I've got to admit, I didn't quite know what to expect from this movie. On geek forums and comic book cinema news sites everywhere, people were giving wildly different opinions on the film. Some said it was brilliant. Some said it was dog-turdish. Some said it was a bit of both. It was hard to tell just from them what I would be seeing in the theatre on June 15th. Since mine is ultimately the opinion I care about, the only way to settle this hot debate was to see it myself. I'd know if it was good or bad.
And thus, my review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer begins. I will be using the same Batman & Robin Movie Gradation Scale as before. The varying degrees are chronicled here, but a quick rundown of the possible scores:
0/4 - Perfect or near-perfect
1/4 - Pretty good, but with serious flaws
2/4 - Mediocre
3/4 - Bad with some good aspects
4/4 - Bad
5/4 - Detrimental to your mental and physical well-being
For reference, the first Fantastic Four film was a 3/4 in my eyes. Now, onto the nuts and bolts.
Story:
It's the classic Galactus story; Galactus, devourer of worlds, is headed for earth and his slave, The Silver Surfer, has come to earth to prepare it for destruction. However, the FF help the Surfer to remember his humanity, who then works to help spare earth from his near-omnipotent cosmic master. Pretty classic stuff, and they surprisingly got most of it right. The Surfer, I will say right now, was awesome. Very easily the best aspect of the film. I loved watching him, listening to him. They even got his comic book back story perfect. It was a character comic book fans the world over could enjoy.
They also tried to throw in the later storyline of Dr. Doom stealing the Surfer's board, and to some degree they pulled it off, but it seemed sort of out of place. Dr. Doom seemed forced; he always did. Tim Story doesn't get Doom. He never did, and he still doesn't. However, I will say that Doom was marginally more entertaining and more Doom-like than he was in the first. He still had the lame one-liners, but he did at least look and act the part with some understanding of the great lord of Latveria. Luckily he's only in it for so long that it's not too annoying. All in all, I'll say Doom was okay. But Doom should never be just "okay." He should be fucking awesome.
The power swapping. Not as lame as I imagined it would be. But there was some lameness, which I shall address later.
Acting/Character Development:
Nothing noteworthy besides the Surfer. Chris Evans as Johnny Storm was still pretty good, and the rest of the four except Jessica Alba were believable in their roles. The extras were horrible, I hate them like I hate eggs. But I say, the Surfer is really the diamond in the rough in this department. You really feel for him after a while, despite his relatively short amount of time on screen.
Faithfulness to the Source Material:
Pretty damn close, actually. The Galactus Saga was pulled off very well, with a few exceptions. First, Galactus is a giant seemingly-sentient uber-storm cloud. Now, I am like many other fans who would have loved to see the giant purple armoured man, or at least something with more of a physical form than a cloud. But Galactus is more of an imminent threat than a character; you should only really seem him in the final quarter. And to this effect, they did Galactus rather well. And they even had hints of his classic form (keep a close eye when he passes by Saturn), enough to make me think they didn't totally rape the character. However, they killed him. Which, in a movie, is fine, we'll never see him again anyway. But the comic book geek inside me is screaming, "You can't kill Galactus! He's a necessary aspect of the universe! He's like a cosmic bacteria! Killing him will fuck up the universe!" But if you can live with that, then he came off okay.
And they got the Surfer's history dead-on; he was once Norrin Radd, he sold himself into slavery to spare his planet, everything. Seriously, the Surfer was so awesome.
Music:
Nothing outstanding, but it was John Ottman, so it was fairly decent. Just nothing memorable or worth noting any further.
Comedy:
Ugh. This film is full to the brim with all the corny, raunchy pop-culture jokes Fox is famous for. It was one of the worse aspects of the film. Watching Reed Richards dance with sluts at his bachelor party, using his stretching powers for comedic effect, was really not all that funny. Most of the humor in this film is groaner humor. But there were a few gems. I just can't remember them. Luckily this dies down once the action starts.
Product Placement:
This film would have received a higher rating if it weren't for all the shameless shilling this movie did. I could have easily written an article entitled "Ad Nauseum: Rise of the Silver Surfer," it was so bad. Almost throughout the movie, it was everywhere. And I mean, it's one thing to have Ben Grimm sipping a Slurrpie on camera. That's subtle. Or billboards in New York. Those are everywhere, it's fine. But when Johhny wears a Fantastic Four uniform with logos sewn into it (he does too, but not through the whole film) and Dodge built the Fantasticar, that's just absurd. Seriously, it's revolting. Johnny even says something like "What have you got against capitalism?" Yuck. Seriously, the very worst aspect of the film. Maybe even worse than I, Robot.
Special Effects:
A mixed bag. The Surfer and Galactus look pretty wicked. Especially the Surfer. They put a lot of much-needed attention into him. And Johnny looked like he was on fire. But at the end, when he uses everyone's powers at once, that is just way too cartoony. It looks really bad. But you will be mesmerized by the Surfer. He is so awesome.
Direction:
I'm actually rather impressed with Tim Story. This is by no means a perfect film, but the pacing was actually rather good. The film's only an hour and a half and yet it never seems like it's being rushed, unlike X-Men: The Last Stand. He got a lot of characters right, especially the Surfer, and I really rather enjoyed myself. He really raised the bar from the last one. But to be perfectly fair, that's like saying that a pimple is better than a tumor.
FINAL SCORE:
1.5/4
I rarely give out a .5 on a film; I'm usually very steadfast in what I like and don't like. But this one was hard to judge. There are moments where it's a two, like with the lame jokes, the lame Doom, and the shameless product placement, and then there are moments where it's a one, namely whenever the Silver Surfer is on screen. Seriously, this guy was fantastic. Doug Jones and the voice of Laurnece Fishburn really brought the character to life. I was blown away. I didn't know Tim Story could be that good. So on that note, I have deemed it a 1.5/4; If you're a comic book fan, especially if you like the Silver Surfer, you can't miss this movie. If you're not a big fan, then you probably can live without it, but still be entertained if you did go see it. It was a hard movie to score, but in the end, I stick by my indecisiveness.
But either way, this is a huge improvement from the first. I actually enjoyed myself. Fantastic.
- Silent G
No comments:
Post a Comment