Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Flotsam and jetsam
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre June 18, 2007

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Directed by Tim Story
Based on the characters created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
Starring Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd, Michael Chiklis
GP / 92 minutes
Twentieth Century Fox/ Marvel Enterprises
** ½ (2 ½ stars)

There are many things to like in Rise of the Silver Surfer – the Surfer, the Torch and Jessica Alba. But there are also as many things not to like in it – Alba’s makeup, the dull action, and of all things, Galactus. Behold – a very nice bad movie.

Manhattan’s fabulous foursome reunite in a more action-oriented, plot-driven sequel to the 2005surprise hit, Fantastic Four. In Rise of the Silver Surfer, the Fantastic Four battle an intergalactic threat that is about to swallow the earth whole.

In the movie, superstar superheroes Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Susan Storm (Invisible Woman played by Jessica Alba) are about to exchange “I Do’s” when a strange being from space barrels across the sky, creating weird climate changes and electrical disruptions from Japan to London.

The US military intervenes, enlisting the aid of the Four for the being’s capture. A resurrected Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) offers his mega-corporate help, despite the Four’s objections. The being gets captured all right, but not before Susan telepathically learns that the Silver Surfer is merely the servant of a planet-eating cosmic entity known as Galactus. At the same time, Von Doom plots to acquire the source of the Surfer’s cosmic powers for his greedy self.

Realizing that Galactus can only be stopped by its servant, the Fantastic Four rescue the Surfer from the military and battle a more powerful Von Doom just in time to convince the Silver Surfer to save Earth from his master.

Like the first movie, The Thing (Michael Chiklis) and the Human Torch (Chris Evans) are the more engaging members of the Four, despite an uneven share of screen time mostly devoted to the Surfer and the Torch. The Silver Surfer steals the show outright thanks to a good mix of CG and performance capture from Doug Jones and Laurence Fishburne’s voice.

Featuring an opening sequence straight out of Superman Returns, a surfing Von Doom that resembles the Green Goblin and a Silver Surfer that is only marginally different from the Terminator’s T1000, Rise of the Silver Surfer is an action flick for toddlers, a simplified superhero story meant to condescend to its audience in the firm deceit that comic book movies need not be “layered” to make bankable money. And oh, the brand placements.

What is disappointing about Rise of the Silver Surfer is not Jessica Alba’s atrocious makeup, not Gruffudd’s reed-thin acting nor the insufficient story on why, where and how the Surfer came to be. It is the sense of the perfunctory, a sense of the superficially naive that director Tim Story has consistently played since the first movie even with the introduction of a morally ambiguous character as the Silver Surfer. I sense a separate spin-off movie for the Surfer, and another for the Torch to explain the origins of Galactus and the Surfer.

The most annoying thing, really, from someone familiar to the comics, is how the mighty Galactus – Devourer of Worlds, third force of the universe aside Eternity and Death, wielder of the Power Cosmic, the very entity which granted the Surfer a mere fraction of its powers – was defeated by the help?