Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Year: 2007
Director: Tim Story
Starring: Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd & Julian McMahon
Runtime: 92 mins
BBFC: PG
Published: 02/05/23
Director: Tim Story
Starring: Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis, Chris Evans, Ioan Gruffudd & Julian McMahon
Runtime: 92 mins
BBFC: PG
Published: 02/05/23
Following the box office success of Fantastic Four, a sequel was assured despite audience reaction to the first film being that of dissatisfaction. Not an awful lot is known about the creation of the sequel, but it is known to have been a less than straightforward production with many of the film’s key elements (such as a villain) only being set in stone three months before the film was due to release. It should come as a surprise then that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is actually an improvement over its predecessor, if only marginally.
When an unidentified flying object begins causing weather disturbances, power outages, and forming large craters, the United States government turns to Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), and Ben Graves (Michael Chiklis) for help. With Reed and Susan due to wed in the next few days, the super-powered group are reluctant to get on board.
But when they come face to face with the object, an alien riding a surfboard that, dubbed the ‘Silver Surfer’ (Doug Jones & Lawrence Fishburne), that claims it is bringing forth the end of the world, the Fantastic Four must unite with their former nemesis Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) and save the world from total obliteration.
When an unidentified flying object begins causing weather disturbances, power outages, and forming large craters, the United States government turns to Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), Susan Storm (Jessica Alba), Johnny Storm (Chris Evans), and Ben Graves (Michael Chiklis) for help. With Reed and Susan due to wed in the next few days, the super-powered group are reluctant to get on board.
But when they come face to face with the object, an alien riding a surfboard that, dubbed the ‘Silver Surfer’ (Doug Jones & Lawrence Fishburne), that claims it is bringing forth the end of the world, the Fantastic Four must unite with their former nemesis Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) and save the world from total obliteration.
The first Fantastic Four film struggled to present a cohesive story. It wasn’t long enough, nor did it have a clear vision for what it wanted to do, so instead of a proper superhero origins story we just had a jumbled mess of storylines that didn’t really tie into each other properly. Rise of the Silver Surfer may not have a particularly great story, but it at least has one mainline narrative that impacts and influences characters individual journeys and motivations. The biggest problem with this story is that there’s too many villains, and none of them really get any development. Fist up is the eponymous Silver Surfer who is pegged as the film’s main antagonist, except he’s not really an antagonist at all. The moment he and Susan come face to face he suddenly reveals that although he is dooming Earth to be destroyed, he is not acting of his own free will and must do this in order to save his own world from the film’s real main antagonist, Galactus.
Now Galactus isn’t really Galactus in this film, it’s kind of like how X-Men Origins did Deadpool in that it’s the character by name only. In Silver Surfer, Galactus is a sentient cloud of energy that must consume planets in order to survive, and the Surfer simply scouts out viable planets for Galactus in order to ensure that his own planet is not consumed. It’s a disappointing portrayal of the character, and it also means that the film doesn’t have your traditional superhero movie throwdown at the end because you can’t exactly have a punch up with a cloud can you?
Then there’s the returned Dr. Doom. I don’t really know why he’s even in the film, like he has almost no impact on the plot, and it makes no sense as to why the government would trust him more than the Fantastic Four. So, when he turns on them in the final act of the film and everyone’s surprised it is absolutely more of an eye rolling moment than Magneto’s role in X-Men 2 for example.
The performances are generally better all round in this film, but unfortunately Alba feels like a weak link amongst the group, and it’s absolutely because she’s being directed to be this helpless female that needs to constantly be saved by Reed, despite the fact that we all known damn well that she’s probably smarter and stronger than he is. She’s not giving her all, and she’s being put into positions where it’s borderline degrading to be that character, so I honestly don’t blame her for the underwhelming performance.
Rise of the Silver Surfer may have improved the story quality over its predecessor, but that didn’t save it from an underwhelming box office performance (it’s almost like nobody wanted it). As such the future of the franchise was put on ice, to be rebooted entirely in 2015 for what is widely considered to be one of the worst superhero films ever made.
Rise of the Silver Surfer does what it can to try and make the property interesting, but it’s clear that these films were in the hands of entirely the wrong people, and given Marvel’s interests in starting up the MCU were in full swing at this point, it’s not really surprising that Rise of the Silver Surfer ended up a sub-par and mostly forgettable superhero sequel.
Now Galactus isn’t really Galactus in this film, it’s kind of like how X-Men Origins did Deadpool in that it’s the character by name only. In Silver Surfer, Galactus is a sentient cloud of energy that must consume planets in order to survive, and the Surfer simply scouts out viable planets for Galactus in order to ensure that his own planet is not consumed. It’s a disappointing portrayal of the character, and it also means that the film doesn’t have your traditional superhero movie throwdown at the end because you can’t exactly have a punch up with a cloud can you?
Then there’s the returned Dr. Doom. I don’t really know why he’s even in the film, like he has almost no impact on the plot, and it makes no sense as to why the government would trust him more than the Fantastic Four. So, when he turns on them in the final act of the film and everyone’s surprised it is absolutely more of an eye rolling moment than Magneto’s role in X-Men 2 for example.
The performances are generally better all round in this film, but unfortunately Alba feels like a weak link amongst the group, and it’s absolutely because she’s being directed to be this helpless female that needs to constantly be saved by Reed, despite the fact that we all known damn well that she’s probably smarter and stronger than he is. She’s not giving her all, and she’s being put into positions where it’s borderline degrading to be that character, so I honestly don’t blame her for the underwhelming performance.
Rise of the Silver Surfer may have improved the story quality over its predecessor, but that didn’t save it from an underwhelming box office performance (it’s almost like nobody wanted it). As such the future of the franchise was put on ice, to be rebooted entirely in 2015 for what is widely considered to be one of the worst superhero films ever made.
Rise of the Silver Surfer does what it can to try and make the property interesting, but it’s clear that these films were in the hands of entirely the wrong people, and given Marvel’s interests in starting up the MCU were in full swing at this point, it’s not really surprising that Rise of the Silver Surfer ended up a sub-par and mostly forgettable superhero sequel.