Review: With the (financial) success of the original Fantastic Four movie, FOX quickly announced that a sequel would be forthcoming and the smart money was wisely placed upon the Silver Surfer and Galactus making an appearance. It was rushed into production (aren’t all FOX films?) in the summer of 2006 and released the following year. The general consent is that it’s much better than the original but still doesn’t come close to matching the top tier superhero films, such as Batman Begins, X2: X-Men United or Marvel’s finest effort, Spider-Man 2.

I personally had my doubts about this one. After the lacklustre first one, I knew not to get my hopes up because the same imbeciles behind the original were back and they clearly didn’t have a grasp on any of the characters and lacked any ambitions beyond making a dumb Hollywood movie in an effort to make more people eat popcorn over the summer. I knew I’d see it of course – I dig my superhero movies and make every effort to see them, despite how bad I hear/believe they will be. Except Elektra of course - I knew that would suck so terribly that even I, who has spent countless hours making websites about cartoons I don’t like wasn’t going to waste my time on that crap. Imagine my surprise when I sat down in the theatre with my big tub of popcorn and actually really enjoyed Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer!

This film actually has something of a story this time around – strange events are happening all over the planet – oceans freezing, pyramids covered in snow, Stu’s bedroom is tidy and the military discover that a strange UFO has been spotted near the aforementioned incidents and look to Reed for help, who of course discovers that it’s The Silver Surfer causing the problems and they look for a way to stop him. Researching further shows them that the Surfer does more than make the Weatherman look foolish – 8 days after this appearance on various other worlds, the planet’s all die. The Surfer’s appearance on the planet has also mysteriously reawakened Victor Von Doom who now seeks the shiny man’s powers so he can take over the world or something.

As with the first film, Doom is wasted again here. I never really saw the need for him to return – it’s not like they continued his story at all like they did with Magneto in the X-Men sequels – given the short running time and lack of focus on Galactus, I think the film would’ve greatly benefited from simply cutting Doom out of it all together.

The film is one of those rare sequels where they take everything they had from the first one and make it better. The characters are better developed (but not so much defined beyond the odd glimmer), the action and effects are improved and the score is just as spectacular as the first time around. Some actual effort appears to have gone into this one and the film is a lot more fun throughout, much like Spider-Man 2 was compared to the original. The Silver Surfer turned out to be a lot more entertaining than I thought he would be – he’s not featured that much due to the short run time but he looked amazing, one of the few characters to be visually translated from the comic book to the big screen perfectly. He’s a character I can give or take in all honesty but he did impress me here. I would actually look forward to seeing him getting his own film is JMS wasn’t involved in it’s production. I’m not usually one for boycotting anything but if his name is mentioned you can pretty much confirm that my interest isn’t there. It’s kind of a shame – this is of course assuming that the Silver Surfer movie actually gets anywhere close to production.

Let me reiterate again that I did actually enjoy this film, enough to pick it up on the day it was released and (eventually) add a section for it to this here site, so for those of you who haven’t seen it, I would recommend you do.

However.

Part of me is still incredibly disappointed in the film. Not so much with the aforementioned use of Dr. Doom, but the fact that this could’ve been Marvel’s biggest on screen epic like the original Galactus trilogy from the comics. With an extra half hour and obviously a bigger budget (and perhaps a more competent director) this had the potential to be one of the biggest movies of the decade. A being that destroys entire planets? Can you get a bigger villain? So what did they do? They turned him into a cloud. I remember when this was first rumoured that I thought they were taking the piss. Even these hacks couldn’t do something so stupid to the Fantastic Four’s greatest villain. Their incompetence surprised even me. It’s horrifying as a fanboy to watch one of your favourite villains ruined but as someone who just wandered in with little expectations, I thought the ending of the movie was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in the history of cinema. That should’ve been an epic fight between the sentinel of the spaceways and a giant devourer of worlds, not a 30 second light show.

Overall, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer is an entertaining blockbuster which oddly enough, is still a waste of a fantastic opportunity.

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