Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Two years later, my memory of Fantastic Four is pretty dim. I didn’t really consider this a problem until Rise of the Silver Surfer rolled into theatres, but the crew behind the production did a good job of confirming that my memory loss was hardly a loss. With the exception of a pending marriage and a few character traits, very little has been ported from original to sequel. A blessing in disguise, it would seem, as revisiting the first film for any reason not named Jessica Alba is largely effort not-so-well wasted.

At some point, Rise of the Silver Surfer ceases to be a major Hollywood film and morphs into more of an E! True Hollywood Story. Characters that can finally move free from the anchor of their origin story have all the depth of ill-conceived stick figures. Each of their most dramatic moments are spoken (“I am so hot for you right now.”) – not shown – draining them of both poignancy and sincerity. The actors appear bored at almost all times, and it’s pretty hard to blame them.

Though it is decidedly better than its predecessor in every way (excepting Alba’s makeup), Rise of Silver Surfer still manages to take a backwards step or three. It’s the kind of movie that defies it’s own laws of physics shortly after stating them and saves all of it’s cool toys for the very end, rather than any of the other 20 times that they might have come in handy. Forgivable sins for a comic book movie, perhaps, until all good will is spent by identifying Stan Lee in his cameo, effectively outing every Marvel movie’s biggest in-joke.

The action is passable – though not entirely creative – until it “climaxes” with a deus ex machina that isn’t only foreshadowed beyond even a third-grader’s doubt for most of the movie, but is at least partially recycled from the first film. Throw in a villain that the audience is compelled to neither love nor hate with another that bends logic in the name of déjà vu and you have yourself the biggest waste of cool characters since Venom’s glorified cameo in Spider-Man 3.

Fantastic? Not so much.

[4/10]