Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

By: Tyler Henderson Hill

Tuesday July 10, 2007

Second Time's a Charm
The first Fantastic Four was anything but fantastic. The plot was straightforward and predictable, the characters sub par, and frankly, there wasn’t much action. With a second try however, director Tim Story did much better. Rise of the Silver Surfer has a more interesting plot line, the characters are more interesting and of course, there is a lot more action. Not to say that this is a great blockbuster, it does have some flaws, but it is still an entertaining movie.

First of all, the plot is pretty interesting. Comic book fans should be psyched that the Silver Surfer and Galactus are in a movie. The Fantastic Four face the task of finding out who the Silver Surfer is and why he has appeared on Earth. After finding out about Galactus, they have to figure out a way to stop this ‘Devourer of worlds’. You don’t have to be a comic book fan to be interesting in this story however. The Silver Surfer is an interesting and very cool character. His appearance on screen looks awesome and the special effects he is involved in are stunning. In Galactus, the audience faces a super villain unlike anything else in any movie. Even Dr. Doom, the Fantastic Four nemesis who reappears in this sequence, pales in comparison to him. His appearance is awe inspiring in the film.

The characters are also more interesting in this sequel. Although they are still not truly drawn out characters that the audience can relate to, they are more understandable in this sequel. The Fantastic Four are interesting super heroes because they don’t have secret identities, instead they have been turned into celebrities. Mr. Fantastic’s wedding with the Invisible Woman turns into a huge media circus. This is stressed throughout the film, the difficulties faced by these super heroes who have nothing to hide behind. They are in public scrutiny constantly. This is really interesting; it is so different from all other super hero movies. The one bad thing is that it feels kind of forced, this plot line is secondary to the super heroes actually saving the world. I would have liked to see the movie take more advantage of this unique aspect of the Fantastic Four.

The other unique aspects of the Fantastic Four are taken advantage of. In this film, they show off their super powers throughout. There are also fights that take place throughout. In the first film, the viewer had to wait until the very end for the big showdown where the super powers were actually used, and it was a very short film. That is not the case here. From rescuing the people from a falling Ferris wheel to fighting the Silver Surfer and Dr. Doom, there is plenty of action in this one.

Overall, this film does very well on improving on its first outing. It is an interesting super hero movie that is just a little bit different than all those other ones coming out. While it’s still not perfect, it’s worth the money to go check out on the big screen.