The first Fantastic Four movie was pretty terrible (I gave it a 0 out of 10). However, it made enough money to warrant a sequel, so in 2007, Fox produced Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. This was an exciting prospect, since all comic fans know that when the Silver Surfer appears, Galactus isn't far behind, and few things could be cooler than seeing the Fantastic Four battle the devourer of worlds. However, this movie returned everybody who worked on the first one, including the awful director, Tim Story, which pretty much ensured this movie's failure.
The start of the movie was unbearably painful. We're given a very mundane sampling of their powers filled with an overwhelming amount of cheesy humor. Then we get the "hilarious" scene of the Fantastic Four being forced to ride coach! It was great, because Mr. Fantastic got to use his stretching power to sneak a bag into the overhead bin across the aisle, and, get this, the Thing had to sit in the middle! Can you imagine that? The Thing? In the middle?! Oh, I'm dying with laughter already. And then, of course, the Human Torch is too cool to fly coach, so he flies alongside the airplane with his fire powers! Awesome! Maybe if you're four years old. OK, first of all, why would the Fantastic Four ever have to fly coach? They are international celebrity heroes. Everybody is talking about them on the news and everybody wants to get their picture taken with them. Who on Earth is more important than them and gets to stay in first class, while the Thing probably destroys a couple of seats in coach? Secondly, what a boring way to introduce these characters and their powers. I want to see them fight somebody! The Fantastic Four has been around for 50 years — they have plenty of villains to choose from! Even if you don't want to use a real super villain, at least show them stop a regular bank robber. Come on! This is a superhero movie!
We then go through the annoying wedding buildup (which I did not care for in the slightest), and then we get to the. Worst. Stan Lee. Cameo. Ever. He's appeared in almost every Marvel movie ever made, ranging from an almost unseen crowd member in Spider-Man, to this, where he literally says, "I'm Stan Lee!" The weird thing is the wedding usher responds to that with, "Nice try!" implying that he knows who Stan Lee is but doesn't think the old man in front of him (with the classic dark glasses, slicked-back hair and mustache) is the real Stan Lee. OK, so let's pretend that Stan Lee exists in this universe. We don't see or here any mention of other superheroes, so I guess we can assume that Spider-Man, X-Men and the rest only exist in comics and Stan Lee invented them, but not the Fantastic Four because they're real. So in this reality, Stan Lee is a well-known celebrity, but the usher doesn't recognize him. How? Why? Ahh, my mind is beginning to melt all thanks to this stupid 10-second scene! Curse you Marvel!
Now, I do actually have to give some credit to this movie. In the last one, the special effects were quite awful by today's standards. In this movie, the effects generally aren't that much better (Human Torch still looks weird), but the Silver Surfer does look good. You can tell that's where they put all their money, which paid off — especially for the first time you got a good look at him, which was a pretty nice shot.
After his encounter with the Silver Surfer, Johnny gains the ability to swap powers with whoever he touches. To me, this completely came off as a plot device to set up a scene where Sue could again become naked in public and the Thing could again become human so we could see the real actor's face. The whole thing felt completely contrived, almost like it was hasty addition to the script due to a clause in the actors' contracts. Regardless, it was a quite boring plot line. I never wanted to see what the Fantastic Four would look like with swapped powers, and this movie failed to convince me that such an idea could ever be interesting, dramatic or funny.
The Fantastic Four actually very rarely use their powers to help people. One time they actually did was to save the giant ferris wheel in London, which was a lot better than them saving the firetruck in the first movie. It was kind of weird, though, when Johnny "messed up" and everybody got mad at him, like even people outside the team were chewing him out, really for no reason at all.
Speaking of people getting mad for no reason, the Army general was furious with the Fantastic Four for "failing" (even though they did just save hundreds of lives). He then purposefully recruits their arch enemy, known murderer Dr. Victor von Doom. I was happy, though, to see them actually make Doom look smart and invent a gadget or two — in the first movie, he was nothing more than a narcissistic businessman, but here, they actually went back to his roots and made him a scientist. Of course, his ultimate plan is deeply flawed. Doom understands that Galactus is coming and will destroy the Earth within the week, so he teams up with the Fantastic Four to save the planet. He then discovers a way to steal and control the silver surfboard, but then what? Does he think he can stop Galactus himself? It just didn't make any sense.
But I am getting a little ahead of myself. First I need to criticize all the pointless, boring side plots. Johnny Storm, one of the most famous people in the world and constantly going on dates with any and every woman he sees, decides that he really is very lonely and needs a real girlfriend. When he sees the inordinately angry general's unnaturally hot assistant, he instantly falls in love with her and spends the better half of the movie pursuing her for no reason. Naturally, she hates him for no reason, until the very end when she shows up as Johnny's date to the big wedding in Japan. Yawn. Oh, and remember her boss? The general who was constantly furious with and disappointed in Reed Richards? Well, apparently the two of them had a high school rivalry, I guess. But don't worry, everything is smoothed over when Reed delivers a heroic speech about how science is cool and jocks shouldn't make fun of nerds, or something like that. Everybody is impressed with Reed from that moment, and then the general is killed by Dr. Doom and nobody cares. Such drama!
I also didn't car about their flying car. I know it was in the comics, but I think they still could have improved it, or at least done a better job setting it up. So, going all the way back to the beginning of the movie, we see Reed working on a "top secret" project, which turned out to be this flying car. Apparently he had had enough with flying coach. Anyway, we skip ahead to Dr. Doom stealing the surfboard and they all say, "There's no way we can catch him now!" But Reed just smiles, and activates the flying car, which instantly zooms to their side. Wait a minute! That thing was up and running this whole time? Why didn't you use it to chase around the Silver Surfer earlier? I guess I'm not supposed to ask those questions. I'm also not supposed to ask why this ship has four seats, when the Human Torch can already fly on his own, nor am I supposed to ask why the ship can only split into three parts. I think originally in the comics, Stan Lee thought it would've been absurd to let a woman drive a flying car, so he kept her with her husband. In this movie, they got around that awkwardness by putting the Silver Surfer in the non-flying seat. Whatever. I don't even care anymore.
Actually, I guess I do kind of still care because the ultimate climax of this movie was so, so stupid. They had to take down the surfing Dr. Doom, but Johnny says, "He's too strong for me!" Thing says, "I could take him, but he'd see me coming from a mile away!" All they were missing was somebody saying, "If only I were a little more flexible ..." Ugh! I hate when they have to set everything up like this! Plus, combining all the Fantastic Four's powers into one person takes away the great team dynamic of these heroes. If I want to watch a movie with one hero with a bunch of powers, I'll go watch Superman. Actually, that's not a bad idea. I'll go see Man of Steel on June 14.
And now for the biggest problem of the movie. We were promised and teased a Galactus sighting since the opening credits. And then ... we never see him! Yes, I know Galactus has a difficult design that can easily look stupid in the wrong hands. But for skilled artists, he is the most intimidating villain in the Marvel universe. And all we got were a bunch of clouds. It's almost like the CGI team said, "You want us to design what? No way! We'll do clouds — they're way easier and cheaper!" Equally disappointing is the fact that the Fantastic Four did not drive away the cloudy Galactus — it was the guest star Silver Surfer. And he did so in a vague and annoying way. He flew up into the clouds and for some reason needed the Human Torch to stabilize his board, then he told Galactus to go away and gathered up all his energy. Then there was a big flash of light and Galactus was gone and everything was back to normal. No! I want the heroes of the show to save the day! I want the Fantastic Four to directly confront this enormous threat and come out victorious. In the comics, Uatu the Watcher (who actually interferes more than watches) took the Human Torch to Galactus' home world to acquire the Ultimate Nullifier, which Mr. Fantastic threatened to use on Galactus, causing him to leave Earth. In this movie, they could have easily omitted Uatu and just had Reed use his brilliant mind to invent the Ultimate Nullifier. That would've been better than watching the guest star create a vague energy blast.
Oh, such a disappointing film that actually had some promise. But, at the end of the day, this is better than the first Fantastic Four movie. So on that merit alone, I will award a pity point.
Final score: 1
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