Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Your feelings about Rise of the Silver Surfer will probably be heavily influenced by your response to the original Fantastic 4 film. If you thought it was dumb and decidedly C-grade, then changes are that you’ll feel exactly the same about Silver Surfer.
If you, like me, have always thought of the Fantastic 4 at rather lame anyway – bickering, dorky, 3rd cousins twice removed from the far more tragic, emotionally engaging X-Men – then chances are you’ll accept this film for what it is – 90 minutes of lighthearted fluff.
Which, in a way, is in Fantastic 4’s favour. You see, Rise of the Silver Surfer is a 100% family friendly superhero film. It’s far more likely to engage a popcorn munching 10 year than Spider-Man 3, with all its unmasked whining and pining. This time around Reed, Sue, Johnny and The Thing are unburdened by any kind of emotional complexity – like the Thing’s devastation at his repulsive form in the original film.
While this unusual “family” of heroes largely play things for laughs (especially Chris Evans’ cocky, branding-obsessed Johnny/Human Torch), it’s the ambiguous character of the Silver Surfer who brings some much needed sobriety to the film. Apart from Lawrence Fishburn’s distracting Matrix-esque vocals, the Silver Surfer is really the highlight of the film.
For one thing he is brilliantly realised, with the filmmakers giving him, via make up, chiselled, comic book-like features to match his intensity. For another, he is depicted as a tragic “Christ” figure, gifted with incredible powers but tortured, abused and self-sacrificial for the good of all. Kudos, also to the filmmakers for taking an abstract but highly credible approach to the Surfer’s “boss”, Galactus, the devourer of worlds.
The filmmakers clearly paid attention to filmgoers’ “favourites” in the original film, because Johnny Storm gets a lot of screen time this time around. By comparison, The Thing takes a back seat for most of the action. Johnny also lands the film’s other major highlight moment – no doubt to be included in the film’s video game adaptation – a one-on-one battle between himself and Dr Doom, with a little help from some new abilities.
Speaking of Dr Doom, he’s actually one of the film’s major disappointments. His “resurrection” starts off promisingly enough, but instead of letting the character remain deformed and cloaked, it isn’t long before he’s back to being too good-looking Julian McMahon – who, for an unknown reason the US military trusts implicitly, giving him plenty of unsupervised time to plan his revenge against the Four.
And what is wrong with Jessica Alba in this film? Her look is actually off-putting for most of the time, as if she is wearing too much make-up base. She’s almost orange at some points.
In the end, Rise of the Silver Surfer has some very entertaining set-piece action sequences, and vastly improved special effects, but in the end I still think I prefer the first Fantastic 4 film slightly more for tackling some of the character’s emotional hang-ups made famous in the comics.
If you, like me, have always thought of the Fantastic 4 at rather lame anyway – bickering, dorky, 3rd cousins twice removed from the far more tragic, emotionally engaging X-Men – then chances are you’ll accept this film for what it is – 90 minutes of lighthearted fluff.
Which, in a way, is in Fantastic 4’s favour. You see, Rise of the Silver Surfer is a 100% family friendly superhero film. It’s far more likely to engage a popcorn munching 10 year than Spider-Man 3, with all its unmasked whining and pining. This time around Reed, Sue, Johnny and The Thing are unburdened by any kind of emotional complexity – like the Thing’s devastation at his repulsive form in the original film.
While this unusual “family” of heroes largely play things for laughs (especially Chris Evans’ cocky, branding-obsessed Johnny/Human Torch), it’s the ambiguous character of the Silver Surfer who brings some much needed sobriety to the film. Apart from Lawrence Fishburn’s distracting Matrix-esque vocals, the Silver Surfer is really the highlight of the film.
For one thing he is brilliantly realised, with the filmmakers giving him, via make up, chiselled, comic book-like features to match his intensity. For another, he is depicted as a tragic “Christ” figure, gifted with incredible powers but tortured, abused and self-sacrificial for the good of all. Kudos, also to the filmmakers for taking an abstract but highly credible approach to the Surfer’s “boss”, Galactus, the devourer of worlds.
The filmmakers clearly paid attention to filmgoers’ “favourites” in the original film, because Johnny Storm gets a lot of screen time this time around. By comparison, The Thing takes a back seat for most of the action. Johnny also lands the film’s other major highlight moment – no doubt to be included in the film’s video game adaptation – a one-on-one battle between himself and Dr Doom, with a little help from some new abilities.
Speaking of Dr Doom, he’s actually one of the film’s major disappointments. His “resurrection” starts off promisingly enough, but instead of letting the character remain deformed and cloaked, it isn’t long before he’s back to being too good-looking Julian McMahon – who, for an unknown reason the US military trusts implicitly, giving him plenty of unsupervised time to plan his revenge against the Four.
And what is wrong with Jessica Alba in this film? Her look is actually off-putting for most of the time, as if she is wearing too much make-up base. She’s almost orange at some points.
In the end, Rise of the Silver Surfer has some very entertaining set-piece action sequences, and vastly improved special effects, but in the end I still think I prefer the first Fantastic 4 film slightly more for tackling some of the character’s emotional hang-ups made famous in the comics.
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