Fantastic Four Rise Of The Silver Surfer Review

The film’s story is loosely adapted from the classic Coming of Galactus story arc, in which the Fantastic Four find themselves up against an omnipotent cosmic force. This force has a name – Galactus – and a herald, in the form of a flying silver alien. In the film, the alien comes to the heroes’ attention when he starts transforming matter all over Earth and leaving great craters everywhere from New York to the Thames. More scarily, every other planet he’s done this on before has been destroyed within eight days …SPOILERS It was as though every open story arc was closed in thirty seconds when it should’ve been at least fifteen minutes. I am THE LAST PERSON who would ordinarily cry out for a longer running time (my crusade against ass-numbing overindulgences has resulted in my active avoidance of almost anything beyond 100 minutes) but really – this is perplexing. Admittedly some of this is minor, like Frankie and Johnny’s relationship which goes from icy pseudo-flirting to a loved-up appearance together in the wedding epilogue. This seemed to missing a vital “we’re about to die together, let’s kiss” scene and the earlier conversation between Ben and Johnny which talked about having someone to hold at the end of the world would’ve set that up beautifully. Has there been a hatchet job here? There must’ve been. Surely overzealous re-editing is the only excuse I can imagine for how Galactus is destroyed. Far from being an all-powerful being, it seems all you have to is randomly fly a surfboard up him, look constipated and explode. Yes. For all the explanation we get offered (ie: none), it looks as though Galactus is destroyed with a gigantic fart; the most ludicrous, baffling anti-climax in recent memory. It’s such a shame that this ridiculous race to the finish line ruins what could otherwise have been a first class Summer Blockbuster. The script is often very careful, especially with the dialogue, which makes a conscious effort to emulate proper comic book style (not as easy as it sounds but accomplished with rare perfection here). There are some wonderful interractions between characters where you can almost SEE the speech bubbles, and even one customary swipe at DC (yay). Additionally, the action scenes are breathtaking. There are one or two bits of well dodgy CGI but it still can’t hamper the sheer inventiveness of certain set-pieces. The sky collision between the Surfer and the Human Torch is a thing of beauty. As is Doug Jones in general, for that matter. Whilst all the cast (bar Jessica Alba – WHY WHY WHY is she making movies?!) do admirably in their roles, Jones excels as the alien. His facial expressions are so impeccably Norin Radd, I could honestly believe him to be from another planet. It’s uncanny. So yeah, there’s tons and tons to love about this film, contrary to my initial fears. All the things I thought they’d fail at were fine (I feared the Surfer would look like toss for a start) and yet the easy bit, the no-brainer (ie: telling a pre-existing story with a coherent ending), they screwed up monumentally. My only hope is that a Director’s Cut DVD might contain the missing fifteen minutes where everything logical happened.

title: “Fantastic Four Rise Of The Silver Surfer Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-19” author: “Brooke Gill”

The film’s story is loosely adapted from the classic Coming of Galactus story arc, in which the Fantastic Four find themselves up against an omnipotent cosmic force. This force has a name – Galactus – and a herald, in the form of a flying silver alien. In the film, the alien comes to the heroes’ attention when he starts transforming matter all over Earth and leaving great craters everywhere from New York to the Thames. More scarily, every other planet he’s done this on before has been destroyed within eight days …SPOILERS It was as though every open story arc was closed in thirty seconds when it should’ve been at least fifteen minutes. I am THE LAST PERSON who would ordinarily cry out for a longer running time (my crusade against ass-numbing overindulgences has resulted in my active avoidance of almost anything beyond 100 minutes) but really – this is perplexing. Admittedly some of this is minor, like Frankie and Johnny’s relationship which goes from icy pseudo-flirting to a loved-up appearance together in the wedding epilogue. This seemed to missing a vital “we’re about to die together, let’s kiss” scene and the earlier conversation between Ben and Johnny which talked about having someone to hold at the end of the world would’ve set that up beautifully. Has there been a hatchet job here? There must’ve been. Surely overzealous re-editing is the only excuse I can imagine for how Galactus is destroyed. Far from being an all-powerful being, it seems all you have to is randomly fly a surfboard up him, look constipated and explode. Yes. For all the explanation we get offered (ie: none), it looks as though Galactus is destroyed with a gigantic fart; the most ludicrous, baffling anti-climax in recent memory. It’s such a shame that this ridiculous race to the finish line ruins what could otherwise have been a first class Summer Blockbuster. The script is often very careful, especially with the dialogue, which makes a conscious effort to emulate proper comic book style (not as easy as it sounds but accomplished with rare perfection here). There are some wonderful interractions between characters where you can almost SEE the speech bubbles, and even one customary swipe at DC (yay). Additionally, the action scenes are breathtaking. There are one or two bits of well dodgy CGI but it still can’t hamper the sheer inventiveness of certain set-pieces. The sky collision between the Surfer and the Human Torch is a thing of beauty. As is Doug Jones in general, for that matter. Whilst all the cast (bar Jessica Alba – WHY WHY WHY is she making movies?!) do admirably in their roles, Jones excels as the alien. His facial expressions are so impeccably Norin Radd, I could honestly believe him to be from another planet. It’s uncanny. So yeah, there’s tons and tons to love about this film, contrary to my initial fears. All the things I thought they’d fail at were fine (I feared the Surfer would look like toss for a start) and yet the easy bit, the no-brainer (ie: telling a pre-existing story with a coherent ending), they screwed up monumentally. My only hope is that a Director’s Cut DVD might contain the missing fifteen minutes where everything logical happened.