He he. My last post was about fanboys, and this one is about a movie that many of them are dead certain to wail on, considering they have been doing so since before the movie was even released: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, sequel to 2005's Fantastic Four.
I will be first to admit that I actually found the first movie entertaining, albeit flawed on many levels, including the fundamental ones.On this blog and sometimes to others I eventually ended up making excuses for this movie rather than openly extolling it, and so I perfectly understood the tidal wave of fanboy venom that swept over it.
The first Fantastic Four movie, incidentally, is another example of the meaninglessness of fanboy outrage considering the movie made $154 million in the U.S. and Canada and over $330 million worldwide. Not bad for a movie "everybody hated." Still, I won't debate how much they bashed it because to no small extent the film deserved as much.
The question, now, is whether or not the sequel deserves more of the same. To this, I say quite categorically: NO.
Is this a great film, in the vein of the first two Spider-Man movies, Batman Begins or X-men 2? Well, no, for reasons I will explain, but unlike in the first film, director Tim Story and his writers hit a lot of marks they previously missed.
The first and most important thing they got right was that the scripting was incredibly tight (to a fault, actually) in that they dove right into the story. The movie is about the threat of Galactus, the world devourer, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. Both are characters well known to fans of the comic book and are explained well enough. The surfer, Norrin Radd (voiced by Laurence Fishburne, played in motion capture by Doug Jones and given glowing silver flesh by WETA Digital, the folks responsible for Gollum and King Kong), serves Galactus because it is the only way to save his own world from being destroyed. Of course, the Fantastic Four have to try to stop him.
This puts a little kink in the plans of team members Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), who are planning to get married. We have a few character moments here as Sue frets about how their lives as costumed adventurers are likely to get in the way of their ever having normal lives. There's also a little subplot about how Johnny Storm, sue's brother a.k.a. the Human Torch (Chris Evans) is a self-centered little brat who needs to grow up. The final member Ben Grimm a.k.a. the Thing (Michael Chiklis) is kind of left to the sidelines in terms of character arcs in this movie.
Things get interesting when U.S. Army General Hager (Andre Braugher) taps the Four's support to stop the Surfer, whose presence has been causing temporal anomalies all over the world and, after one botched attempt to catch him, they end up recruiting as well the team's nemesis from the first movie, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), who has been rejuvenated courtesy of an encounter with the Surfer fairly early in the movie.
To go into the details at this point would involve spoiling some plot points, but suffice it to say it all plays out pretty well from here.
Like I said, the script is very tightly-woven, a stark contrast to all the endless exposition that characterized Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and the narrative clutter of Spider-Man 3. Whatever anyone might say about this movie, no one can accuse it of having too much going on.
At 90 minutes, though, the film is a little too compact, and there are character moments which could have been expanded somewhat. This is a film about family, first and foremost, and while Story and his writers Don Payne and Mark Frost don't quite forget this aspect, sometimes it's the little things that matter. It is possible to do a kid friendly movie with expanded characterisations after all. In addition to reading the comic books, Tim Story should keep a DVD of The Incredibles handy every time he wants a lesson in the way superhero family dynamics should play out onscreen. It's as if, every time the characters are about to have more than a minute's worth of meaningful conversation, the filmmakers shy away, as though they're repulsed by the thought of developing the characters a bit more. While I understand that the Spider-man movies, for all my love for them, kind of laid it thick on the weepy character moments, I honestly believe that the makers of the Fantastic Four movies could really learn something from Marvel Films' flagship franchise. The sad thing is, a few of the character moments that were allowed actually played out pretty well, making it all the more disappointing that Story didn't really allow them to breathe a little more.
One area in which I cannot complain is the action. In this respect Tim Story really comes into his own. From Johnny's first encounter with the Surfer, to the showdown between the Surfer and the U.S. military to the team's re-match with Dr. Doom (which, incidentally, features the debut of the Fantasticar!), the action in this movie is excellently staged, and the crew from WETA Digital and the other supporting VFX studios really pull through brilliantly. There are still some spotty moments with the effects animation of the Fantastic Four themselves early on in the film (Reed's stretchy dancing in a nightclub is particularly wince-inducing), but when the action kicks in the effects go from splotchy to spectacular in no time at all. And the Fantasticar deserves a particular shout-out because it was great to have the filmmakers nail such a memorable part of the Fantastic Four's lore. They got it absolutely right (except for a little bit I'll mention later). Johnny Storm's flying effects, which were pretty okay the first time around, look even cooler now even against the VFX wonder that is the Silver Surfer, and there's even an added treat, featuring Johnny, towards the climax of the movie.
There are a couple of noted improvements in the actors' performances as well. Gruffudd, who looked really, really uncomfortable in the first movie, seems to have settled more comfortably in his role and now ably projects Richards as the team leader. I particularly loved how he delivered a speech about nerds and football jocks which the scriptwriters lifted almost verbatim from Warren Ellis' recent Ultimate Extinction miniseries. In that moment, Gruffudd truly embodied Reed Richards. Evans and Chiklis continue to play well off each other, with Johnny Storm's goofy, visibly uncomfortable attempts to talk about Ben's relationship with Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington) being good for more than a couple of laughs. While Alba is eternally miscast, I'll be charitable enough give her some points for trying. McMahon delivers an adequate, if somewhat unremarkable performance as Dr. Doom, though I do feel they ramped up the sense of menace a touch. I did like Braugher as General Hager, and of course the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, this time done in a meta-fictional, tongue-in-cheek fashion, consistent with the general tone of the movie.
The movie definitely could have been done better in some key respects. The ending was something of an anti-climax, though to avoid spoiling it I won't go further into it. I'll give a hint; don't expect a blue -and-purple-clad giant (Galactus' comic-book incarnation) to show up onscreen. I also really, really, really didn't like the fact that the Fantasticar was a Dodge (see it to believe it). It's as offensive as the thought of the Transformer Bumblebee being a Camaro rather than a Volkwagen Beetle just because General Motors paid Dreamworks a fortune. Corporate America rears its ugly head again, though at least the involvement of DaimlerChrysler meant I got to see one of my favorite supercars, the Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren, onscreen for a few glorious moments.
Overall, one thing I found genuinely annoying about this movie is how clear it is that, to this day and age, Twentieth Century Fox still treats their comic-book properties like second-class citizens.
With the exception of the intercalation of Venom, Sony, from the get-go, always let Spider-Man director Sam Raimi make the movies he wanted to make. He got to pack in all the character development and pacing quirks he wanted.
It has not been the case with Fox, either in this franchise or in the X-Men franchise. In the two X-Men movies Bryan Singer directed you could almost hear him shouting out his frustration at how little Fox would let him do and how parsimonious they were with their budget. X2 was a great movie, but one wonders what Singer could have done had Fox not clipped his wings.
Here, Tim Story seemed hell-bent on telling a better story than he did last time, but the film felt genuinely restrained in certain key aspects, like the character moments I mentioned before. It's my honest hope that, now that Marvel Films are now independent of any one studio, their talents, such as Jon Favreau who is currently filming Iron Man, are able to truly flex their creative muscles and not have to kowtow to studio executives.
Flaws notwithstanding, for the reasons stated above, this movie was genuinely entertaining, a popcorn movie, as it were, and deserves to make at least as much money as its predecessor did, whatever fanboys may have to say about it.
'Nuff said.
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