

The year was 2007, two years after the first live-action Fantastic Four movie hit the theaters. And 2007 was around the time where superhero sequels end up sort of being pretty looked down upon. Spider-Man 3 debuted in the same year, and X-Men: The Last Stand the year before, and while I certainly found things to enjoy in both of them, they were... problematic movies at best. Throw in the fact that the following year, 2008, had two of arguably the best superhero movies of all time that redefined not just superhero movies but cinema in general (Iron Man and Dark Knight), and the poor, poor Fantastic Four sequel that came out in 2007 sort of just petered out as an underperforming disappointment that caused Fox to stop making Fantastic Four movies for nearly a decade before they splurged out that hideous abomination that is the 2015 Fant4stic movie. And Rise of the Silver Surfer is certainly a better movie than the 2015 movie, but what isn't?

Still, I did really enjoy this movie back when I watched it in the cinema in 2007. It was mindless summer blockbuster, and it was a pretty decent introduction to the Silver Surfer, one of the few 'cosmic' Marvel characters to make it to the big screen before the MCU dipped its toes into the likes of Thanos. Having reading a bunch of Silver Surfer centric stories in the recent months, I ended up booting my old DVD of Rise of the Silver Surfer, and watched through it. 

And... and it's not that bad? At least the first half isn't that terrible. It was pretty decent build-up, with the Silver Surfer, an enigmatic (and honestly, well-portrayed; the CGI for the Surfer and his effect stands up reasonably well) alien on a surfboard that zips around and causes strange global weather changes and creates gigantic sinkholes in different parts of the Earth. 

Meanwhile, the titular Fantastic Four... are having to deal with a marriage. And while it's kind of eye-rolling for the plot to be "ohh the woman wants the marriage to go on and gets upset when the man puts superheroing above their emotional marriage", it's actually not portrayed as terribly as I remember it to be. The marriage angst lasts for a couple of conversations, and Sue's more upset about Reed lying to her than the actual principle of putting superheroing above marriage, and she jumps into action as fast as her compatriots. 

The interaction with our bargain-bin Nick Fury, General Hager, is even a neat storyline for what's otherwise a one-note government flunky. Hager's got a neat ex-rivals dynamic with Reed Richards that ends up in that nice "shut up, you need our help, show my friends some respect" speech in the jungle. And for the first half of the movie, the mystery is built up well -- it's a generic superhero story, but it's executed relatively well. The initial surprie fight against the Silver Surfer in the city, the later trap with the random sci-fi goobledeygonk, the realization that the military might be torturing poor Silver Surfer... and the fact that the Surfer isn't the threat, but a herald to a planet-devouring monster called Gah Lak Tus Galactus...

Unlike most reviewers, I even welcome the addition of previous movie's big bad, Doctor Doom, as this untrustowrthy ally they had to be buddies with thanks to the government's insistence. At least for the first couple of scenes. Doom getting put on his ass when he thinks his paltry electric blasts can match up to the space surfing alien is fun, and his dynamic with Reed as unwilling allies is nice to watch. But when the inevitable betrayal happens and we spend nearly half an hour just dealing with Dr. Doom on a surfboard... the movie sort of falls apart. The CGI fight is neat for a while, but then you realize the writers really didn't have any idea what to do with Doom and at this point he's just a cackling megalomaniac that loses any of the charm he might have when he's prancing around pre-board.  

And that's where the movie falls apart, I think. We get this neat little buildup to the Galactus storyline, but Galactus shows up waaaay too late to the story to have an impact. The Silver Surfer's story is neat, but it also loses steam near the end where the Surfer is reduced first into an exposition machine, then as a deus ex machina to resolve Galactus while Doom ends up stealing the screentime. There's also the whole "all your powers combined" bit where the Fantastic Four start switching powers thanks to the Silver Surfer's ambiguous powers in the first act of the movie, leading to Johnny Storm gaining the powers of all four Fantastic Four members, which is kind of a bit too kooky. Doom gets knocked out after a long CGI fight, and the surfboard returned to the Surfer. And then, of course, the infamous giant cloud o' doom scene as Galactus turns out to just be a massive mass of burning clouds that Silver Surfer just flies in and kills in a suicide bomb scene after discovering humanity or whatever. It just happens really rapidly, such an anti-climax, and even back in 2007 then I always thought it was particularly silly that the way they beat Galactus was within two minutes of him arriving on Earth. Sure, Galactus is the sort of enemy that tends to get defeated thanks to some plot device, but at least make our heroes work for it, y'know? 

Overall, the movie's... it's entertaining enough, I suppose, if you grab some popcorn and sort of turn your brain off. But the rather disappointing CGI-fest that closes out the movie's final act really ends up not resolving much of the set-up that was done reasonably well in the first half. As much as I enjoy McMahon's hamminess, I'd cut out most of Doom's scenes in the second half and replaced it with more Silver Surfer stuff. Or, alternatively, cut out Galactus and save him for a third movie if you really want to focus on Doom and Surfer as the primary focus of the movie. The end result ends up being pretty disjointed as a result. 

The acting is relatively well-done for the most part, with Doug Jones (Silver Surfer), Ioan Gruffurd (Reed) and Michael Chiklis (Ben) being the easy highlights of the movie. Julian McMahon's Dr. Doom is fun but ends up taking a bit too much of the screentime and is reduced to generic Saturday morning villain once he gets the surfboard, while the pre-Captain-America Chris Evans is always charming as Johnny Storm, but I found his scenes kind of grating in this one, with a random shoehorned tsundere military captain love interest that was completely unnecessary to the story. Jessica Alba's Sue Storm... yeah, she reportedly hated being on this movie and it kind of shows. She does a decent job in that it didn't take me out of the movie, but she's clearly the weak link among the primary cast. Which is kind of a shame, since this movie actually gave her a lot more to do with her being the one that first befriends the Surfer. 

Anyway... it's a decent flick, I suppose, despite all its warts. It's around slightly-below-average, but I would be lying if I said I didn't at least enjoy some of the fun superhero action scenes.