Cool Fantastic Four 1/4 Scale 'Thing' Statue

With the popularity of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, I thought I'd highlight a related collectible. Sideshow Collectibles is running out of these 1/4 scale maquettes of the Ben Grimm/Thing character so you might want to check 'em out and maybe grab one for yourself. It's a big piece, standing 16" tall, and this detailed, lifelike solid polystone maquette was used as the control design model for the fabrication and sculpture for the full sized suit seen in the first film.

Movie Reviewers Need To Lighten Up

When reviewing movies, I form my own opinion - but one of my favorite websites for helping me decide whether or not to go see a movie is RottenTomatoes.com. I really like the "consensus" approach they use in determining whether or not a movie is good or bad in a general sense.

If you're not familiar with the site, it gathers reviews from across the web and based on the ratings of individual reviews determines whether the movie gets a ripe or rotten tomato. 60% and above overall positive reviews garners a film a ripe tomato, indicating that it's a good flick according to the majority. Anything under that gets a rotten tomato. My experience is that anything down to about 50% can be a pretty good bet depending on the genre and your personal tastes, although the lower you go the more likely you won't like a movie no matter what.

Up until this past week I've almost always been in agreement with the overall consensus, but I think the majority of reviewers out there really need to lighten up based on the ratings for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

No More Freaking FF2 Or Tranformers Clips!

Holee crap... it seems like every other day another three movie clips and 24 new images come out for either Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer or Transformers.

I refuse to post another video clip or new image from either of these upcoming films here at Screen Rant. Seriously, just how much of these movies do you want to see before you ever set foot in the stinking movie theater?!? I understand the concept of the Hollywood Hype Machine and it's ever increasing need to beat the last box office record (most money made on a 3.5 day weekend in an odd numbered month during the summer solstice, for example).

Fantastic Four 2 Is Rated PG

Is the pendulum finally swinging the other way? For the longest time action movies pushed the PG-13 envelope, doing razor thin trims until they just barely escaped the R-rating and slid in to theaters as PG-13 for those lucrative teen and preteen dollars.

Now I hear from /Film that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer has gotten a PG rating! I did not expect that at all... I had assumed it was a given that it would get a PG-13. Very surprising as far as I'm concerned.

Could Rise Of The Silver Surfer Be Better Than The First FF Movie?

So it's almost here. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (don't you love super-long movie titles?) opens on June 15th and the marketing blitz is in high gear. It almost seemed like 20th Century Fox bought up all the advertising time on the season finale of Heroes to pitch this sequel. Is it possible that the sequel could be better than the original?

Rise Of The Silver Surfer Trailer: Hope For FF2?

The final trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is out and it's much more impressive than the original teaser trailer that was released a while back.

Fanboys Appeased: Ben Grimm Has A Brow

One of the complaints about the first Fantastic Four movie was the fact that Ben Grimm as The Thing did not have his trademark big honkin' brow ridge.

Based on the photo on the left it looks like the folks making the movie heard that and fixed that particular issue in Rise of the Silver Surfer. The first image is from the first film and the second image is from the sequel.

At least it looks like they're going to do one thing right in the upcoming film. :-)

AICN Losing It's Cool?

Ain't It Cool News has always been a huge movie site, with it's founder Harry Knowles becoming a bit of a celebrity among the geek fanboy movie crowd (don't be offended, I'm IN that crowd). Like many movie websites out there (including this one) they report rumors based on information sent to them, but usually their sources are pretty solid.

However right now they're getting pretty hammered in regards to recent reports about Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Galactus With A 20% Chance Of Rain

Wow, this has got to be the most interesting story I've read so far today. On the heels of some very bad preview reactions to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, comes the news from AICN that Galactus will appear in the form of:

A giant cloud.

Fantastic Four Sequel Worse Than The First?

The big news this week is supposedly that Laurence Fishburne may be doing the voice of Galactus, but I think that this tidbit from Ainitcoolnews is a lot more newsworthy: There was a screening of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer a couple of days ago and the reaction was, to put it mildly, not good.

The specific quote that was sent to AICN was:

Fantastic Four 2: Galactus In But Not Yet Designed?

It seems that a previous quote by Ioan Gruffudd (who plays Mr. Fantastic) stating that Galactus would not be appearing in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer seems to have been incorrect. Whether this was by design or ignorance, I don't know. Considering that the Silver Surfer is the herald of Galactus, it seemed odd to me that the big guy wouldn't be in the film... especially with the sound bite in the latest commercial where they say that eight days after the Silver Surfer shows up on a world, it's destroyed.

But today, posted on Tim Story's Myspace blog:

Fantastic Four 2 Trailer: Cool If You Don't Think About It Too Much

So the quicktime versions of the Fantastic Four 2 trailer are out (or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer if you're feeling more dramatic). I'm pretty sure that at the least it will be better than the first FF movie, but as I read elsewhere, that wouldn't take much.

At first glance it was pretty cool... I always enjoy watching Johnny Storm in flying sequences, and his admiration at the Silver Surfer's ability to go through solid matter was fun. However the ridiculousness of Johnny being able to keep up with and even catch the Silver Surfer seemed a bit silly to me. SS travels through space at what one would assume hyperlight velocities, yet this guy who's made of fire can catch him? Unless the Surfer was just in the mood for a game of cat and mouse, that seemed pretty dumb to me.