I don’t think he destroyed Galactus. I just think he dispelled him from Earth. I think a SS solo feature will deal with the ramifications of his treason.
cmkeller, that would have been a good angle, but given that the first one was a borderline success, I think the producers thought it was now or never for the Surfer.
I have a tangential GQ.
[spoiler]Do we know how deep those holes all over the planet are?
If so, how long will it take the Thames to fill its hole back up with water?
And how would such a large hole in the middle of the Thames affect the river’s ecology? To say nothing of England’s riverine commerce.[/spoiler]
I enjoyed it, mostly. First of all, it was ten times better than the groan-awful disappointment of FF1. I know this isn’t setting a very high bench-mark, but credit where it’s due: they aimed to improve and they did. The story was cleaner, leaner, better directed, easier to follow and easy to enjoy. All the four leads were better and more comfortable in their roles, although I still think Jessica Alba was a seriously bad choice. Minor improvements all round in terms of art direction, set design, make-up (The Thing is slightly better this time around) and costume. SFX… brilliant in places, acceptable-to-good most of the time, just a few puzzling rough edges (they still haven’t quite got how to portray Reed stretching, and it still looks painfully obvious where the actor ends and the CGI takes over).
The Surfer himself was quite a success, I thought. Having seen the early trailers, I was concerned that no matter how well he was done, he would suffer in comparison with all our happy memories of the silver robot from Terminator 2. It turns out not so. He works very well on screen, and was captivating enough (with enough ‘presence’) to make me forget about the Terminator movie and just enjoy him as a character in his own right. What I really liked was that (I’ll use a spoiler box even though it’s not really crucial to the plot):
we got to see him in his normal, super-powerd form and his tarnished, greyish, less shiny, de-powered form. I thought this was a cute touch, and worked very well.
Anyone expecting anything other than mindless fun, comic-book action and eye candy-a-plenty is mad. That’s all it aims to be and all it could aim to be. And on that basis, I’d say the makers have delivered. 8 out of 10 if in a generous mood.
I don’t see how Jessica Alba is a poor choice to play anything.
If she signed on to play Tevye in a revival of Fiddler On The Roof I’d go see it.
I disliked the SFX at the end of the final confrontation where Galactus gets blowed up. The “explosion ring” clearly moves faster than the speed of light! And if it did, somehow, move faster than the speed of light, from the camera’s perspective, the rear half of the explosion would clearly lag the front half since the light moves slower!You may laugh, but it really took me out of the movie. It made the scale of the event actually seem smaller rather than larger like it was supposed to. If they had made the effect a bit slower it would have seemed bigger, like when they showed Gandalf and the Balrog falling slowly in the big cave, it made the big cave seem bigger because that’s how things fall when there is a terminal velocity.
I really enjoyed it. I liked the first one well enough, but this one was much more satisfying. The climax in the first movie seemed so… small. Here we had a climax with pretty much the highest stakes possible–I’m glad they amped it up.
I agree that the cast is settling into their characters well. If I’m not mistaken, Thing looked a little rockier and had more prominent brow ridges than before, following his evolving look in the comics. I think Jessica Alba is doing quite well as this version of Sue (though I don’t remember her eyes looking nearly as blue in the first movie as they do here and I found it a little distracting, but then Jessica Alba is always distracting!) The weak member of the four for me is Ioan Gruffud. He’s not bad, but he doesn’t sound very convincing when he makes with the technospeak. He sounds like he’s just reciting something he memorized.
I didn’t stay through the end of the credits (I had to pee like a mofo!)
Were there any other teaser scenes at the end other than the one near the beginning of the credits that showed the Surfer floating in space and his board suddenly starts moving towards him?
Actually, I think he did have to memorize his lines in the first one phonetically (sp?) because he couldn’t quite get the American accent right. Dunno if the same was true here. And I’m glad the teaser was moved up, much better than sitting there till the credits end.
If you didn’t like or were eh towards the first one, I’d suggest checking out the extended cut, with 20 minutes more footage. It was much much better in my opinion, really fleshed things out such as relationships and arcs IMHO. I’m not buying or renting the regular ones anymore…nope, all extended for me.
As for this movie, I liked it. A fun, interesting comic movie without a lot of angst, and with the sense of family that is so much a part of FF. Hell, I liked it better than X-Men 1, possibly 2, and Spider-Man 3. Also better than Daredevil (again, extended version is better. Avi Arad can lick goats.)
To those who say it was predictable…so? Hell, most of the plot twists were given in the trailer, but they were still very watchable. Alba is the lightweight actor of the four, but she’s still good. I can’t find anything bad to say about this movie. Well, except that Julian McMahon looks more like Namor than Doctor Doom, but he’s still fiendish.
My criticisms mostly fall into this: I didn’t think it was particularly fun. Mindless yes, fun no. The “villains” ain’t much. The Thing’ lines made me cringe. The entire marriage plot bored me. The perfectly ordinary general provided the sum total of all the tension in the film.
To be honest, I was plain bored. I don’t think movies have to have angst or whatnot, but the action was pretty dull. I don’t want to be able to foresee the exact ending to every plotline. It might turn out to be what I think (good triumphs, evil lses, yada yada) but getting there must be fun. This wasn’t bad. It was just meh.
We saw it last night. It was all right - the CGI was good enough to bring the comic book feel off successfully. But if Jessica Alba’s lips get any bigger, she is gonna need black face.
But did I, or did I not, see the sparkle effect once shortly before the final sequence where Johnny Storm touches Mr. Fantastic and it appears that they are changing powers? I thought that was a “subtle” set up for some plot twist that would enable them to defeat Dr. Doom somehow or other. But they didn’t do anything with it.
I think my major problem is that I read the comics where Dr. Doom stole the Surfer’s powers, and the FF defeated him, and it was so much better than this thing that I couldn’t relax and enjoy the movie.
Nothing to compare to X-Men or the first Batman, but OK. I should have waited for the DVD.
Regards,
Shodan
OTOH, I was extremely pleased that they left out all the “darlings” that Reed and Sue throw around so much in the comics. I seriously considering bringing along a barf bag so that I’d be prepared when they started that up. Granted, I haven’t read an FF comic since the late '80s - early 90s, so maybe they’ve knocked it off since then. I always thought that it made FF sound really out of date.
I also wondered about SS’s depowered form in the movie. In the comics, he was always portrayed as a very human-looking white guy with a bald head.
Also…
[spoiler]I don’t believe it’s within the Silver Surfer’s capabilities to destroy Galactus. Big G is one of the fundamental, unique forces of the universe. He’s not an evil villain; he’s amoral. He devours planets because he must to survive.
But, the “villain” dying seems to be required in the movies, even when it’s unnecessary. So far, in all these movies (from both Marvel and DC), the villain has died, with the exception of Magneto, Sandman, and Lex Luthor. Did I miss anybody? I mean, really, The Punisher is the only character whose enemies should be dying in the movie.
[/spoiler]
Who’s “Namor”? He looked enough like Jason Isaacs (of Harry Potter and The Patriot fame) that I wondered if it really was him.
The Marvel Comics version of Aquaman, called the “Sub-Mariner.”
Of the Ari Avad comic films, my list:
Top Tier:
Weak, but not horrible:
Bad:
Have Not Seen:
Did I miss any?
Spiderman 3?
Elektra was even worse than the first Fantastic Four.
Oh, yeah. Haven’t seen it. It should be #1 because despite the lousy reviews, I gotta see Venom.
Um, do you mean like Doctor Doom? :smack:
Well, I’ve finally seen it, and I liked it, as I did the first. With the exception of Sue, I thought the main characters had the personalities of the roles down pat. Doom was MUCH better than in the first film. The one thing I wasn’t crazy about was the ending - you really didn’t get any impression of what happened, just the vague idea that somehow, and it’s anyone’s guess as to how, the Surfer got Galactus to back off of Earth.
Lots of people seem to think that the cloud was meant to be the actual depiction of Galactus, but it seemed to me that Galactus was in the cloud. In either case, I wouldn’t have expected a real exploration of Galactus’s nature in this movie.
Phase42:
I think it’s a matter of intentionally transferring their powers vs. accidental - they could knowingly void themselves of power if they tried, but in the absence of intent, Johnny’s power flowed to them to fill the power vacuum.
Blade was entertaining. Punisher was crap except for one small sequence. Hulk was terrible. Elektra, also terrible. Other Blades…reasonable popcorn flicks, and 3 had Biel! Bonus!
I am looking forward to Iron Man, though. and I’ll repeat my advice that you try the other versions of DD and FF.
