Customer Rating:  
Summary: strike two on the franchise
Comment: Sight gags, some decent CGI, and Andre Braugher as a cartoon military cut-out all equal a whole lot of nothing going on.
This is a sequel made for the sake of making a sequel. There's no heart to the monster, no real depth. Impressive as the Silver Surfer looked and as great as some of the score sounded, it never lived up to the trailer. The movie is largely wasted on sight gags involving the Fantastic Four trading powers after Johnny Storm's initial encounter with The Silver Surfer. Whether the effects of that are mitigated by the movie's close after he powers up with all four powers to smack down the 11th hour villainy of Dr. Doom (and for all that he's a complete asshat, I still don't get HOW we're supposed to believe that General Hager actually trusted Doom) whose clever scheme was always to get his hands on the Surfer's board.
There's some standard comic book commentary on the viability of living a "normal" life while also being a super hero, a fake out that kills off Sue for all of five seconds, and two wedding sequences, but none of it really rises above affectation. Although I did read a little Fantastic Four in my time, they were never my favorite comic book and the movies (despite the hotness of Jessica Alba and Chris Evans) have yet to do anything to change that. Kerry Washington is WASTED as Ben Grimm's girlfriend, Alicia Masters, acting as a sort of mediator between Grimm and the Torch, and Sue and Reed but without really adding anything to the plot.
Despite Sue's brief one on one with the Surfer where we learn about his mission, his job as herald and his One True Love; the movie is permeated with the sense that there's more backstory. I continually felt that there was something more to know, something about the Surfer and Galactus that just wasn't being addressed. I've never been a Silver Surfer fan, maybe having read one comic a very long time ago, so that's a really bad sign when a non-fan who knows nothing about the franchise gets the feeling that there's something vital missing.
Translating a comic into a movie is really difficult, like with any adaptation there has to be mediation between old and new fans. The Hollywood machine ever in pursuit of a guaranteed dollar has become bloated with remakes and adaptations of previously produced material. Unfortunately, that material is generally suffering for it. Fantastic Four should have been a better movie, but sadly, isn't.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A notch or two better than the first entry in the series
Comment: I'm surprised that this movie didn't do better when it was in theaters. It has a better, more ambitious story than the first film, the fan-favorite "Silver Surfer" character from the comics, a tone of wonderment that characterizes the best F.F. comics stories, and a minimum of silliness (and what silliness remains is actually good for a genuine chuckle or two). In short, "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" is a good time. Who knows, maybe we'll still get a third installment, as the movie did pretty well in the international market.
The single-disc version of the movie looks and sounds great and is economically priced, but it doesn't have the entertaining, illuminating extras features of the two-disc special edition. It's great for a quick re-revisit of the actual film, though, which is the reason I recently picked it up.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Movie: 2.25/5 Picture Quality: 4~4.75/5 Sound Quality: 4.5/5 Extras: 2.75/5
Comment: Version : U.S.A / Region-A
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
MPEG-4 AVC BD-50
Running time: 1:31:50
Movie size: 25,538,820,096 bytes
Disc size: 42,450,704,194 bytes
Average Total Bit Rate : 37.07 Mbps
Average Video Bit Rate : 29.14 Mbps
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 24-bit
DD AC3 5.1 448Kbps English / French / Spanish
Subtitles: English SDH / French / Spanish / Korean / Cantonese
Customer Rating:
Summary: A GENEROUS ONE STAR
Comment: No Plot, terrible dialogue, awful characters... Might appeal to a 3-4 year old child, just because of the bright colors and loud noises. This was even worse than the first Fantastic Four.
Customer Rating:
Summary: MAN, is this film a botch job!
Comment: Let me say just one thing...I [[LOVE]] the FF! I've loved it since the first issue with the Mole Man. But this film, and the woebegone first one are so badly cast and underwhelming, it's awful! Whose bright idea was it to cast Jessica Alba, who looks like she's fourteen, as Sue Storm? Or Ioan Gruiffudd as Reed Richards? NEITHER of these people work in their roles! Reed should be solidly middle aged, about 45-50, with premature grey hair at the temples and a movie star handsome face and an intelligent, fatherly air. Gruiffudd is neither upper-middle aged, professorly or fatherly and is too thin and flutey for the usually huskily drawn Richards. The sad thing is, anybody who COULD have played him is either too old or dead: Keith Andes, John Forsythe, Dean Jones, Richard Denning, (who Reed was probably based on to begin with,) or Russell Johnson are either retired, WAY too old, (like 70 or 80,) or, sadly, in the grave. They STILL could have done better than Gruiffudd, though! Actually, I could see him and Julian McMahon switching roles. And Dr. Doom isn't supposed to have an American accent anyway!
And Alba....Come ON!! She hardly looks PUBESCENT, much less old enough to marry a scientist near retirement age! They should have saved her for Frankie Raye, one of Johnny's many girlfriends, and someone who would eventually supplant the Silver Surfer as a herald of Galactus. And Johnny should be BLOND, not brunette with a crew cut!! J. Storm never had a crew cut in his LIFE in the book!! Heck, I've always had my reservations about the Human Torch as a comic book character to begin with!
However, as usual, they NEVER get Ben Grimm wrong! What's to get wrong, anyway?? All you've got to do is get a burly, middle aged actor who can talk like a New York cab driver and you're home free!
Now, as to the Silver Surfer, though pretentious as ****, he's always been one of my favorite superhero comic supporting players. I like the fact that one of my favorite black actors, Laurence Fishburne, is doing the voice of ol' Norrin! The character, alas, suffers from the USUAL Marvel superhero film "obvious CGI effect" problem. What IS it with cheezy Marvel?? Can't they do ANYTHING first class?! This outfit has [always] been tacky as the blazes in their endeavors, since day one. I guess even hitting the big time with the X-Men movies and the first Hulk film can't alleviate their affection for that "sleaze aspect". (And when are they going to stop making those "Punisher" movies??)
I [[had]] to get this film due to my love for the Surfer, but I can tell you right now, if I had anything to do with its production, either casting, directing or writing, things would be done differently! Ta-ta, Alba and Gruiffudd, bleach Johnny's hair, make Galactus solid instead of gaseous, and rework the origin where they actually had Doom aboard their near-space probe, acquiring powers, something that never happened in the source material! I HATE it when my favorite superheroes have their origin stories altered significantly in movies or TV...it happened in BOTH first "Batman" movies, (Joe Chill killed Bruce's parents, NOT Jack Napier/The Joker, and Ra's Al Ghul came LONG after Bruce Wayne became Batman! He did NOT train him!) The Flash TV show, (Barry Allen was blond, again, not dark-haired like John Wesley Shipp; did NOT live with his parents and had no brother. Iris West was in practically every issue of his magazine, but was only in the pilot episode of the show, (as a punk rocker, yet!) replaced by Tina McGee, a new character...there was no Julio in the book..AND HE NEVER VIBRATED THROUGH WALLS on the show!! [My favorite trick of his!]) The X-Men were originally: Cyclops, The Beast, The Angel, Marvel Girl/Jean Grey, Professor X and Iceman, THEN there was the reboot with Cyclops, Jean Grey/Phoenix, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Shadowcat and Wolverine. Rogue was a Johnny-come-lately, taken in from an organization that actually was formed to FIGHT the X-Men! She was also much more mature than Anna Pacquin in age and bearing. Their legend from about 1985 on has been too confusing to go into here, but the above is the basic truth. The second animated show and the movies screwed that ALL up, with Iceman being one of the junior students at Xavier's school, Angel a completem stranger, Nightcrawler a latecomer and Kitty and Piotr (Shadowcat and Colossus) VERY peripheral players! I could go on....Superman and the Kryptonian criminals lifting things with their eyes in the original Salkind "Superman" movies, Mary Jane living right next door to Peter Parker in "Spiderman", Sandman being a sympathetic character with a dying daughter in Spidey 3, Peter acquiring the black, alien suit while still being on Earth, etc., etc....Suffice it to say that "Daredevil: The Director's Cut" is about the ONLY decent, faithful transfer of a superhero to the screen I've ever seen!
Somebody get Paul Levitz and Jim Shooter to supervise this stuff, huh?
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