Comic Book Rewind

Hello all, we are doing another installment of comic book rewind today and we are rewatching the Silver Surfer. The second Fantastic Four film was released in 2007 and introduces one of the most well known comic book characters of all time. These films as a whole are widely regarded as subpar but in rewatching them I have found that the reality is that they were simply a product of their time. The casting was impeccable and thought the actual writing left much to be desired. The feeling of the characters was there. So here we go chapter two of the Fantastic Four.

Basically what I’ve learned in re-watching these movies is that Ben Grimm is the best and he is truly my favorite member of the Fantastic Four.

The bachelor party scene is very Johnny, I love that Ben looks like he’s having fun, and Reed is truly the biggest idiot on the planet. The very concept of Bachelor and Bachelorette parties is problematic but if you are going to use the evening before your marriage to someone as an excuse to flirt, hit on, or worse with people who aren’t your fiance then you shouldn’t be getting married.

In the Silver Surfer’s emergence, he awakens Doctor Doom. I will see that we kind of see his powers in this film but they're very non-specific and we really don’t see the scale or scope of his powers at all.

Ben Grimm deserves to be so happy, seriously he can do whatever he wants forever.

The scene of the Silver Surfer just catching Johnny by the throat in mid air was such a well done scene. It's peak comic book movie honestly. It's a cool move that also establishes character strength for the Silver Surfer while allowing Johnny to have a humble moment, it's just a great scene.

Sue is also a scientist, yet all she is concerned about is how they're going to have babies and raise a family. This is part of a much larger issue in comics where all women want are babies and families and once they have those things they can’t possibly be a superhero too. Even though this dilemma never seems to affect their male counterparts. It's deeply insulting and reductive and that's coming from someone who wants nothing more in life than to be a mom.

Sue and Johnny switching powers leads to Sue being naked in public…again. As if that trope wasn’t already tired and sexist in the first movie they just thought they'd pull it out again. I get it Jessica Alba is one of the hottest women on the planet, but again exposing her character, even in fiction is misogynistic and deeply damaging to not only the audience's view of the character but the sad, lonely, nerd boys view of actual, real human women.

Using Doctor Doom as the villain for the second movie was a brilliant move, one of not only my but the biggest complaints of most early comic book movies and even MCU movies as we know them now is that major villains are wasted as one offs. Allowing Doom to come back further establishes him as the main adversary of the Fantastic Four, as well as deepens his character.

The pacing of this one is actually very good, the film is very clearly in three acts and it moves at a great clip. Nothing is super rushed but it could have been longer.

Basically family saves the day…Johnny takes on everyones powers and we all pretend that makes sense

Weirdly long scene of the surfer healing sue, this was a little much. It could have been done with the wave of his hand but we lingered for like 2 minutes for some reason.

The vague cosmic event could have been done better, simply telling me what the stakes are doesn’t work for me. I really wish they would have built up the destroyer a little more so that we were able to connect with it a little better.

Sacrificing Silver Surfer is a total waste even for a self contained movie. We just talked about how Doctor Doom coming back was a wonderful idea and in direct contrast we introduced an incredibly major comic book character just to kill him off at the end of the film.

Overall the film holds up okay, it's aggressively average and no better or worse then MCU films now. Even judging it against the comic book movies of today it's middle of the pack.