Screen Rant » fantastic four rise of the silver surfer

The Weekly Rant – June 22, 2007

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:30:04 +0000

Hey, thanks for the suggestions on renaming Screen Rant’s weekly podcast! I’ve decided to go with regular commenter Chip Chief’s suggestion and from here on it this will be called:

The Weekly Rant

This week’s podcast does indeed include a rant regarding who movie critics write their reviews for (other critics or the public?) plus my thoughts on Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Also covered this week is news about the new Batsuit from The Dark Knight, talk about the possibility of Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury in Iron Man, the first official pic of Harrison Ford from the set of the new Indiana Jones movie, and more!

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Cool Fantastic Four 1/4 Scale ‘Thing’ Statue

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:18:29 +0000

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.

I own a couple of Sideshow Collectibles items and they’re very cool and high quality. In particular I love my Iron Man Extremis Armor comiquette, which I purchased for $250 and is now going for about $700 on eBay (not that I’ll sell it, of course). My recent Spider-Man 3 contest featured a Sideshow Spider-Man bust and this was the reaction of the winner upon receiving it:

“I just got this bust, and it is way cooler than I expected!”

So anyway, if you’re a FF fan, go check it out.

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Movie Reviewers Need To Lighten Up

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:54:20 +0000

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.

In my review of the film I gave it stars. Now FF2 was no Citizen Kane, but then it didn’t set out to be. It was a fun movie and a vast improvement over the first film. Sure, it had it’s problems (Jessica Alba’s acting, for one) but in the end it was an entertaining escape for an hour and a half.

I just don’t understand some of the really nasty comments made by reviewers about this movie. Here are some examples:

“(Director Tim) Story can’t sustain anything resembling a mood, let alone a sense of gravity.”

Um, the idea here was to not make a “heavy” movie. If you want a sense of gravity in a superhero flick, go watch Spider-Man 3 (wasn’t THAT one fun) or Batman Begins.

“Rise of the Silver Surfer is an existentially and aesthetically unnecessary sequel to the equally irrelevant if depressingly successful Fantastic Four.”

I just love that one. Is the reviewer talking about a superhero movie or something shown on the Independent Film Channel?

“Surfer is just as lousy on every level as its predecessor.”

Um, sorry, but that’s no true.

“For non comic book fans over the age of 13, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a tedious, incoherent bore. For comic book fans of any age, it is an atrocity.”

Ok, the target audience is, are you ready…? Kids and comic book fans. And “an atrocity”? Are you kidding me? Save that witty quote for Catwoman. Heck, I wouldn’t even use a term like that to describe Ghost Rider, and I did not like that movie at all.

My personal philosophy regarding movie reviews here at Screen Rant is that one should often review a movie within the context of it’s genre. That’s why on my 5 Star Movies page you’ll see a Sci-Fi flick like Serenity and a comedy like Kung Fu Hustle on the same page as the outstanding documentary Enemies of Happiness.

Each of the above movies succeeds at its goal, whether that be to give you a great Sci-Fi experience where you care about the story and characters, to make you laugh hysterically, or to enlighten you about some topic you weren’t aware of. Having said that, of course you can have movies that fail even within their genre and I’ll call it like I see it. I’ll also admit that my personal subjectivity regarding the content of a film sometimes comes into play when I’m writing a review, but that’s part of my reviewing style.

I don’t write movie reviews for other critics, I write them for regular folks who are trying to decide whether or not to plunk down their hard earned money to go see a movie. That’s why I don’t often mention things like cinematography or esoteric aspects of a movie – of course all that factors into the final product, but I approach a review from the very basic “was it a good movie or not” point of view. Was I entertained? Moved emotionally? Blown away? Those are my benchmarks and I think they’re yours as well.

End of rant.

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Review: Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surver

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:20:47 +0000

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Although at times it felt like a made-for-TV movie, a far better film than the first and more entertaining than the super-serious Spider-man 3.

So it’s possible.

Not only can a sequel be better than the original, but it can be done with the same director and writer. By process of elimination, it would seem that the blame for how bad the first film was can perhaps be laid at the feet of the one guy missing from the new production crew: writer Michael France. I can’t say for sure, but at the top level it seems like pretty much everyone from the first film was still there for the second one. Pure speculation on my part, of course.

Anyway, on to the review…

It seems that expectations were all over the place for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – The first one was pretty awful, would this one be any better? Rumors of Galactus being portrayed as a giant cloud, Laurence Fishburne’s voice not fitting the CGI Silver Surfer, etc., etc. However I posted about the first whiffs of possibility that this sequel might be better than the first about a month ago. And guess what? It is better.

Much better, in fact.

The film opens with a shot of a planet being destroyed and then a look at the Silver Surfer, albeit only identifiable as a comet-like projection zooming through space. We’re re-introduced to our heroes, and their individual personality quirks are all still there. Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) and Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) have apparently tried multiple times to get married, but some emergency/disaster always seems to pop up to keep them from exchanging their vows. To complicate things they are now very popular celebrities, whose lives seem to be in the spotlight as much as Paris Hilton’s.

Reed vows that this time the wedding will happen and although he still has a bit of the “Absent Minded Professor” vibe, in his heart he’s committed to making Sue happy. Of course despite his best intentions, the military wants him to build a device to detect the Silver Surfer, and our silver friend zooms right past the Baxter Building as the wedding is in progress. Also alerted to the arrival of this alien presence is Victor von Doom (Julian McMahon), who was last seen stored as cargo on a ship bound for Latveria. Doom meets up with the Silver Surfer and the result of his encounter is that he is no longer horribly scarred.

After Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) comes in contact with the Silver Surfer, the team discovers that he can now switch powers with other members of the team. There’s a funny moment when Sue absorbs his ability to burst into flame, and when the ever vain Johnny takes on Ben Grimm’s (Michael Chiklis) appearance.

A military general that Reed has had dealings with in the past grudgingly turns to the team for help, and after they flub an incident with the Surfer in London pretty badly, the general decides to bring in Doom to work with Reed despite the warnings the Fantastic Four give him that Doom cannot be trusted.

Along the way Reed determines that planets visited by the Surfer are destroyed within a matter of days of his arrival and sets about coming up with a way to separate the Surfer from his cosmic surfboard, apparently the source of his power. Of course as you can imagine Dr Doom (aka Victor) wants to get his hands on such a powerful device.

Enough about the story… is the movie any good? Yeah, it is. Overall I hate to admit that for the most part I found it a more enjoyable experience than Spider-Man 3. Granted, it may not be fair to compare the two… despite the fact that they’re both in the superhero genre, they are as fundamentally different in their approach as Batman Begins was to Superman Returns. While Spidey 3 was heavy and overall pretty much a downer (not a criticism in and of itself), despite it’s end of the world storyline Rise of the Silver Surfer was a much more fun movie to sit through. The interactions between members of the team seemed much more natural and indeed like that of a bickering family and I really liked the change in Reed’s character from the first film: Here he actually seemed like the Reed Richards of the comics – more mature, confident and secure in his genius. One scene in particular where he puts the general in his place put a huge grin on my face. I also liked that they added some depth to Johnny Storm this time around.

Ben Grimm was pretty much the same, although the prosthetics did give him more subtlety of expression, which was appreciated. However Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, while exceedingly pleasant to look at, just did not generate much depth no matter how hard she tried. I don’t know, maybe her beauty is too distracting? One thing I found quite funny in particular was director Tim Story’s decision to have her wear glasses in many of the scenes in the film. Can you get a more classic (or cliche) method of trying to make someone seem intelligent than slapping a pair of black framed glasses on their face?

And yes folks, Galactus is indeed basically a giant, planet-sized storm cloud. I’m not a purist when it comes to Fantastic Four and I do believe that some things in comics would just seem absurd in a live action big screen movie, so it didn’t bother me much. Perhaps they could have come up with some other solution, but honestly I think they did pretty well with the concept of a giant planet eating entity.

As to the PG rating, I can see why it was not given a PG-13 with what passes for PG-13 these days, but for those of you with little ones, it does push the PG envelope pretty hard. There were some moments in the film that may be pretty intense and scary for little kids. Just don’t go into this expecting Shrek.

Overall, while certainly not a great movie, I thought it was pretty good and very entertaining. I would be more likely to watch this one again than I would Spider-Man 3, if that means anything to you.

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Screen Rant Weekly Podcast – June 14, 2007

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:32:00 +0000

Just a grab bag of stuff from the last week and half including my server crash, thoughts on Fantastic Four 2 being rated PG, Jericho’s return, Lost’s ending, why I’m worried about the recently announced Captain America movie, and more!

BTW, maybe I could ask for suggestions from those of you who are regular readers/listeners for a new name for my podcast? “Screen Rant Weekly Podcast” just seems a little… boring, ya know?

P.S. I apologize for the poor quality of the audio today… I think I need to invest in a new microphone. :-\

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No More Freaking FF2 Or Tranformers Clips!

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:45:21 +0000

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).

But for crying out loud, FF2 is due out in what, 7 days? And Transformers… well jeez, that one is down to 3 1/2 weeks How in the heck will we survive without being fed constant new scenes from the movie?

Well I’m here to tell ya I’m done. Finito. No mas. Period.

Sure, I run a movie site, but hey, once in a while I’d like to see a movie without knowing every single shred of what is going to happen before I put down my hard-earned dollars.

So… what will I write about? Well, geez… I don’t know but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

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Fantastic Four 2 Is Rated PG

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:19:39 +0000

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.

I guess if you remove all foul language and any sexual innuendo, a superhero movie can actually get a PG-13 rating. My guess is that the violence in the film is of such a non-specific and fantasy nature that it was able to qualify for a PG. What was even more striking to me is that in a related story, the Wachowski brothers are planning on the upcoming Speed Racer movie being G-rated!

Do I smell the start of a trend here?

Now personally I don’t think a G-rating will stick for the Wachowski movie, and actually I think they may be shooting a bit low on the rating. I think Speed Racer would actually be better and do better at the box office as a PG than as a G film. But is a PG for FF necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think so. I’ve always considered the Fantastic Four to be one of the “lighter” superhero comics and I think the movie could easily work as a PG. Now that doesn’t mean that it will be a good movie… remember: The same team created this one that created the first very weak film.

However, unlike my pals over at /Film, I’m not horrified at the idea of a PG Fantastic Four movie.

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Yet Another Rise of the Silver Surfer Trailer

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:27:44 +0000

With Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer only two weeks away, Fox has release yet another trailer, with some new footage in it:

Now although a previous trailer actually had me thinking this one might turn out to be not-so-bad, I have some concerns with the team’s switching powers storyline. Seeing Johnny Storm using Reed’s stretch power and Grimm’s big rocky fist while on fire just seems over the top to me.

What do you guys think?

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

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:00:52 +0000

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?

Now I’ll grant you that wouldn’t be terribly difficult since the first Fantastic Four movie was pretty weak (I only gave it stars), but it’s entirely possible for a sequel to go downhill even from there. My hope is that (if you’ll pardon the pun) this one will actually rise to the occasion and improve upon the first. The latest set of TV spots (click on the above image to watch them) actually don’t look too bad, and although it’s a fluffy press release document, here are some items that at least sound good in regards to the new film:

“It was a delicate balance meeting the comics fans’ expectations for the look of Galactus, and making him truly spectacular and cinematic to those not familiar with the character.”

So could Galactus actually appear to be more than a giant storm cloud?

“I wanted this movie to be the rare sequel that’s better than the original…”

One can only hope.

“Reed Richards has evolved and has much more confidence and is much more in control. He’s much more of a leader this time.”

That’s extremely good news, as I thought the character was pretty lame and not at all like the comic book version in the first film.

“Thing’s headpiece now features a larger brow – something requested by diehard Fantastic Four fans.”

I commented on that and showed the difference in a previous post, and it shows that at the very least they’re listening to the fans.

Of course all of the above quotes may just be happy talk from those involved with the film and it may turn out to be lame after all. Personally one of the things that bugs me from what I’ve seen so far is that I do not like Laurence Fishburne’s voice coming out of the Silver Surfer. It just doesn’t sound right… doesn’t match the character for some reason.

My expectations are pretty low on this one, so if it turns out to be even semi-decent that may be enough to get a pretty good review from me.

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Rise Of The Silver Surfer Trailer: Hope For FF2?

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:49:00 +0000

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.

This trailer actual makes the movie look like it might have some pretty intense moments, but that’s helped quite a bit by the music, which I don’t know if it’s the same as will be in the final film. There are quite a few cool scenes that seem to carry dramatic weight along with the humor between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm from the first film.

Of course the problem is that this is just a trailer, and it’s quite common for a trailer to make a mediocre movie look awesome. Still, I would love to be proven wrong about this Fantastic Four sequel and have it turn out to be a good, or dare I say it, great movie.

Click on the image above to see the trailer in a variety of formats.

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Fanboys Appeased: Ben Grimm Has A Brow

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:29:03 +0000

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.

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AICN Losing It’s Cool?

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 15:50:51 +0000

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.

First they reported that Laurence Fishburne was providing the voice of Galactus in the film, but it turns out that he’s going to be the voice of the Silver Surfer. The same story told of a test screening in Seattle where the feedback was that the movie was absolutely horrible.

Considering how much clout the site has, FOX put out some information today stating that not only was there not a screening in Seattle, but that there has not been a screening of the film anywhere. Also, although they didn’t reveal what Galactus would look like, they reiterated that “fans definitely won’t be disappointed.”

I think that perhaps the fact that AICN has so much competition now may be causing them to loosen their standards when it comes to “sources.” In the past even information they put out there as rumor has been pretty reliable, and even with these items they stated that. But to post information regarding a test screening that never happened? I can see that happening on a little podunk site like mine, but Harry has an infrastructure… on his contact page he has about 20 people listed, he has tons of industry contacts and I’m sure a wide network of “scoopers.” I would think that there would have been some way to verify a test screening of a blockbuster film with the resources at his disposal.

The other question is what’s going on here? Could this be some sort of misinformation campaign targeting the movie by some other studio that has a competing film coming out around the same time? It just seems odd that there would be both a terrible fake review of the film plus a description of Galactus guaranteed to make the fans really angry. Of course it remains to be seen if Galactus does turn out to be a giant cloud… but if not, this thing will reek of disinformation.

Source: Dark Horizons

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Galactus With A 20% Chance Of Rain

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:37:37 +0000

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.

According to Moriarity (probably my favorite contributor to AICN) someone sent in a scoop regarding what the big-G will look like in the upcoming film. I think I felt a collective scream in the Fanboy collective upon reading the news.

Here’s a quote from Tom Rothman, stated back before the first Fantastic Four movie was made:

“There won’t be any giant robots in any movie my studio makes.”

This, of course crushed the idea of ever having Sentinels appear in any Rothman-helmed Marvel superhero flick. (Sentinels being the 10 story tall robots that were created to hunt down mutants.) And since Galactus is portrayed as a giant the size of a planet in the comic books, I guess he fits under that category.

In September of last year Rothman had this to say in regards to Galactus appearing in the movie:

“Yes, I think that Galactus, look, I don’t want to give away too much, right, but I will say this, Galactus will appear and fans will not be disappointed.”

Now remember that five months later, in an interview Ioan Gruffudd stated the following regarding Galactus’ appearance in the film:

“…his presence is felt in the movie. He doesn’t physically appear, no.”

Now I’m not saying that a giant dude would necessarily work as Galactus in the movie… sometimes things need to be changed from the comic book version in order to fit better into a live action movie. However, having said that, here’s an image a fan did on his home PC using just Photoshop:

So yeah, I think it could have worked.

Source: AICN via DarkHorizons

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Fantastic Four Sequel Worse Than The First?

Vic Holtreman — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:24:57 +0000

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:

“[it was] sooo bad that they felt dirty and wanted to write letters of complaint.”

This is pretty much unverified, so it could be legit or it could be some uber-disgruntled hard core fanboy’s reaction. However, the fact that we have the same writers and the same director (Tim Story) on this one as we had on the first one does not bode well IMHO.

The first Fantastic Four movie was pretty weak, but I had hoped that maybe now that the origin story was out of the way they might hit their stride in this one.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

Source: AICN

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