Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer opened recently. While I thought the first movie seemed to be exactly the kind of movie that might kill the comic-book-blockbuster genre (I didn't see it, but everything I read about after release confirmed what I thought about the movie before release). Bad casting, cheezy writing, very canned character development. Basically, the hollywood formula taken to it's most boring and predictable.
(Oh, I'm gonna start spouting off spoilers, so consider yourself warned.)
Despite that, I really, really love Silver Surfer as a character, and I want to see him made into a modern-day comic icon along the lines of Wolverine and perhaps Magneto. I don't think he'll ever have the staying power of Superman or Spidey, but hey, it would be nice.
The sequel was about as much as I expected. I have to say, Jessica Alba really seems to be developing as an actress - I don't think it is fair to classify her as a typical "only a pretty face" actress. I mean, she's no Merryl Streep. But she's no Paris Hilton either. I'd put her up there with Mark Wahlberg. Their striking appearance got their foot in the door, but with alot of effort, they are both genuinely average actors, which is just a tremendous improvement from where they were at the beginning of their acting career.
Anyway, enough about Alba, because despite that earlier praise, her inabilty to carry the Sue Storm character was a movie killer. Almost as bad as the unbelievably overdone and predictable personal problems the characters had. So pretty much every scene that was only the four was pretty damn boring, despite fair quips. The guy who played the Torch was good. Chiklas was very good. The guy playing Reed Richards wasn't terrible, which is what I thought he'd be.
And of course, there was The Surfer. They handled the first encounters fairly well. I liked that he had very few lines. It was extremely lame for something as harmless as a tachyon pulse to affect The Surfer in any way, but since he's grown in power so much in comics, they'd have a hard time finding anything Richards could build to affect him. Surfer is more powerful than Superman in every way. And he has no kryptonite.
Galactus was handled horribly, but again, as a writer, it's very tough to tell that story without making it too smart and long for most audiences. No one ever "defeats" Galactus, really. They just fend him off, and make him realize that eating Earth wouldn't be worth the energy he'd have to expend to overcome it's defenses. In modern Marvel, Galactus is as he should be - a world ending force of the universe that absolutely everyone has to rise up to fend off. So Surfer shouldn't have "killed" him. I'm glad they were able to get Doom involved, but it is sad when they have to totally halt his development, and give him screen time in such small, dull doses.
All in all, I'd give it a 5. Somewhere in the average-mediocre neighborhood. Still, there is a chance that a Surfer offshoot project might be interesting, but it sure as hell couldn't include the writers or directors from this one. Maybe call the guys who did the new TNMT, get them good and high, let them watch some Joseph Campbell or Stark Trek: TNG, and let them go wild.
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