Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007)

The whole gang is back. What gang you say? Why the Fantastic Four. Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) can stretch his body to, well, fantastic lengths. Susan Storm, aka The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) can bend light to make herself invisible and can create force fields, and, lets face it, has a fantastic body. Johnny Storm, Susan's brother, aka the Human Torch (Chris Evans) can light his body on fire and can fly, he is also fantastically arrogant. And Ben Grimm, aka The Thing (Michael Chiklis) has a body made from rocky and he is very strong. In the time between movies our fantastic heros have become fantastic celebrities, and it seems a fantatsic wedding has been fantastically planned. Susan and Reed are getting hitched...finally. Fantastic hilarity ensues when there is an unwanted wedding guest. A silver man on a flying silver surf board crashes the party and did I mention that he is here to destroy the world?

Trivia: Stan Lee plays himself in a cameo as a rejected wedding guest, in a tribute to his own fictional comic book incarnation. It has become a tradition for Lee to have cameo appearances in live-action adaptations of his comics; he appeared in the first Fantastic Four film playing the Baxter Building's mailman, Willie Lumpkin. The cameo scene where Stan Lee is refused entry to the wedding is in keeping with the comic series. In the 1960s story of Reed Richards and Susan Storm's wedding, two characters, obviously representing writer Stan Lee and artist/plotter Jack Kirby, are also not allowed to attend the wedding. Although the film uses the premise that the Silver Surfer gets his powers from his board, this is clearly not the case in the comics. In the comics, the Surfer is able to fly on his own and use his full gamut of powers without the aid of his surfboard. He uses it, however, as it significantly decreases the energy required for flight. The wedding dress Jessica is wearing in the wedding scene is a custom made design by the German luxury fashion brand Escada.

Sequels, Superheros sequels especially are hit and miss. This one pretty much missed. It is an okay movie sure, but I would expect more from Marvel, of course few of Marvel's superhero movies are actually very good. Most of them are okay. So after looking back at it, as a Marvel superhero movie it is good. In the first movie Johnny was the comic relief. You need a comic relief on a team for it to work well. They decided to go overboard and everybody is comic relief in this one. It is the too many cooks in the kitchen syndrome that has hampered superhero movies over the years. How to out do the original movie, which was good, not great, but good. So they took one of the few things that worked in the first one and multiplied it by four. Reed becomes a love sick absentminded professor type. Susan has a whole sctick when she inadvertantly switches powers with Johnny and ends up burning her clothes off, which would have greatly increased the entertainment of the movie except for the fact that it is PG so nothing was seen...dammit. Johnny seems to be the most serious of the group. It did have some thought provoking parts, well, kind of thought provoking cerning the fact that everyone know who they were. No secret idenities here. I can see where a secret identity could come in handy.