Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) Review

Time: 92 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains low level violence.
Cast:
Ioan Gruffudd as Dr. Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic
Jessica Alba as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman
Chris Evans as Johnny Storm/Human Torch
Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm/The Thing
Doug Jones as Norrin Radd/Silver Surfer
Laurence Fishburne as the voice of the Silver Surfer
Julian McMahon as Dr. Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom
Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters
Beau Garrett as Captain Frankie Raye
Vanessa Minnillo as Julie Angel
Andre Braugher as General Hager
Director: Tim Story

Reed (Ioan Gruffudd), Susan (Jessica Alba), Johnny (Chris Evans) and Ben (Michael Chiklis) face an intergalactic messenger who has arrived to prepare Earth for its destruction. While the enigmatic being wreaks havoc around the world, the heroic quartet must also contend with the unexpected return of their enemy, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon).

Fantastic Four was not a hit critically so it was a surprise that a couple years later a sequel would come out. When it comes to this movie as a sequel, some see it as an improvement, others see it as a step down, I’m personally in the latter category. Not only did the sequel not improve many of the aspects, it made even more mistakes. The first half is borderline atrocious and the second half is mildly enjoyable but still not good. I’m surprised that they managed to make a worse Fantastic Four movie since the original.

The first half of the movie is absolutely terrible. It focuses on uninteresting aspects, especially around the wedding of Reed and Sue. This first half could pretty much be titled First World Superhero Problems: The Motion Picture or Keeping up with the Fantastics. This sequence was so uninteresting and annoying, it was such a pain to sit through. It’s difficult to care about the characters, which makes it worse. Also the very cheesy moments in the first film, there’s more of that here. There is a dance scene involving Reed Richards and it is worse than the dancing scene in Spiderman 3. I will say that the second half of the movie is better, still not good though. The second half has a lot more action (the action in this movie being okay). However there are still a lot of aspects of this film which are terrible. Galactus is a cloud (which really isn’t accurate to the comics at all). To make matters worse, both the Silver Surfer and Galactus aren’t really the main villains in the final act, it’s Doctor Doom again.

The acting is about as good/bad as the previous movie. Ioan Gruffudd is fine but unmemorable and boring, Chris Evans and Michael Chiklis were some of the best parts of the film and Jessica Alba was…. yet again Jessica Alba (still the biggest miscasting I’ve seen in a comic book movie). In all fairness, Julian McMahon as Victor von Doom is actually pretty good casting. The writing was bad for the character and from what I can tell, is nothing like the comic book character. The best part of the film is the Silver Surfer with Doug Jones playing him and Laurence Fishburne providing the voice. It’s not accurate to the comics but he definitely made an impression in the movie.

The special effects of Rise of the Silver Surfer aren’t as bad as the effects in the previous movie but they still aren’t good either. The fire effects and shield effects for Johnny Storm and Sue Storm were good enough. Reed Richards’s stretch ability were better than in the previous movie. The Silver Surfer visual effects were pretty good. As I said, the last half of the movie is better and is more enjoyable as it has a lot more action and it is entertaining enough to watch, even if it isn’t great. The music is fine.

I know that Fant4stic gets a lot more criticism but I find Rise of the Silver Surfer to be the worst Fantastic Four movie. This is a sequel, and Fox and Tim Story should’ve learned from the previous movie. This film made many of the main mistakes that the first film made. What we get instead was a film with an awful first half surrounding a wedding and was just completely annoying, the second half while enjoyable wasn’t anything special. Overall this movie was just terrible, and is for me the worst Fantastic Four movie.

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