Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Not
a Marvel
(Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 6/25/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
It's probably not news to anybody who reads this column, but this boy
is no fanboy. From here, the explosion of comic/superhero blockbusters
from Hollywood doesn't look like something to rejoice, but more like
a "fantastic" waste of time. Those who admired Marvel Comics
(Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc.) in their original form—as
a smart and edgy alternative to DC Comics (Superman, Batman)—can
only look with regret at what Hollywood has done to their stable of
superheroes. Marvel is alternative no more, but a big box outlet for
Hollywood orthodoxy—over-produced, uninspired thrill rides designed
to make money before word of their mediocrity spreads.
That said, one or two of the X-Men
movies were entertaining, and the last Batman was not so bad.
Something less can be said for the second in the Fantastic Four franchise,
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. For those with better
things to do, the heroes here are four crewmembers of a space station
who get zapped by cosmic rays (or was that gamma rays...?). All end
up personally enhanced for their ordeal, with Dr. Reed Richards (Ioan
Gruffudd) becoming super-elastic, Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) a sardonic
human torch, Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) an "invisible woman,"
and Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) a super-strong behemoth, albeit with
psoriasis. All four devote their powers to doing good, which is fortunate
because the Silver Surfer (Doug Jones) has just arrived to announce
that imminent arrival of Galactus, a giant space-cloud bent on eating
our planet. Got it?
Four is a short movie (89
minutes), but spends an inordinate amount of time on a subplot involving
the wedding of Richards and Sue Storm and the tabloid circus around
it. One gathers that somebody thought it clever to render this particular
piece of corporate media into a thoughtful critique of the follies of
corporate media. It isn't clever.
The kids in the audience, meanwhile,
patiently suck their sodas and wait for the good parts. Fortunately,
the Silver Surfer himself is a pretty cool creation—a foil-clad
sylph who likes to hang ten from his board of liquid mercury. The Army
wants to blast him, of course, but the Four soon ascertain that the
Surfer is just the unhappy herald of Galactus. All this makes little
sense, since the Surfer is a "herald" who never gets around
to announcing anything, preferring to surf around doing mischievous
things like draining the Thames. (Maybe all this could have been better
explained if not so much time was spent attacking the paparazzi.) It
probably isn't giving much away to say that the Four manage to corral
the Surfer by wiping him off his surfboard, thereby proving the rule
that you should always wear your retention strap when surfing, fellas.
It's a matter of some puzzlement
in the comics blogosphere why Hollywood has managed turn Spiderman and
Batman into $$$, but can't seem to figure out how to make a megahit
with the Fantastic Four. The answer is no mystery—the tragic loneliness
of characters like Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne have long been the bread
and butter of movie heroism. The dynamics of the Four, meanwhile, is
nothing more or less than the labor of getting individuals to pull together
as a team—something as often seen in the cubicles of everyday life
as in the comics. If there's anything more frightening than a planet-eating
space cloud, it's a supervisor with the power of invisibility.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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