Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Review
We’re 10 days away from the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps. We’re almost done with my Fantastic Four review series. So today we’re talking about the second film in the Tim Story Fantastic Four franchise. What do I think about Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? Is it better or worse than the 2005 film? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
One thing this film does better than the previous film is we do get some cool action. Despite not getting great reviews, Fantastic Four (2005) did very well at the box office. That film had a $100 million budget, this has a $130 million budget so the bigger budget allows them to do more exciting things. That leads to a cool and exciting action for this film. We get the introduction to Silver Surfer which allows for cool sequences with Human Torch. When he first appears in New York City and he and Johnny are chasing around the world it is very exciting. The third act has some cool images with Doctor Doom on the surf board and destroying parts of China that visually look very cool and interesting. They’re dynamic sequences that take place in some cool environments that allows for this film’s action to stand out and be different from the first film. It might look goofy and very dated in 2025 but the images of Human Torch gaining the abilities of the other members and fighting Doctor Doom with them was cool and interesting.
The other thing you have to talk about here is Silver Surfer himself. I’m not familiar with the character from the comics. My only other knowledge of the character is him playing a critical role in LEGO Marvel Superheroes. Since Galactus wasn’t great (we’ll talk about that later) I think it dampens how good Silver Surfer could be because the characters are so connected. But with what Silver Surfer is given to do in this film it's a pretty good character. He is given a character arc, his relationship with Sue Storm allows him to see humanity and that Earth isn’t worth destroying. Doug Jones plays the physical version of the character, he’s one of the great character actors that can play weird characters like this. The voice of Silver Surfer is Lawrence Fishburne and I always forget this casting. I love Fishburne and of course The Matrix is fantastic. But since this film is so forgotten and not very good (spoiler alert for the rest of the review), you forget that Fishburne joined the comic book movie genre before he was in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
Finally, there’s a lot of ideas in this film that feel like the proper follow-up and sequel to the 2005 film. That film brought our team together, gave them their powers and sent them off on a mission against Doctor Doom. This film has a lot of ideas that provide the logical and natural follow-up to what the 2005 film gave us. The key word in all this is “A LOT”, this film has a lot of ideas which isn’t always a good thing.
The Bad
As I just mentioned this film has a lot of plot lines going on. This means that the film is unfocused and it can’t latch onto any of these ideas. The movie is about Silver Surfer coming to Earth, Galactus wanting to attack Earth, Reed & Sue get married, their powers get switched up, the public’s acknowledgment of the team, Doctor Doom’s return, the government hiring Reed Richards to stop Silver Surfer, the team breaking up, and so much more that the film isn’t able to latch onto any of these ideas. The bigger problem with the film is that it’s only 94 minutes long with the credits. That means this film has about 1 hour and 25 minutes to explore all of these ideas and that’s simply way too much. You can see how some of these ideas could have made for a good sequel. If this film focuses on the city’s response to the team and you have Silver Surfer coming to Earth to warn them about Galactus. You have this film where the team is overwhelmed by the city’s new found love for them and this big galactic threat out there so they feel this extra pressure to save the world. If that’s the plot for this film, that could have worked. It’s nice and focused and once again it follows up on ideas set up in the original. With less plot lines going on, you could focus more on Silver Surfer and Galactus and make them far more interesting and complex villains. But they didn’t do that, they added more plot lines then they needed. So the 94 minute long film feels WAY too overstuffed with plot lines. Since the movie is short with a lot going on, some plot lines aren’t really fully introduced until half way through the film. They tease Doctor Doom’s return early on in the film. But he doesn’t really become a major character until 45-50 minutes into the film. It’s frustrating because there’s a good idea here. On paper, Silver Surfer should be a really good idea for a Fantastic Four sequel. And in a lot of ways it is. With so much going on there’s a lack of development which means he or the film as a whole isn’t as good as it should be.
From there, their usage of Galactus in the film is terrible. This might be the worst comic book movie villain of all time. Galactus is an iconic Marvel villain, one of the most iconic in Marvel comics. His design is so unique and recognizable. The image of a powerful being that is the size of a planet and eats them is very cool. Unfortunately, they replaced the iconic look of Galactus with a space cloud in the third act. Everything that makes Galactus this interesting character is gone in this film. I know what probably happened was they had the idea of Silver Surfer and Galactus for this film but realized they didn’t have the budget to pull it off. So they had to transfer Galactus’s comic accurate look to a space cloud, that’s weird. It’s one of those things of if you can’t pull it off don’t do it. Maybe what they should have done is you have the embodiment of Galactus be a normal sized guy that’s extremely powerful. But whenever he eats worlds he turns into a space cloud. My idea also sounds stupid but at least there could be a physical embodiment of the character and something that makes for a more exciting third act where you have our Fantastic Four fighting this physical embodiment of Galactus.
Finally, Doctor Doom is once again wasted here and proves that Tim Story didn’t crack the code with him. When you watch the film, it’s so weird even why he’s in the film. You didn’t need him to be in this film and if you cut him from the film you can give more time on the other plot lines. It felt like he was here to give our team a physical threat in the third act. Since they decided to turn Galactus into a cloud in the sky they needed to find ideas to change it up. What’s weird about his usage in the film is that a lot of the problems with Doom in this film are plucked from the original. One of my issues in the original was Doom’s plan going into the third happens very suddenly. That’s sort of the case with Doom’s plan in this film. They tease and hint at him wanting revenge on the Fantastic Four due to the events of the previous. He likes the idea of the power that comes from Silver Surfer’s surfboard. Him being the third act boss fight is so sudden and not properly set up.
Final Thoughts: I feel like this film had all of the pieces to be a really good follow-up and sequel to the original film. The idea of having Silver Surfer and the teaming’s new found fame with the general public feels like the logical next step. But the problem here is there’s simply way too much going on so the film lacks a sense of forward momentum. All of the ideas here feel underused because it can’t give any idea any time to work. Galactus should have been a much better villain then he actually was. Overall, another disappointing adventure with the Fantastic Four.
The Score: 7.4/10 (C)
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