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– Reviews/The Fantastic Four- Rise of the Silver Surfer
Maintained by and for Bob Cooley (me!)
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There are plenty of
mainstream reviews of this film available, so you’re going to get mine from
the perspective of a Marvel Comics fan-boy:
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Click for larger image
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In 1961 Stan Lee was
about to give up. His line of fantasy/horror comics was going nowhere, and
perhaps it was time to get a real job (never mind he’d been in the
comic book business since the 40s). Encouraged by his wife, he decided to
give it one more shot, by writing a new kind of super-hero comic book his
way. He asked his most experienced and prodigious artist, the legendary
Jack Kirby, to come up with some ideas. As it happened, Kirby had ideas
coming out of his ears (Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Spider-man, The X-Men,
and much, much more, all sprang from his fevered imagination). So Lee had
Kirby get to work on some of them, including this story of four compatriots
whose physical make-ups are altered on a test rocket flight by cosmic rays,
endowing them with strange super-powers. Not exactly new stuff… but it was
the treatment that would be different. These “heroes” would be
complicated. They’d bicker and have real human problems. There’d be pathos,
humor, melodrama. They’d inhabit the real world (New York City was home to
the Fantastic Four, as opposed to Superman’s Metropolis or Batman’s
Gotham), and the real world would not be immediately impressed (fending off
subterranean monsters and inter-galactic warlords can be tough on streets
and buildings, for Pete’s sake!).
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The marriage of Stan Lee’s
empathy and real-life grounding and Jack Kirby’s unbridled imagination was
a success. The age of Marvel Comics
was born, and comic books would never be the same. As with most new ideas,
the first couple years, while wildly inventive and imbued with an
undeniable urgency and power, could be spotty and somewhat primitive. But
Marvel Comics found their voice (in Stan Lee, and later Roy Thomas), and
Jack Kirby, unfettered by commercial restrictions, was free to let his
imagination soar. And soar it did, culminating in perhaps the greatest 2 ½
year arc of audacious story-telling in the medium. Beginning with issue #36
(March, 1965) and continuing through issue #67 (Oct. 1967), Kirby, with
words and dialogue by Stan Lee, gave us the Inhumans, the Frightful Four,
The Kree Sentry, Warlock, The Black Panther (the world’s first African
American super-hero), Galactus, the
Silver Surfer, a great arc wherein Dr. Doom steals the Surfers powers and
nearly takes over the world, and two great single issue stories filled with
Marvel pathos and drama- “Behold a
Distant Star” and “This Man This Monster”.
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Now, after the
disappointing first installment of the new Fantastic Four film franchise,
comes “The Fantastic Four- Rise of the Silver Surfer”. If a big imagination
were involved I’d say that biting off nearly 10 issues of that mind-blowing
32 issue story arc from the mid-60s (AND the classic “Marriage of Reed and
Sue” from FF annual #3 for good measure) was admirably ambitious.
Unfortunately, it seems the idea was to plunder the material for as many
good ideas at once as possible; the filmmakers have very few of their own.
The cast is able and, for the most part, somewhat well suited to the iconic
characters they’ve been hired to portray, save the glaringly miscast
Jessica Alba as Earth-mother/Invisible Girl (“Woman” in the film) Susan
Storm. I’d be hard pressed to find any similarity between Alba and the
character she is playing. Where Sue is warm, Alba is Edgy. Sue is
tentative, Alba is aggressive. Sue is a mature woman, Alba is a young
hottie. And so it goes. The problem is only minimally exasperated by her
horrible blond wigs, which change length much more often than even Judy
Garland’s did in Oz. Oh well.
Chris Evans is appropriately smart-allecky and
cocky as Johnny Storm, Michael Chiklis is coarse and rugged (if a tad
small) as the tragic Ben Grimm, and Ioan Gruffudd, although again, too
young, is serviceably reserved and geeky as brainiac Reed Richards. Julian
McMahon reprises his role as Dr. Doom, and although they completely ruined
the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe with the changes they made to
his origin and powers in the 1st film, he is properly
egotistical, vain-glorious and pompous for the role.
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So… the Silver Surfer
(voiced by Laurence Fishburne )
arrives to prepare the Earth for it’s eminent demise at the hands of the
Cosmic eater of planets, Galactus (FF #s 48-50). Tripping radar alarms and
causing strange weather phenomena, the Surfer catches the attention of Reed
Richards and the U.S. government (amongst others). There is a fun showdown
between the Surfer and The Human Torch, which is the action centerpiece of
the film. It’s no world-beater, but if your expectations are scaled down
for the cheesy likeability of this material, it’s enjoyable enough. There
is a big hunk of screen-time wasted on some irrelevant nonsense about the
Army bickering with Richards about how and when and who is going to
investigate what. The Army calls in none other than Victor Von Doom. I
suppose the point of the nonsense was to justify bringing Dr. Doom into a
story he had no real business in anyway- McMahon is probably signed for X
number of installments, and therefore must be utilized. Doom, of course,
wants the source of the Surfer’s power, his board. He gets it, he's
defeated (did you expect some other outcome?) That the greatest villain in
Marvel Comics history accomplishes absolutely nothing whilst in control of
the most powerful force in the universe is an indictment of the
unimaginative or unambitious (I have no idea which is worse) minds involved
in the creation of this project. And so the great story arc of FF 55-60 is
swiped and dispensed with in a mere 20 minutes of screen time. Sigh.
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The filmmakers are perfectly
happy to ply their trade in standard popcorn cinema conventions, and the
Marvel Comics characters they are adapting are just right for plugging into
prototypical Hollywood B-film fare. It’s interesting to note that the tried
and true story-telling methods of classic Hollywood live on in two
particular genres: feature animation and comic book super-hero adaptations.
It is nice to know our children will be acquainted with the age-old tools
of the trade (for a much more satisfying modern example of old-fashioned
Hollywood storytelling, be sure to see “Meet The Robinsons”). Anyway; as in the Marvel comics,
characters complain and wise-crack, they stay true to type, and at the
right moments the violins start playing and the characters reach into their
hearts, make some tough decisions, deal with some losses, and live to fight
another day.
The “push the edge of the
envelope” vitality and urgency of the early Marvel comic books has yet to
be captured for the silver screen. Back in 1962 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
captured lightning in a bottle and re-invented an art form. Asking a commercial Hollywood film to
live up to that special achievement is probably asking a bit too much.
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Disagree?
Something to add? E-mail me and I’ll post your responses!
bob@bcspage.com
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