Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"

"Should we bother making an interesting poster?"
"Nah, just slap their faces on it, it'll be fine."

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Directed by Tim Story
Produced by Avi Arad, Bernd Eichinger, Ralph Winter
Written by Don Payne, Mark Frost, Story by John Turman, Mark Frost

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Andre Braugher, Doug Jones

Budget: $130M

I'll fully admit to having somewhat unusual taste when it comes to superhero movies. I'm actually a fan of when it treats the characters like they're going about their super-heroism in the modern world, politics included. It's why I want a Superman where he has to deal with the fact that he's essentially an unstoppable tool of the American way. I want superheros to deal with their public image, whether vigilantes or not.

So you'd think the Fantastic Four would be a good fit. They're something like America's First Family of Superheros, considering they're "out," for lack of a better term. They're often treated like celebrities, and, to get off on a positive note, they deal a little bit with that in these two Story F4 movies. In the first one Johnny is trying to capitalize on their fame by prototyping action figures. In the second one he's selling ad space on the uniform. I'm totally cool with that.

However, when the story devolves into illogical, cosmic-stakes nonsense, that's when I lose interest. Call it oversaturation, call it an inability to relate to the idea of these people stopping the solar system from getting eaten, but that's about when I lose interest.

*sad trombone*

The movie starts off with a shot of a planet cracking open, a la Krypton, and a narration about something I didn't catch because I had already checked out. Cut to New York, where the F4 are having issues getting on an airplane, talking about the media circus wedding between Reed and Sue, and awkward comedy with the Thing.

Interspersed are shots of the Silver Surfer flying around, freezing stuff, snowing in Cairo, and causing black-outs across the world.

There's some manufactured drama between all the characters because we have to undo the development we had in the past movie, Andre Braugher shows up to tell Reed about the weirdness around the planet, and then the Silver Surfer shows up at the wedding to mess things up. Doom "escapes," though it's more like he walks outside. Johnny follows the Surfer around, almost gets killed but doesn't because duh, and we learn that Galactus is going to come eat the planet! Oh no!

Like I said, space scooter.

Now, this ties into my criticisms about the stakes in general, because Galactus is pretty much impossible to do well on film. You can either display him as a giant purple-helmeted guy riding around on his space scooter, or you can do something different, in which case why bother? Rise figures the best way to do this is to portray the planet-eater as a giant space cloud.

Weak. Even Ultimate Galactus (called Gah Lak Tus) was a swarm of spaceships. This one is literally an evil cloud.

There's some power-shifting shenanigans which aren't funny, nor clever, the Silver Surfer realizes the error of his ways, and Doom does some evil stuff that ultimately doesn't have any impact on the plot. Sue gets speared and brought back to life, the Surfer sacrifices himself to beat Galactus and comes back to life, and the credits roll.

The Silver (Surfer) Lining
Doug Jones does the motion capture for the Surfer, and it's always nice to see the guy getting work. The Surfer looks good throughout, and they do a fair job of making him look, at first, pretty powerful. His voice is provided by Laurence Fishburne, so he sounds appropriately cosmic.

Break it down, Chiklis.

At least the final fight is better than the one from the first movie, but that's not really saying much.

At least it gave us this scene --->

The Planet-Devouring Storm Cloud
As said above, the stakes couldn't be any non-existent. This movie doesn't have the tone of something that will actually do anything brave, from the Johnny's fall from orbit to the bloodless helicopter crash to Sue's death and resurrection literally five minutes later. The worst we see is a bit of relationship drama between Sue and Reed, which is resolved pretty immediately after.

Speaking of Jessica Alba, the first movie saw fit to bleach her hair and call it a day. In this one they put her in a bad blonde wig and over-saturated blue contact lens. Though Sue Storm is the epitome of blue-eyed blonde, it gives the unfortunate impression that Jessica Alba was too hispanic for audiences in the first movie. Maybe that's just me living in this post-Trump society, but whatever.

The Continuity What?
So...Stan Lee's cameo is during the wedding scene...as himself...and it's written and performed in such a way that makes it seem like Stan Lee recognizes these people as his characters. The theory that Stan Lee is playing Uatu the Watcher still holds water.

But really, what? I know it's done for comedy, but does that mean this version of Stan Lee has some sort of creative reality-warping ability? Now there's a movie, man.