Brad Mercer
25th June 2007, 04:43 PM (16:43)
We saw Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer as a family Sunday night. I wasn't a big Fantastic 4 fan as a kid in the 1960's and '70's, but I was a big Silver Surfer fan. His own comic book series only lasted a few years, but they were my biggest comic book years. I always preferred Marvel over DC as a kid because the heroes were more complex, 3-dimensional characters with real relationships and problems and conflicting emotions. Most DC characters on the other hand seemed little more than the sum of their powers with no real lives at all.
In that light, Spiderman was my favorite superhero, facing difficulties in protecting his Aunt May and her weak heart from the shock of ever finding out that he's Spiderman, dealing with a boss who makes Spiderman out to be a villian, dealing with his girlfriend who's father is high up in the police force, and so forth.
My second favorite was Silver Surfer, partly just because the surfboard was so cool, but also because he was cool by his emotional detachment, his nearly complete otherness. He's more totally alien than nearly any other Superhero, and more conflicted about whether he is or should be or can be either a protecting hero or destroying villian.
As a kid moving every two years, always an outsider and a stranger in a town where everyone else seemed to belong, and feeling like my best efforts to live the right way were devalued and unappreciated, I related to the Silver Surfer.
So I eagerly anticipated this movie. I think but am not sure they did an adequate job of introducing him to those who weren't already fans. I had to explain to my 18-year-old daughter after the movie why the Silver Surfer was one of my favorites, so apparently the movie didn't make that obvious to her.
This movie, like Evan Almighty, has a more family-friendly rating than the original. Silver Surfer is just rated PG, has no sex, profanity or graphic violence. Reed Richards and Susan Storm get married. The Fantastic Four, Victor Von Doom and Silver Surfer interact interestingly and there's enough action to make it exciting, enough humor to make it fun and enough cool special effects to make it worth seeing on the big screen with the big speakers instead of waiting to watch the DVD on TV.
And it seems to be doing well enough at the box office to give hope of a Silver Surfer solo movie as this movie sets us up for at the end.
It's just a great time to be alive when technology makes it possible to do justice to the Marvel superheroes, Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, that couldn't possibly have been adequately transferred from books to movies even 20 years ago.
Oh, and just in case mere entertainment value is not enough, and you feel like a movie needs some morally redemptive lesson to be acceptable, the Fantastic 4, and Sue the Invisible Girl in particular, change the Silver Surfer from bad guy to good guy and get him to open up about who he is, his mission and motives, by valuing him and listening to him where others have failed to get what they wanted from him when they tried control, manipulation, condemnation and attack. In short, control is not transforming but love is.
Brad
In that light, Spiderman was my favorite superhero, facing difficulties in protecting his Aunt May and her weak heart from the shock of ever finding out that he's Spiderman, dealing with a boss who makes Spiderman out to be a villian, dealing with his girlfriend who's father is high up in the police force, and so forth.
My second favorite was Silver Surfer, partly just because the surfboard was so cool, but also because he was cool by his emotional detachment, his nearly complete otherness. He's more totally alien than nearly any other Superhero, and more conflicted about whether he is or should be or can be either a protecting hero or destroying villian.
As a kid moving every two years, always an outsider and a stranger in a town where everyone else seemed to belong, and feeling like my best efforts to live the right way were devalued and unappreciated, I related to the Silver Surfer.
So I eagerly anticipated this movie. I think but am not sure they did an adequate job of introducing him to those who weren't already fans. I had to explain to my 18-year-old daughter after the movie why the Silver Surfer was one of my favorites, so apparently the movie didn't make that obvious to her.
This movie, like Evan Almighty, has a more family-friendly rating than the original. Silver Surfer is just rated PG, has no sex, profanity or graphic violence. Reed Richards and Susan Storm get married. The Fantastic Four, Victor Von Doom and Silver Surfer interact interestingly and there's enough action to make it exciting, enough humor to make it fun and enough cool special effects to make it worth seeing on the big screen with the big speakers instead of waiting to watch the DVD on TV.
And it seems to be doing well enough at the box office to give hope of a Silver Surfer solo movie as this movie sets us up for at the end.
It's just a great time to be alive when technology makes it possible to do justice to the Marvel superheroes, Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, that couldn't possibly have been adequately transferred from books to movies even 20 years ago.
Oh, and just in case mere entertainment value is not enough, and you feel like a movie needs some morally redemptive lesson to be acceptable, the Fantastic 4, and Sue the Invisible Girl in particular, change the Silver Surfer from bad guy to good guy and get him to open up about who he is, his mission and motives, by valuing him and listening to him where others have failed to get what they wanted from him when they tried control, manipulation, condemnation and attack. In short, control is not transforming but love is.
Brad