So I went and saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer the other day. I must say, it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. Granted, it did have it’s moments (as I’ll explain below), but it was a decent sequel, or at least as decent as it could be given the original movie (I wasn’t floored by the first Fantastic Four, either).
Superhero movies have the tendency to get campy. Most of the recent ones have, luckily, avoided that pretty well, albeit with some glaring failures (emo Spidey, anyone?). Batman Begins was good, all three X-Men were good, Superman Returns was all right (could have only been better with Chris Reeve). Sure Catwoman sucked, but she wasn’t really a superhero anyways. I know there are a lot of other superhero movies I didn’t mention, but that’s because I didn’t want to make an impromptu list of every superhero movie made recently. That’s what Wikipedia is for.
Anyways, Silver Surfer really wasn’t that bad. Good action sequences, good villains (Dr. Doom makes a reappearance!), and a good storyline, especially for fans of the Fantastic Four comics. All in all, it was typical but enjoyable summer movie fare. My biggest beef was the Fantasti-Car. If Reed Richards built it himself…why was it a freakin’ Dodge?! I mean, seriously. If the iconic Dodge grill design wasn’t enough, they had to show a Dodge commercial for the car before the movie. Come on! Blatant advertising within a movie is something that just doesn’t fly for me. It was the same way with Minority Report with the futuristic Lexus I had to keep hearing about. It’s okay to use branded stuff in a movie; just don’t overplay it.
Anyways, that’s my take on the movie. It really wasn’t too bad, unlike certain sequels (or should I say threequels? …I hate that word). Oh, and for anyone complaining about Galactus being just a giant cloud, be sure to look closely when the Silver Surfer is inside the cloud. There’s a glowing silhouette that’s the exact shape of the comic version’s helmet. Of course Stan Lee is going to make a homage. I personally think the movie would have been worse with a gigantic man threatening to consume Earth. Dark clouds are much more sinister.
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