Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer: Thoughts

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A large, all-powerful, entity decides to destroy the earth but is stopped by its son, who, after walking briefly among the humans on earth, rebels and sacrifices himself so that mankind can live on. If you skipped the post title and guessed this was the plot to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, you get a gold star (acceptable answers could have included Battlefield Earth and The Bible). Perhaps because the first FF film was so atrocious (the Fantastic Four, in hindsight, have one of the worst origin stories—what worked so well in the sixties seems ridiculous today now that we have astronauts from several countries living it up on space stations), or perhaps because I saw the movie with someone who was under ten, I have to honestly admit that I wasn’t as disappointed in this movie as I have been with other sequels this summer; and that, in fact, I might be willing to admit (under duress in Gitmo) that I was pleasantly surprised. The plot for the film is loosely (stress loosely) based on the classic Stan Lee and Jack Kirby epic that ran between issues 48 and 50 of The Fantastic Four comic book, in which readers were introduced, with great destruction (to New York and hyperbole), to the world devouring Galactus, and his noble herald, the Silver Surfer. The Marvel Universe may have been created during the 60’s, but it was the Silver Surfer who was the ultimate Summer of Love hero: a vagrant so angsty he wandered the universe with his “cosmic powers” (which, loosely defined, meant that he could shoot large doses of LSD out of his hands) and shacked up on various planets to ponder the meaning of existence while continuing to battle the fascist elements of the universe that refused to play it mellow, eventually finding a way to bug out to other worlds when things got to “intense”. Too bad he never made it to San Francisco! In the film, director Tim Story replaces the Surfer’s more existential behaviour with that of a bewildered Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn, awkwardly, on voice) who acts as if he’s just awoken from The Matrix. Apparently, kids can handle the destruction of the earth, just not their place in the universe. The cast returns for their paycheck, with only Chris Evans (as Johnny Storm) bringing any effort (or body hair!) to his part (side bar: I predict that Chris Evans will either be the next Harrison Ford, or co-star with Matt Leinert in One Night in Paris 2—but at this point it’s a toss up). There has been a lot of complaining about the amount of product placement in the movie (here’s looking at you Dodge), but which was never been beyond the realm of The Four (Reed Richards has always been a benevolent uber-Gates, with no desire to rule the world), and The Four have always been the corporate man’s super team. Still, true honesty must compel us to recall the past and admit to how we saved pennies for that Big Gulp with the Superman IV: A Quest for Peace picture on it, and how we remember desperately trying to hold tightly onto that giant plastic cup as it sweated its way out of out hands as being one of the most awesomest days ever (okay, maybe that was just me). In America, a nation full of broken and denied marriages, the Fantastic Four are somewhat archaic in their existence (remaining a "traditional" family at all cost). Their legacy is that they were the “first family”, the beginnings of a universe that would take us into modernity, the super-hero link between the cookie-cutter 50’s and the turbulent mutant 60’s; facts that, as I watched my girlfriend’s cousin remain, literally, on the edge of his seat throughout the entire film, I realized was a good thing. Perhaps those of us who’ve grown up with comics should spend less time complaining about the films that haven’t grown up with us and assimilated our collective cynicism, and remember that comic books, if they are to survive as an art form, are first, and foremost, a child’s gateway to the unknown.