Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Movie Info

Still the Fantastic Four…still lame

The Fantastic Four are celebrities.  As Reed (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue (Jessica Alba) make their fourth attempt at a wedding, the city celebrates.  When Reed is contacted by General Hager (Andre Braugher) and Captain Frankie Raye (Beau Garrett) from the military, he learns that a mysterious alien force has been monitoring the Earth.  When the alien interrupts the wedding, an encounter with Johnny (Chris Evans) leads Johnny’s powers to destabilize…threatening the team.  When the military teams with a reborn Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben (Michael Chiklis) discover the alien known as the Silver Surfer could signal the end of the world.

I’m kind of like the Super Skrull

Directed by Tim Story, Fantastic Four:  Rise of the Silver Surfer (sometimes stylistically shown as Fantastic 4:  Rise of the Silver Surfer) is the follow-up sequel to Fantastic Four from 2005.  Much like its predecessor, the movie was met with negative reviews (slightly better) and decent take in the box-office.  The movie received Razzie nominations for Worst Actress (Jessica Alba) and Worst Screen Couple (Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd).

The first Fantastic Four wasn’t that good.  It was unbalanced, looked bad, and loaded with poor actors.  This Fantastic Four did some work to fix that and got at least one of the problems rectified…it helps but still doesn’t work.

This “cool” dance scene doesn’t help

The movie mostly suffers from a painful opening act.  The first thirty minutes or so of the movie really try to be “fun”…something which it is not.  The bachelor party, the dancing, and the wedding really just don’t work.  It does start to improve with the arrival of the Silver Surfer, but Doctor Doom’s return probably wasn’t necessary…it hindered what was turning into an ok adventure.

The acting once again is quite poor. Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba continue to be awful and have no chemistry, but the slight script improvement does help them slightly.  Michael Chiklis as the Thing sees his role cut down significantly and the fun Human Torch played by Chris Evans becomes the star.  Julian McMahon feel pointless in this movie as Doom, and the movie should have been about the far more interesting Silver Surfer who was played by Doug Jones but voiced by Laurence Fishburne.  Beau Garrett stars as Frankie Raye (who in the comics became Galactus’ herald Nova).  Of course, Stan Lee stops by for the wedding, and Thing’s girlfriend Alicia returns played by Kerry Washington.

Sue Storm…why can’t I be the star of this movie?

The visuals for the movie are the one thing that did get better for the movie.  The Silver Surfer and his board are quite impressive and the movie even made the Human Torch, Invisible Woman, Thing, and Mr. Fantastic look better.  I didn’t really feel Doom’s look worked in the first movie and it doesn’t work here.

Fantastic Four:  Rise of the Silver Surfer was a slight improvement.  I was actually kind of impressed by the Silver Surfer and wished he had gone on to the proposed spin-off film (where they could rectify the hugely disappointing lack of appearance by Galactus).  Despite being a financial success, this movie ended the franchise but a planned reboot based more on the Ultimate Fantastic Four was released in 2015 (and was a box office failure).

Related Links:

Fantastic Four (2005)

Fantastic Four (2015)

Fantastic Four:  World’s Greatest Heroes