Moderately Fantastic

I just got back from an evening of watching Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer. As things have it, the movies are not exactly the way the comics have them. Characters have slightly different origins, and they look different. I heard so many negatively mixed reactions from friends and family alike that I had to watch it myself. I know that the first movie wasn't too fantastic, but like the X-men, they had to establish the characters, their origins and powers before developing them, and that will take at least a trilogy to accomplish.

Caution: Some Spoilers Below! Read At Your Own Risk!

When you deal with 4 characters, plus supporting casts, you have to develop them all, so that the movie is balanced. Although this movie concentrated more on the pair of Susan Storm and Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd), their wedding and their expectations on family values, they could have concentrated on all of them. I can understand having to develop movies for the younger generation, I felt that the movie was catering to the younger kids than to the developed, advance comic readers in general.

The movie did stress on the importance of teamwork and how, if one of the team members don't plan according to the plan or rules, it does affect the other members of the team and break them up. Everyone in the team is interconnected.

Susan Storm's (Jessica Alba) blond hair was just wrong, they could have let it look more brown than bleached blond. I particularly laughed at Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) breaking out the Fantastic Four blue suits complete with all the endorsement company logos attached, almost like one of those F1 racing suits that Kimi Raikkonen wears when racing. The subplot about the Human Torch touching everyone and exchanging powers with them was a little ridiculous, but worked well into the main plot of the movie.

Technology using visual and special effects was top-notched again as per all sci-fi action flick. I never really knew that the Silver Surfer's powers came from his board or that Galactus, who was a giant in the comics and now appears as a swirling cloud of mist, needed craters in the Earth for his misty powers to enter to the Earth's core to consume the planet.

They never really explained how Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon) was reawakened, was it from the Silver Surfer flying over Latveria, his home town that re-empowered the cosmic power within him? All his metallic blemishes vanished from his hands and face instantly, it went unexplained. However, they did deal with the fact from the comics that Victor von Doom has always been trying to steal the Silver Surfer's cosmic power for personal gain - a good link to the comics, for those who read Fantastic Four. The actor did look a little more plastic than he's used to.

One more thing that I noticed in this movie that is commonly introduced in the comics, is that when a character loses his/her powers, they become skinnier, or they lose some kind of colour. This is mainly to show that the power(s) was a part of their body and that it made them what they are and gave them a figure or shape. In this movie, when the Silver Surfer lost his board, he lost his metallic sheen and became a duller shade of grey. So the writers did actually adhere to some of the Marvel comic book rules when writing this movie, or it was just a complete coincidence.

Overall, I was rather entertained for the entire movie, I didn't once yawn or try to feel like the movie was going nowhere, so that should explain quite a lot. Do not go and watch this movie expecting it to be exactly like what you've been reading in all the comics ever published on Fantastic Four, if you do, you'll be sorely disappointed. The creators and screenplay have been developed as closely as they can to the comics, but not completely similar.

7 out of 10 stars