While it was far from a critical success, and while the fan community seemed pretty divided on it (a common refrain was that Brad Bird had already done a better Fantastic Four movie with Pixar’s The Incredibles), Fantastic Four made a pretty penny in 2005, riding the new wave of Marvel films suddenly seemed to be all over the filmic landscape.
Green-lighting a sequel seemed a no-brainer, and so they brought most everyone back two years later, and decided to adapt one of the most iconic Fantastic Four comics stories ever: the coming of Galactus.
During their lengthy run on Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created many brilliant stories and introduced many amazing characters: villains like Dr. Doom, the Mole Man, Rama-Tut, Annihilus, the Puppet Master, and the Skrulls, plus nicer characters like Wyatt Wingfoot, the Black Panther, Alicia Masters, the Watcher, and the Inhumans.
But one of the biggest villains was Galactus, introduced in the lead-up to the landmark 50th issue of Fantastic Four in 1966. A creature as old as the universe itself, Galactus travels throughout the cosmos consuming the energy of whole planets for sustenance—and should that world be inhabited, so be it. (This was part of a particularly strong run that was preceded by an Inhumans story that ended with the Torch being brutally separated from his lady love Crystal and also introducing the Wingfoot character, and followed by the classic “This Man, This Monster,” as a scientist switches places with the Thing to get revenge on Mr. Fantastic, only to realize that the man he hates and is jealous of is truly a hero, and sacrifices his life to save him; and also the introduction of the Black Panther.)
Galactus has a herald, the Silver Surfer, who seeks out worlds for Galactus to consume. In the original storyline, the Watcher tries (and fails) to hide Earth from Galactus. The Fantastic Four do battle with the Silver Surfer, who winds up befriending Masters (the Thing’s girlfriend) and is convinced by her to plead with Galactus to save the Earth.
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Vengeful
In the end, thanks to the FF’s resistance, the Watcher’s sending the Human Torch to retrieve an ultimate weapon, and the Surfer’s rebellion, Galactus is driven off, the first time he’s been denied a world. He punishes the Surfer by trapping him on Earth, which would remain the character’s status quo until the debut of his second solo monthly title in 1987, when he was finally freed from his imprisonment on our world.
In 2000, Marvel started their “Ultimate” line of books, with new versions of all their classic characters. The idea was to provide new stories for their iconic characters without forty years of continuity baggage. It was, in this reviewer’s opinion, a bad idea—why have two competing versions of the same characters?—but there were some good stuff in there. (Among other things, the Ultimate line gave us the Miles Morales Spider-Man and the African-American Nick Fury.) Ultimate Fantastic Four did a particularly radical new take on the FF, and the Ultimate universe also had its own version of the world-devourer, this one called Gah Lak Tus, and it was a hive mind of robotic drones that consumed worlds.
It was this version that the screenwriters used as inspiration as much as the original 1966 story, as Galactus was written here more as a force of nature than as a fifty-foot-tall white guy with a purple W on his helmet.
In addition to bringing back Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis as the titular foursome, as well as Julian McMahon as von Doom and Kerry Washington as Masters, this sequel brings in the great Andre Braugher as a new character, General Hager, as well as Beau Garrett and Vanessa Minnillo as, respectively, Frankie Raye and Julie Angel, both based on FF supporting characters. (Raye, here a captain in the U.S. Army, was a girlfriend of the Human Torch’s who wound up becoming a herald of Galactus in the comics.) Doug Jones plays the Silver Surfer but, for the second time in this rewatch, his character is voiced by someone more famous—in Hellboy it was David Hyde-Pierce, and here it’s Laurence Fishburne.
“I like the part where he knocks you on your ass”
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Written by John Turman and Mark Frost and Don Payne
Directed by Tim Story
Produced by Avi Arad and Bernd Eichinger and Ralph Winter
Original release date: June 15, 2007
We see a world being completely destroyed—and a silver streak leaving the scene of destruction. That streak arrives on Earth, causing a river in Japan to freeze, a power outage in Los Angeles, and snow in Egypt.
On Earth, Reed and Sue are planning their wedding—for the fourth time, as each previous attempt was interrupted by a need to do something superheroic. Plans are not aided by Reed being regularly distracted by work. Johnny drags him and Ben to a club for a bachelor party, which is interrupted by the arrival of General Hager. (Sue arrives with Hager and his staff just as he’s dancing with two beautiful women, making good use of his stretching abilities. Sue pretends to be mad in front of everyone, but later privately admits to being glad he’s having fun.) Hager and Reed have history: Reed testified before Congress that Hager’s proposed missile defense system wouldn’t work.
Hager doesn’t want to approach Reed now, but he’s been ordered to. What the general public doesn’t know is that, besides the odd occurrences mentioned above, there are also gigunda sinkholes showing up at various points around the world. Hager needs Reed to build a scanner to detect this creature. Reed, however, refuses, as he has a wedding to plan. Sue is very pleased that he’s finally prioritizing their relationship.
Except he isn’t—he’s still building the scanner for Hager on the sly, and finishes it right before the wedding. Said nuptials take place on a rooftop in New York, with tons of guests, Johnny trying to monetize the wedding, including auctioning memorabilia, and also Stan Lee trying to get in but being turned away by an usher who doesn’t believe that it’s really him. (This may be the only Stan Lee cameo in which he actually plays himself…)
Unfortunately, the scanner goes online and detects that the entity is heading straight for the wedding. It causes a massive power failure all over New York, regardless of the item’s power source—it includes a drill being used by a ConEd worker and the paparazzi helicopter flying over the wedding. Reed, Sue, and Ben manage to save folks from being killed by the crashing helicopter while Reed sends Johnny after the entity.
Said entity turns out to be a silver humanoid on a silver surfboard. Johnny chases him all the way from New York to Washington D.C., and the Silver Surfer finally grabs Johnny by the throat and brings him into the stratosphere, where there isn’t enough air for him to maintain his flame. He plummets to the Earth and manages to flame on long enough for a barely controlled landing somewhere in the Middle East.
Johnny gets back to New York, er, somehow and reports to the rest of the team and Hager. The Surfer destroyed the scanner, apparently having recognized it for what it is. Hager directs Reed to build another.
At one point, the Surfer flies over Latveria, and his proximity causes von Doom to awaken within his frozen armor. He is cut out of it, and he covers his ruined body in a cloak and tracks the Surfer to the Russell Glacier. He proposes an alliance, but the Surfer just blasts him. The blast hurts von Doom temporarily, but also restores his physical form to its old self.
Proximity to the Surfer doesn’t just affect von Doom, though—every time Johnny touches one of the other team members he switches powers with them. It happens accidentally with Sue, and then Ben touches him on purpose so he can be human again, however temporarily. Sue is also worried about how they don’t have normal lives, and how can they hope to raise a family when they’re superheroes? Reed proposes that after this crisis and they’re married, they go off somewhere away from New York, stop being heroes and raise a family.
Johnny overhears this and shares it with Ben. Neither is particularly happy about the idea.
Reed figures out the pattern of the sinkholes and determines that the next will be right in the middle of the Thames near the London Eye. The Surfer arrives and makes the hole—which drains the Thames—and also starts to knock the Eye over. It takes all of Reed, Sue, and Ben’s efforts to keep it from collapsing. When Johnny goes after the Surfer, he doesn’t notice a whipping broken cable, which knocks him into Reed, and they switch powers—except Reed’s flexible form is bracing the Eye. However, Reed instead uses his newly acquired flame abilities to weld the broken part of the Eye back into place.
Hager—who was already annoyed with the FF for bickering about Reed and Sue’s plan to leave the team and not tell Johnny and Ben in the middle of a mission—is fed up with their complete inability to actually do anything about the Surfer. He brings in someone else: von Doom, now fully restored to his old self, and who has footage of his confrontation with the Surfer. They realize that his power seems to derive from his board. They have to separate him from the board. Reed and von Doom are put to work on that. Reed is not happy about working with von Doom, telling Hager that he can’t trust him. But von Doom himself says the world is at stake, and they all have reason to save it.
Johnny tries, not for the first time, to flirt with Hager’s aide, Captain Frankie Raye, and she rebukes him for almost getting his teammates and innocents killed with his irresponsible behavior.
Reed figures out how to separate the Surfer from his board: with a tachyon pulse. They track the Surfer to the Black Forest in Germany, and the FF set up the pulse generator (after Reed has to remind Hager that he’s in charge). However, the Surfer arrives before Sue can finish her part of putting it together—so Hager sends missiles after him to distract him. (This mostly results in Hager’s command center getting blown to bits by a pissed-off Surfer.) However, Sue is able to activate her pulse generator, the Surfer is separated from his board and brought to a base in Siberia. (Why a U.S. Army task force brings him to Siberia is left as an exercise for the viewer, though it will have to get in line behind how that same task force operates in England and Germany…)
With the Surfer captured, von Doom gets from Hager what was promised: a shot at the surfboard. Meanwhile, the FF are put under virtual house arrest. Sue uses her invisibility to sneak out and talk to the Surfer, who reveals that he is not here to destroy the world, but to prepare it for a cosmic creature called Galactus, which devours worlds. He agreed to become Galactus’s herald in order to spare his own homeworld. He left everything behind, including the woman he loved. Sue reminds him of her, which is why he saved her life from Hager’s missiles.
Elsewhere, von Doom informs Hager that he should have listened to Reed when he said not to trust von Doom, and he blasts the general and another soldier, puts on his armor, and connects himself to the board. Now possessed of the power cosmic (which is never called that), he kills Hager and flies off on his own.
The FF take advantage of the chaos created by von Doom’s departure to escape their own house arrest. Reed summons the Fantasti-Car and they put the Surfer—who gives his name as Norrin Radd—inside to help them. Radd explains that Galactus is drawn to the board. (At one point, Raye tries to stop them—though the gun she’s holding wouldn’t really be all that effective—but Johnny is able to convince her to let them go.)
They track von Doom to Shanghai, and he pretty much kicks their butts. They try to explain that Galactus is using the board to track Earth and come to it to destroy it, but von Doom is too consumed with power to give much of a damn. At one point, Sue gets between von Doom and Radd to try to save him, but von Doom’s cosmically powered spear penetrates both her force field and Sue herself. Reed holds her mortally wounded form. Reed can separate von Doom from the board, but only if he can get close enough. It would take all four of them to do so—or one of them with all four powers. Johnny touches all three of them at once and he winds up with everyone’s powers—er, somehow. He flies after von Doom doing his Super-Skrull act, eventually managing to use all of the team’s powers to bring him down.
Radd regains the board and uses his powers to restore Sue, then flies into orbit to confront Galactus and stop it from consuming the planet which he does, er, somehow.
The world is saved and Reed and Sue decide to have a small wedding ceremony in Japan—and as soon as they’re done, they have to stop Venice from sinking into the Adriatic Sea…
Meanwhile, the Silver Surfer floats in space, and opens his eyes, his board coming toward him.
“This is the end for us both”
As a live-action portrayal of the Fantastic Four comic book characters, this movie is much better than the first one. Gruffudd’s Reed is much more sure of himself, for one thing, while Evans and Chiklis remain superb. Alba’s Sue is—okay, I guess. Her best moments are her interactions with the Surfer and her work helping save the Eye is well done, but Alba still feels wrong in the part. (It doesn’t help that the wig she wears is awful.)
McMahon is actually worse as von Doom in this one, though it’s mitigated by his greatly reduced screen time. Actually seeing von Doom’s scarred face feels wrong on every level, since the one constant over the last sixty years has been that we never see Dr. Doom’s face. And what we do see is kinda disappointing. (It’s right up there with Dredd unmasking in Judge Dredd, though there at least we have the excuse that it’s Sylvester Stallone and his very famous face. What do we gain by seeing Julian McMahon covered in bad makeup?)
Still and all, the banter among the main characters is fantastic. (Sorry…) They sound like the bickering family we’ve been reading about for decades. I especially approve of seeing Reed as a great scientist who is consulted by militaries and governments, rather than the ineffectual dunderhead of the previous film.
Unfortunately, the actual storyline is a disaster. So many things here don’t make sense, starting with how, exactly, the U.S. Army is able to run operations on foreign soil like the UK, Germany, and especially Russia without any kind of presence from local military forces. (Apparently, early drafts of the script had Nick Fury in the role that eventually became Hager. This would’ve worked way better with S.H.I.E.L.D. than it does with the Army.) How does the Fantasti-Car get literally halfway around the world in ten minutes? How does Johnny exchanging powers with anyone he touches translate to him getting everyone’s powers at the end, which is contradictory to how it worked in the movie up to that point? (At the very least, his flame powers and ability to fly should have been transferred to one of the other three.) How does the Surfer actually stop Galactus? (He just sorta flies into him and Galactus collapses in on itself, and that’s it, and holy shit is it anticlimactic.)
Hager himself is a straw bad guy, elevated only by the magnificent Andre Braugher, who can make a silk purse out of any sow’s ears. Beau Garrett’s Raye goes from disdaining the FF to suddenly and unconvincingly being Johnny’s date at the wedding and trying to catch the bouquet, a transition that makes nothing like sense. Doug Jones does his usual amazing work with body language as the Surfer, and much as I love Laurence Fishburne, I wish Jones had been able to do the voice himself, especially since his own voice is actually much closer to how I always heard the Surfer in my head when I read his adventures than Fishburne’s is. Still, whatever its other flaws, the movie captured the Surfer’s regality and nobility and look beautifully.
The same cannot be said for the character to whom the Surfer is herald. Changing Galactus from a character to a monstrous force-of-nature style entity was stupid when the Ultimate line did it in the comics, and it’s just as stupid here. The power of the original Galactus trilogy in 1966 was in challenging Galactus, particularly the Silver Surfer betraying his master when he sees the good in humanity that should be spared.
By making Galactus a force of nature cloud of whatever-it-is, it just becomes a hurricane they have to stop. You don’t get the Watcher pleading on humanity’s behalf, you don’t get Alicia Masters pleading with the Surfer to spare humanity (Sue’s conversations with the Surfer in the movie are decent, but pale in comparison to the original), and you don’t get the power of the Surfer’s rebellion, nor of Galactus condemning him to Earth at the end (which doesn’t even happen in the film).
This is a better Fantastic Four adaptation than the previous film, but it’s also a much dumber movie. The general public seemed to agree, as this one had a smaller box-office return despite a bigger budget, and the planned third film never got off the ground.
Several of the actors in these movies would go on to other comic book roles. Alba is in both Sin City movies. Chiklis has a starring role for a while in Gotham (as well as the short-lived superhero semi-sitcom No Ordinary Family not actually based on a specific comic). Fishburne will play both Perry White in Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Justice League and Bill Foster in Ant-Man & The Wasp. Jones will reprise Abe Sapien in Hellboy II: The Golden Army and also play Deathbolt on both Arrow and The Flash. McMahon will be in both RED and Runaways. Braugher will voice Darkseid in the animated Superman/Batman: Apocalypse.
Oh yeah, and that Evans guy starred in a movie or two, playing some obscure Marvel hero. The Patriot, or somebody…
For the next three weeks, we’ll look at Christopher Nolan’s trilogy about the dark knight detective, starting with Batman Begins.
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the guests at “Author’s Day” at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, New York on Saturday the 23rd of June, alongside fellow Trek scribes Peter David, Dave Galanter, Robert Greenberger, and Scott Pearson. He’ll be selling and signing books all day, and also giving a talk from noon to 1pm. Come check it out!
I always use this movie as an example of how ridiculous movie studios have gotten and how pernicious spoilerphobia has become, because originally Peter David was to write the novelization of this film, as he had the previous one. But they wouldn’t actually send the script to him, because they feared leaks on the Internet. Mind you, never in the history of movie novelizations has a writer ever leaked a script — when scripts have been leaked, it’s usually by some low-level production assistant who needs an extra buck or something. But the producers were so scared of leaks that they kept the script under lock and key and would only allow a novelizer to go to L.A. and take notes on the script in a locked room.
The punchline of course, is that they were worried about spoilers for a movie based on a comic book that came out in 1966.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Was anybody else a huge Silver Surfer fan in the 80’s/90’s? He was probably my favorite character. This movie does him no justice. And what the heck is up with Jessica Alba’s wig??? What did they stick that hideous thing on her?
My comment @2 should say “Why did they…”
It was made in 2007, that alone is a justification as to why the US army is violating national sovereignty at will. It needs no further explanation. The rest of the world, we’ve pretty much got used to America doing what it wants when it wants for whatever it wants. Especially so in the late Bush era.
This movie was pretty much okay, but the inclusion of Doom just felt tacked on. It would be a better movie without him in it, he added nothing and subtracted a lot. Give his sudden decision to be a traitor to one of the US soldiers, again no surprise if a US officer decides to go rogue for what, when and whatever etc. Fits a lot better than the Doom plot version, if it needs to be there at all.
I find it hard to criticise the decision to change the form Galactus takes though, sure the execution could be better, as a giant guy in a goofy hat just would not work on screen. There is a limited number of alternative ways to play that, and the best alternative version was already nabbed by the Transformers cartoon. It could have been better delivered, but force of nature was a good try.
Austin: because apparently bleaching her hair in the first movie damaged Alba’s hair something fierce, so they had to go with a wig. Why they couldn’t get a better wig, I have no idea…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
random22: The plotline of von Doom stealing the Surfer’s powers also came from the comics, actually, as he did so in Fantastic Four #57. He was done in by the fact that the Surfer was trapped on Earth–by stealing his power, von Doom was also trapped on Earth, and he crashed into the barrier that kept the Surfer exiled.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Admit I haven’t seen this one and don’t really plan to; I also object to changing Galactus from a big guy in a purple helmet to a cloud of … something? My own personal acquaintance with Big G was primarily from Byrne’s run on Fantastic Four (and his lamentably unfinished Last Galactus Story in EPIC Magazine) and from Galactus’ brief appearance in ROM: Spaceknight, during which he entirely failed to consume the Dire Wraiths’ homeworld.
Definitely the best FF film to date, though that’s grading on a steep curve. A lot of things were rather superficially explored, and it felt more like a budget-busting 2-part episode of a Fantastic Four TV series than a feature film. But as a piece of light entertainment, it was very entertaining. We didn’t get to explore the characters very deeply, but their interplay was enjoyable and it was nice to hang around with them for 90 minutes.
And this movie let them be something they failed to be in the first movie: actual superheroes. I complained last week how in the first film’s climax, they weren’t saving anybody but themselves. Here, they were saving the whole world. The action sequences were mostly well-done, although not without flaws. For instance — and this is something Keith pointed out to me back in the day — Johnny and the Surfer both enter and leave the Lincoln Tunnel from the New Jersey side!
Some parts were very predictable. When they first began airing TV spots with that scene of Sue flaming on and flying around, I predicted that it would end with her naked in public and saying something like “Why does this always happen to me?” And they did exactly that.
I thought Fishburne was excellent as the Surfer’s voice, bringing an appropriate grandeur and sadness to Norrin Radd. But now that I’m more familiar with Jones’s voice, I agree he would’ve been a good fit too.
I particularly liked Reed here. He came off the best of all the characters, stronger and more sympathetic than I’ve usually seen him in cartoon adaptations. I loved how, even when he switched powers with Johnny, he remained in command of the situation and quickly adapted to his unfamiliar power. Too bad he had absolutely no chemistry with Jessica Alba. But then, that wasn’t his fault. Chemistry requires both actors to be capable of expressing emotion. Honestly, I couldn’t tell whether Sue was supposed to be dead at the end, because Alba was no less expressive than she was at any other point in the film. Unlike the first film, this one demanded more of her character than merely being desirable, and she didn’t rise to the occasion.
Unlike most people, I was impressed with Galactus. Sorry, comics fans, but I’ve always found Jack Kirby’s cosmic superbeings rather laughable, and Galactus is one of the goofiest-looking ones in comparison to what he’s supposed to be. I’ve always felt that a cosmic force like Galactus should be something less personified, more like an oncoming storm, and this was very much the sort of thing I envisioned. I suppose it could’ve been better, though — maybe something along the lines of V’Ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, something vast and alien and sentient but clearly possessing a mind and a guiding will that could potentially be communicated with through the right intermediary. Maybe some kind of sentient black hole with a vast techno-organic complex built/grown around it to drive it through space — the tech framework could be the part with Kirbyesque design elements. A black hole would make sense for a force of cosmic hunger. Certainly more so than a big guy in a purple hat.
This was the first one of these that i saw since I was, and still am, a HUGE Silver Surfer fan. I was…disappointed. I understand that having a giant as your antagonist was problematic, but a cloud? But I was pleased with the Surfers characterization. They actually got his nature down better then I thought they would.
But in no way, no how, does Sue look anything like Shalla-Bal. Just saying. :P
Yeah, I always loved that the Torch and the Surfer flew in on the Jersey side and then flew out on the Jersey side. Oops.
(This was made up for in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, when a chase went in the Manhattan side and came out on the Manhattan side also.)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I have always felt that Evans and Chiklis are the best thing about either movie. Alba and Gruffudd have no chemistry as Reid and Sue.
My biggest personal complain against this movie is Galactus would make the Surfer powerful enough as to destroy him– even if he, sorry, it is a cloud, he’s obviously sapient since it knew about the concept of a herald and willingly made another being into one. It can reason and has had millenia of experience across the universe, so why would it be stupid enough as to give a being he had basically made a slave over centuries the power required to destroy him? In the comics, as powerful as Surfer is, Galactus still can swat him away like a fly if he feels like it, which is much more logical. Of course, it’s just because they don’t have the time to write an Ultimate Nullifier in here, but it’s still a cheap, lazy copout to justify Galactus being stopped at the end.
That, and while I don’t mind Galactus’ shape on itself, his absence of any sort of personality or character just robs the film of a satisfactory climax against an opponent who can talk back and expose their own views. Doom… just comes short on that regard as he basically shows no strategy or great plan after stealing the surfboard, he just flies around being a jackass.
In a perfect world Avengers IV would end up (if the Disney Fox buyout works out in the end) with a stinger where a silver speck flies through the cosmos. Slowly, the camera closes in, showing the figure of a man entering some sort of gigantic floating construct in outer space. It approaches a much larger vague figure resting in the darkness inside, and says, “I have just found a suitable world. One full of beings gifted with the power to best a Titan. It should provide you well.”
Then Galactus opens his eyes.
Heck, the MCU FF movie might have the cosmic radiation that transforms the Four being a first wave effect of Galactus’ ship’s energies approaching Earth, or something like that, with the Four having been sent to reserach it on the first place. I’ve always thought that’d be a neat way of tying them up, even if Galactus himself should be saved to arrive in a later movie. First movie: the Mole Man/The Wizard/Mad Thinker whatever, with a teaser of Doom at the end; second movie, DOOM, third movie Galactus.
@12/OverMaster: I still say the last thing we need is another Fantastic Four movie about their origin. It’s the least important part of the story. If they join the MCU, they should be treated like Hank Pym and Carol Danvers: retcon them in as having been around all along, just not actively part of the current superhero game. Maybe they got their powers years ago but have been using them to explore the cosmos rather than fighting crime on Earth. Maybe the Guardians or Captain Marvel run into them out in space and fill them in on the recent messes back on Earth, and they decide to come home to help out.
I can’t honestly defend these films and claim they are decent movies nor can I say I really know much about the Fantastic Four but neither can I deny that I really quite enjoy them.
I’m probably crazy (to admit it), but I like both of these FF movies. Mostly, I like the character casting. Everyone agrees about Chiklis, and Evans must have done something right, since they let him play Cap. I think Gruffudd is great for Mr. Fantastic – at least he looks like I picture him.I’d have made him a little more peevish, but close enough.
Alba is SO FAR from anyone’s idea of Sue Storm, of course. But I find her so likable and attractive I kind of don’t care. I can see how Namor might become enchanted. And I give her points for trying to act like shy, mousey Sue.
Then there’s the action, with some scenes looking like classic panels from the Kirby years. When Thing shoulder checks that truck on the bridge, it was right out of the comics.
And of course, the Silver Surfer – when he shows up, Johnny Storm and I said the same thing, almost in chorus: “Cool”.
Too bad there’s no “BEHOLD GALACTUS!” moment. I’ve heard that the director “doesn’t do giant robots”, his excuse for going with a cosmic cloud. I suppose it’s better than trying and failing.
Yeah, when I read that Tim Story’s excuse for not doing the original version of Galactus and doing the Ultimate version instead was because he doesn’t do giant robots. First of all, Galactus isn’t a robot, secondly, if you don’t want to do giants, don’t do Galactus…….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Couldn’t they do both versions of Galactus? Maybe have the space cloud hanging out there in space and the humanoid version appear as an avatar or something on Earth. Or as a vision to one of the characters. I dunno, seems like they could’ve done more with it.
As I mentioned last week, the Stan Lee cameo in this movie is one of my favorites. I love when the movies take small moments directly from the comics, and Stan’s cameo in FF Annual #3 is perfect. It’s a shame Jack wasn’t around to participate.
The cast was more sure of themselves, but I couldn’t enjoy it because the story was such a muddled mess. I have been an FF fan since their earliest days, and am keenly disappointed they have never been on the silver screen in a form worth watching.
I agree that Evans and Chiklis were the best parts of this.
I’m still amazed that the one actor (Evans) has brought us to of the most accurate (personality wise) translations of comic book characters to the screen, and they are such different characters.
Sidenote: I had forgotten that Andre Braugher was in this (I didn’t know who he was at the time). Once you mentioned that, I started hearing the article in my head as read by Captain Raymond holt. Everything’s better when read by Raymond Holt.
So why is the Surfer the herald/slave when he apparently can just kill Galactus himself?
“Oh woe is me. I must do the evil bidding of this terrible monster so it does not destroy my home and my love.”
“Ummm, have you tried killing it instead?”
“Huh… Now that you mention it…”
@17/Halbert: I think the “humanoid avatar” thing would cheapen it. Like I said, I feel an ancient, cosmic force of nature should be something larger than human comprehension, something that barely even perceives us as individuals, let alone deigns to communicate with us. Would you hold a parley with the microbes on an apple before you washed and ate it? Besides, Galactus already has an intermediary with mere mortals, namely his herald.
On the other hand, I acknowledge that treating Galactus as a relatable character rather than an unknowable force of nature does add more possibilities for drama and character exploration, and those can be worthwhile, whether it’s Galactus coming to respect Reed or Galactus becoming pals with Squirrel Girl. I guess I’m torn between that and the more cosmic/alien portrayal. It’s hard to see a way of balancing the two.
@22. Doesn’t have to be a relatable character with significant screentime. Quick flashes of the humanoid Galactus to one of the characters, ala the Satan imagery in The Exorcist, would be sufficient to make the threat relatable, and disturbing. Well, as disturbing as a comic book movie would allow.
@23/Halbert: But making Galactus a relatable character is the only reason to give him a humanoid form. I don’t see the point if you just want him to be an inchoate threat.
Maybe the “avatar” idea could work if it were filtered through the Surfer. Since the herald is the being that speaks for Galactus and conveys his will to mortals, maybe he could telepathically link the Fantastic Four to Galactus in some sort of mindscape, and the humanoid form would be the Surfer’s mental image of Galactus, his far-greater-than-human thoughts interpreted into comprehensible words by the Surfer’s mind. Maybe the costume and headdress could reflect traditional god images from Norrin Radd’s homeworld of Zenn-La.
And there’s no reason a comic book adaptation can’t be disturbing. There have always been horror comics. The zombie TV series The Walking Dead is based on a comic, as was the vampire movie 30 Days of Night. And Fox is making their New Mutants film a straight-up horror movie, even doing reshoots to make it scarier after the horror elements in the trailer were well-received.
@24. I was thinking it only needs to be relatable as a threat in humanoid form, a quick flash of nightmare imagery that could be a bit more intimidating than a cloud, in the first half or so of the story. The rest could be handled via the Surfer, as you suggest.
As for disturbing material, well, there’s quite a big difference between the Fantasic 4 and the Walking Dead! Not all adaptations are for the same audience. These movies seemed to be aiming for a bouncier 60s comic book tone, which probably explains the comparisons to the The Incredibles. Doubtful they would’ve gone for anything dark and dour in the mid 00s with the F4.
That would come with a later adaptation… and oh boy… we’ll get there…
We did see embodied ancient, cosmic forces of nature in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie when they had brief flashbacks to Celestials doing their thing.
When this film was released, Marvel Studios was already hitting the ground creating its cinematic universe, hard at work on both the first Iron Man and Incredible Hulk.
Retroactively, I wonder if they could have fit these characters and this setting on Marvel Studios’ plans. It’s too bad this film wasn’t successful. It was miles better than the first entry and showed some promise of expanding its universe by adding characters like the Silver Surfer and Galactus. Obviously, there’s no way Fox would ever make some compromise with Feige and the Marvel machine the way Sony did with Spider.
Not that it matters much. I, for one, am glad we got these two films for what they were, and I am more than glad that Evans moved on to become the face of Marvel Studios. This was definitely the best FF adaptation ever made, and as far as the X-Men are concerned, I actually prefer they remain separate from the cinematic universe. It gives the filmmakers freedom to experiment and try different possibilities.
The highlight of this movie is Human-Torch-as-the-thing’s pecs and arms. Mmmmm.
@25/Halbert: If you want something more intimidating than the swarm/cloud, it doesn’t have to be humanoid. There are other designs that could work.
I liked this movie, although I have a hard time remembering much about it. My opinion of the four leads hasn’t changed: They all do a decent job with the roles they’ve got. It’s curious that the Thing, established as the heart of the team in the first film and arguably the comic’s breakout character, gets the least to do here, even if he is still dating Alicia. I did have a hard time getting past “…They made Galactus a cloud”, which seems a waste of one of FF’s most iconic villains, and then in a waste of another of FF’s iconic villains, having spent the previous movie setting up Doctor Doom, they…turn him back into Julian McMahon in a boiler suit, probably because they’re not going to hire him without giving him face time. (He might not have been quite up to Sylvester Stallone levels of fame, but he’d had a regular role, in one case starring role, in at least three prime-time dramas. Four if you count Home and Away. He was hardly a nobody. And at this point I ponder if anyone in the country of origin really knew who Ioan Grufford, a lead actor in British dramas who’s started subverting his image as he’s got older, actually was…)
I can’t say I was ever keen on the Silver Surfer film that this seemed to be a 90 minute trailer for, but I’m disappointed we never got a third FF film since this version of the line-up was pretty likable. Mind you, in this day of Marvel Studios seemingly having a bet as to the most obscure superhero they can build a film around, I guess it wouldn’t look out of place.
@13: That was pretty much my view of Spider-Man: One of the many reasons the ASM series was stillborn (or at least died in infancy) was they spent a third of its running time repeating the first act of a film from only a decade previous beat for beat. Fortunately, the MCU seems to have realised that.
@12/OverMaster: As far as an origin story for the FF, having them get their powers as a result of researching Galactus’ coming is a great way to update the story from its cold-war roots. Jim Lee did this when he took over the FF as part of the Heroes Reborn reboot attempt Marvel did in the 90’s. Lee took many of the prominent elements Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were making up as they went along – the Inhumans, the Super Skrull, the Mole Man, etc., and tied them into the Galactus story. Although it went down hill as all the Heroes Reborn titles crossed over with Galactus’ arrival and the end of the Heroes Reborn titles, it was head and shoulders above all the other Heroes Reborn titles, and to me the FF title was actually better than what it had been before the temporary reboot.
RED was based on a comic book?
If they weren’t going to use “big guy in a purple hat”, I think a depiction that would both work and be true to the comics would be to make Galactus’ world-ship into Galactus’ himself.
I figure that the “why is the US Army is Siberia?” is a narrative thing, not a geopolitical thing. You see it in other films like this too. You need a institution that the audience will recognize and is potent enough be a counterweight to the hero (but hideworn enough that the story needs the heroes to step in and solve things instead). In a city, it’s the police; in a national story, it’s often the FBI. In an international story it’s either the US military or some fictionalized UN force; SHIELD would fall under the latter, but it would end up being one more thing to explain. By just having the Army somehow involved, you get the stock “scientist vs soldier debating how to deal with the alien” trope as the B-plot for the viewer to worry about when other things aren’t occurring, without having to introduce some new group
Matthew: Yup, Red was based on a comic book miniseries by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_(WildStorm)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I can remember just one occasion when Doom was unmasked. It was supposed to be a big battle just between Reed and Doom, finally finishing off the years of being enemies. They pounded the heck out of each other, Reed managing to damage the power systems in Doom’s armor, until Doom had him on the ropes and was killing him. Reed claws Doom’s mask off and we discovered his hideous scarring consisted of one tiny nick on one cheekbone. As far as Doom was concerned, this was a horrific marring of his perfection. Despite the fact I’m pretty sure that was a big anniversary issue or something, I’d bet nobody pays that any mind any more.
@34: But why Siberia? If you’ve decided to write in a scene where the captured alien is taken to a U.S. Army base, shouldn’t said base be located in, I dunno, the U.S.?
@37,
I think the implications are obvious. In this FF timeline, the US has conquered Russia, and maybe the whole world. Everywhere is a US base.
Kinda like Star Trek, where a French guy has a British accent. In that timeline the UK defeated France and so many Brits colonized France they replaced the accent.
@38/ragnar: “Kinda like Star Trek, where a French guy has a British accent.”
Which he would naturally have when speaking English if he’d been bilingual from childhood. Fiction uses the conceit that foreigners speaking English always have to have a heavy accent to code them as foreign, and it’s true that people who learn it as a second language often do. But there are plenty of people who have been bilingual from childhood and can switch effortlessly between languages and accents. I’ve seen plenty of Hispanic-American actors on TV who speak English with a flawless American accent but can flip on a dime to speaking Spanish with an equally flawless accent, even in mid-sentence. Because they’ve spoken both languages from childhood and so both accents are equally natural to them.
Since Picard is from a united Europe, it’s logical to assume he learned both French and English from childhood onward, and that the version of English he learned was British English. So there’s no reason he wouldn’t speak English with a British accent. The only way there’s a credibility problem is if he speaks French with a British accent. (I always found it amusing that Jonathan Frakes pronounced the name “Jean-Luc Picard” the French way when Patrick Stewart didn’t.)
@39
The fact that Picard didn’t pronounce his own name correctly only strengthens my theory.
@40/ragnarredbeard: He mispronounces his own name as a courtesy to his monolingual coworkers. As an educated Frenchman, he can afford to be gracious because he knows that half of English is mispronounced French anyway.
@40/ragnar: Rather, the actor Patrick Stewart didn’t pronounce his character’s name correctly. That doesn’t mean the in-universe character would pronounce it the same way. In “Journey to Babel,” when Leonard Nimoy delivered the line “a seer-o-genic open-heart procedure,” did that mean that Spock didn’t know how to pronounce “cryogenic,” or that Nimoy didn’t?
I remember reading somewhere, and I can’t remember where, that the face under Dr. Doom’s mask was supposed to be Stan Lee’s face.
I believe the revelation that Doom’s face was only marginally scarred occurred in Fantastic Four number 200, although I could be wrong. I also seem to remember that Lee had pushed for the idea while Kirby resisted it, although I could have that entirely backward.
But I don’t think it was ever seriously suggested that Doom was supposed to look like Stan Lee. I just remember Lee writing that Kirby had once done a gag drawing of Doom with his mask off, revealing Stan’s face underneath.
Okay, I just looked it up. I did have it backward. It was Kirby who came up with the idea that Doom should only have a single, small scar.
Interestingly, there was a story in one of the Batman comics about a murderous ex-football player who thought he had been disfigured but was ultimately revealed to have only a minor blemish. I remember reading that story before ever hearing the idea had been considered for Doom.
Yes, I looked up the cover, and issue 200 is the one.
Comics constantly rewrite themselves. I also remember Doom going to the monks who forged his armor and being in such a hurry that he slaps the mask on his face while it is still dangerously hot, burning his entire face all at once. Whether it was a retelling of his original visit, or possibly a return visit for a new set of armor sometime after issue 200 (thereby eliminating the “Doom has only a tiny scar” revelation) I can’t remember.
This is all making me want to find my collection and see if it’s safely readable.
Stephen & Lisa: No, that wasn’t in FF #200. In fact, it was in that issue, by Marv Wolfman & Keith Pollard, that von Doom was exposed to multiple reflections of his ruined face, which drove him mad.
It was in FF #278 by John Byrne that postulated the notion that the explosion that “ruined” his face in college was just a tiny scar that led to him declaring himself ugly and fleeing to the mountains of Tibet. But then the monks placed the red-hot mask of his armor on his face, scarring it truly. So he basically had it both ways. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Aha. My memory was squashing multiple stories together. Thank you! :)
Ha! I had that issue (#278) but must’ve forgotten the details. I just pulled it out again, and I wouldn’t say that it was a tiny scar — it wasn’t Freddy Kruger level, but it looked like one check & onto his jaw was pretty disfigured — but yeah, clamping on a red-hot iron mask would not have led to an improvement in the situation.
@42/CLB: At the risk of going massively off topic… By that logic, we might as well say that Picard actually does speak with a French accent, it’s just Patrick Stewart doesn’t play the part with one. (Also, didn’t Data describe the French language as “obscure”? Fridge Logic causes me to wonder if the French don’t speak French anymore but some parts of Canada do, meaning North Americans are more likely to know the French pronunciation than Europeans…)
@50/cap-mjb: It’s also possible that the French on Earth still speak French, but nobody else in the galaxy does. In an interstellar civilisation, that makes it obscure.
Picard calls his mother maman in “Where No One Has Gone Before” and sings Frère Jacques with the children in “Disaster”. I take that as evidence that he still speaks French. On the other hand, today French is an official language in many African states. This is probably no longer true in Star Trek’s United States of Africa.
@50/cap-mjb: But my point is, it’s unrealistic to assume that any French person speaking English is required to speak it with a French accent. That’s a fallacy that we’ve been conditioned to believe by fiction, because having characters speak English with strong accents is a convenient way to code them as foreign. In real life, anyone who learned both French and English from childhood — as Picard logically would have — should be expected to speak both without an accent. For that matter, anyone who’s just really good at languages, or just at mimicry, should be able to speak them with minimal accents. (When I took language classes in high school and college, the pronunciation was the only part that came easily to me. I was bewildered by other students who didn’t even try to pronounce the sounds in a non-English way even after years of study.)
A case in point is actor Michael Vartan of Alias. He was born in France and spent most of his childhood years there, aside from a relatively brief stretch in the US from age 5, and yet he speaks English so fluently that he has no trace of a French accent. It was when I learned he was French that I began to realize the folly of assuming that foreigners must always speak English with obvious accents.
@47/krad: Yes, thanks. I remember it now. Doom sees multiple reflections of his face and it puts him over the edge. However, wasn’t there an issue in the run up to 200 in which he removes his mask, and the members of the FF who are his prisoners seem distinctly undisturbed by whatever is underneath? Wasn’t this pointed out in a subsequent letters column, and wasn’t the answer that their lack of revulsion was a strong clue as to just how different Doom’s “disfigurement” was from what we had always been led to assume?
I know that I had heard of the idea that Doom might only have minor scars long before Byrne got involved with the title — because I never read any of his issues. I stopped getting the book shortly after issue 200, ironically enough.
I don’t recall anything like that in those issues. But I could be wrong. And yeah, the notion of von Doom with a minor scar only had been floated for a while.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@53: Yeah, that kind of rings a bell. Although seems to me first off Doom wouldn’t be showing his face to anybody, least of all the FF, and second, they should look very surprised by the relatively minimal scarring compared with what they expected to see. And no way could Ben keep his trap shut at a moment like that; he’d have some smart aleck comment to rile Doom.
It’s in #197 that von Doom unmasks in front of Sue, Ben, and Johnny, which he does so Alicia Masters can feel his face in preparation for sculpting a statue of von Doom. However, he turns away from her quickly, and von Doom hides under his hood. It’s perfectly possible that nobody else in the room saw his face at all.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
So Assuming the planet’s the silver surfer destroyed are farther than 8 light days away from Earth how is it possible for them to know that he is destroying them since light has a finite speed. Of course they could make up some BS about discovering a massless particle that allows them to gain information almost instantly. I guess that answer my own question. But really it’s not scientifically sound but it would be enough to trick lay folk and help with their crazy plot holes they could introduce tachyon which have never been observed in real world because according to quantum theory which is the most successful of all our theories. NO Particle can travel faster than the speed of light. Massless particles i believe can travel close to the speed of light or hypothetically at the speed of light but even that wouldn’t help in this situation because the planets would have to be closer than 8 light days away or the silver surfer would have had to take crazy detours to allow that information To get to Earth . Our the destruction of a planet could take him. In which case it would be OK , in fact had they made him take really long like hundred of millions years you wouldn’tt have to introduce anything new .