The rise and fall of… « Riding The Slipstream

The rise and fall of…

July 11, 2007 by chitty

Did anyone notice I was gone? I guess not.
I have quite a bit of catching up to do, so I thought I’ll start out by doing good on the comment I made to Tripeak (3 weeks ago) about posting a Fantastic 4 review. So here goes.
I saw the movie on the weekend it premiered, so I am a bit late in posting. In my defense, I had the post saved to my drafts and meant to publish it before my week long absence, but never got around to doing it.
Nevertheless, I’ll be brief and do my best to remain objective and not come across as a comic book geek… which incidentally I am not. Well, I am not 15 anymore… although I know at least 4 people out there who would disagree.
There’s not much I want to say about Tim Story’s adaptation of the legendary Marvel Comic. If you are a die-hard Fantastic 4 fan you probably came out of the theatre underwhelmed and wondering at what might, and could, and should have been. Some may even call it a disaster, second only to X-men 3.
Though certainly not my favourite comic book, The Fantastic 4 always had a special place in my heart. And perhaps that is my downfall… I expected it to be more, and deep down I wanted it to be more. I am clearly self-indulged and have hedonistic tendencies.
If the first time you’ve heard of The Fantastic 4 was back in 2005, then you will regard The Rise of the Silver Surfer as highly entertaining. Some might even think of it as good. Enough to give the kid in you chills, thrills and marvels, it is better than Fantastic Four 1. There was plenty of action and the story moved at a good pace, despite the somewhat mediocre acting. Take your kids if you have any. They’ll love it.
From a purely male perspective, whose testosterone levels spike every time a beautiful women gets within a 50 meters of where I am, I would have liked to have seen a little more of Jessica Alba (The Invisible Women) than what was delivered. (Is there a contradiction hidden in that statement?)
The Silver Surfer was, I thought, supposed to be a main character in the film and yet his role was scaled down to increase time for the Richards (Mr Stretchy) & Storm drama. So much for something more focused on the Silver Surfers’ intent to destroy the Earth.
It really irked me that so much time was dedicated to Johnny Storm (aka The Human Torch). I have nothing against Chris Evans (He is hot, no pun intended, ladies), but why the focus on his character?
There are some funny moments in the first half of the movie and the jokes are non-stop between the characters, albeit somewhat sitcom-like. (I especially enjoyed the Arnold-like one liners delivered by Michael Chiklis)
However… The absolute tragedy/ mockery of Galactus must be a sore point for the Marvel fans out there. Galactus is one of the b-i-g-g-e-s-t villains in the Marvel universe. The movie does not do him justice. Depicting him as a white cloud is in my opinion one of the biggest flaws in the movie. What was Stan Lee smoking at the time? A heroin-laced reefer? And to have him taken out/defeated like that is an absolute insult!
I doubt I will want to see it again before it comes out on DVD, but don’t take my word for it. I am a sucker for special effects.

Posted in Entertainment, Movies, The Fantastic Four | 11 Comments

11 Responses

on July 11, 2007 at 1:11 pm IB

I noticed you were gone… but then you told me so.
I share your sentiments on the movie, but I have to admit it was entertaining. I do not have your knowledge on MARVEL COMICS. (Geek… hehe!!)
Nice review. Just wished you had posted it before I spent all that dosh.
on July 11, 2007 at 2:59 pm tripeak

Thank gawd your alive! LOL

I see your point about being a sucker for action… so you will love Die Hard 4 – It was absolutely mind %#@ly amazing!

Go watch it!
on July 11, 2007 at 4:59 pm Pequeña Orquidea

I noticed you were gone! (I expected some news regarding your nephew, as most probably you had a very interesting week).
I think I’m going to pass on that movie and wait for the dvd to come out. No doubt I’ll get asleep in the middle of it when I’ll watch it.
on July 11, 2007 at 5:36 pm livewire

Let’s get one thing straight, shall we? I’M one of the biggest villains. Er, villainesses? Well whatever the term, I fit the bill!
on July 11, 2007 at 7:02 pm sugar007

I noticed you were gone too, hence checked your blog everyday!! Was about to send out a cyber S.O.S too. I like Micheal Chiklis character in the first one but not in a hurry to see the second.Might do when it comes on TV in about 3 years time
on July 11, 2007 at 9:33 pm chitty

IB: Your kids enjoyed it. That is money well-spent in my book.
Calling me a geek? I am going to have to kill you!
Tripeak: I’ve not seen DH4.0. I’ll see what I can do over the weekend.
Orquidea: The nephew and I had a great week. We went away for a couple of days. I thought if I get him away from the city, there’d be less chance of him revving me up. I’ll blog about our journey sometime later. It is hard to cram a full week’s activities into one post an not bore your readers to death.
Lucy: I’ll just call you Galactica for now. Take no prisoners, oh great villainess!
Sugar007: The second one is actually better than the first one. I’d suggest you rent the DVD and watch it with a large group of friends. Could be a whole lot of fun. Although… having the characters speak French may be a bit of a downer. Humour does not always translate well.
on July 12, 2007 at 10:08 am Guido

You do know your Marvel comics, don’t ya Mr Chitty? A geek indeed.
I am not a big fan of the genre, other than the funnies in the Sunday newspapers. I know it is not the same thing, so don’t bite my head off.
And we have noticed that you were gone. Your sense of humour was sorely missed.
on July 12, 2007 at 1:44 pm chitty

Heheh… I was a bit of a comic book freak when I was in my teens. It is an expensive hobby to have and does not leave much time and money to spend on girls and all the other fun things that makes life worthwhile.
Girls and raging hormones finally got the better of me which signaled the end of my obsession with Marvel.
on July 19, 2007 at 11:56 am Onyeka

I didn’t think it was so good. But you’re right about one thing, it’s very undewhelming, and Johnny actualy saved what was really a poor follow-up from the first one. We leeft the move with not a thing to say about it.
Thanks for stopping by, alwasy a pleasure.
on July 19, 2007 at 2:25 pm moonflake

i am a huge Marvel fan and, frankly, I thought X-Men 3 was awesome. Sure, it wasn’t canon, but you can hardly expect it to be when condensed into a movie. But I did think that they got the spirit of the characters right, and if they had dumped those same characters into that situation, that’s about the reaction I would have expected. By far the best of the trilogy, and the trilogy is by far the best comic adaptation ever. Well, except maybe tank girl.

Okay, I’ll throw you a bone – archangel was crap. And rogue was crap. And there was no gambit. But otherwise, it was pretty awesome.

and I especially like what they did with Cyclops in this movie.
on July 20, 2007 at 10:03 am chitty

I am not about to challenge your view of X3, but here are some of the reasons why I was pissed off about X3 and the mind-fuck Brett Ratner unleashed on his audiences.
My main gripe is how far the movie strayed from the original Marvel comic series, which probably does not matter a whole lot to anyone else out there.
I am writing this from what I can remember from my childhood, so I’ll be “leaping” all over and there may be many inaccuracies. (You had mentioned some time ago, that you had a copy of Age of Apocolypse Xmen, so your recall of the comic storyline may be more accurate than mine)
The story pivoted heavily on Jean Grey/Marvel Girl (no problem there), but in the process everyone else got relegated to bench duty. Colossus gets a combined screen time of 15 seconds, Psylocke left her psychic blades at home, Angel reminds me too much of the tooth-fairy to be taken seriously, and you only get to see Iceman in his true form for 2 seconds. Rogue’s still unbelievably useless. She gives up her powers and finally just gets get it on with Iceman. Gah!
Brett Ratner said in an interview that he closely followed the cartoon/animated series of the X-Men saga, which basically translated (to me) that he did not follow the story line set out in the original comic books. I fully appreciate that he had a multitude characters to deal with, and that time was a luxury he did not have. But he fragmented the storyline to the point where he almost altered it completely. He also had the arduous task of letting the story continue form the preceding Xmen films which quite frankly had set the stage for the disaster. Wolverine is portrayed as the “ultimate” bad-ass hero whereas Cyclops (the first mutant taken in by Prof X and the undisputed field leader of the Xmen) became no more than a whimpering bitchboy. I am not a big fan of Cyclops either, but come on!
Cyclops didn’t die this early in the saga; Professor X didn’t actually die at the hand of Jean Grey. In fact Jean Gray didn’t die this early in the series and finally, Magneto didn’t lose his powers to a couple of darts/syringes. He lost his powers to the Scarlet Witch. I am forever scarred.
It’s unclear how true the writers intended the portrayal of Jean Grey/Phoenix to be, since no one (not even Xavier) finds out about Phoenix’s true identity till much later in the comics. Since all X3 movie-related references point to Famke Jansen a simply being Jean Grey/Phoenix, I’m not sure that they’ve actually stuck to the comic’s plot. What is clear is that there have been massive tampering of the chronological events involving certain mutants in order to wrap X3 up. They also killed off the possibly of there ever being an X4, unless half the cast are resurrected from the dead.
The Jean Grey we see in X3 isn’t actually Jean Grey (in the original Marvel comics there was a fair amount of retconning around her character). It is in fact Phoenix/Dark Phoenix. What we should have seen is the cosmic entity known as Phoenix Force. This entity assimilated Jean Gray (her personality and memories) when it witnessed the original Jean Grey sacrificing herself for the good her team (X2). How many people would have known this?
Like Jean Gray, the life form Phoenix also had powers of telepathy and telekinesis, but in fact also held powers of flight, energy and molecular manipulation and awareness of the cosmic sphere making her arguably the most powerful mutant in the universe. It was only much, much later that the real Jean Grey, having recovered from her injuries was able to re-possess Phoenix. Dark Phoenix was actually the result of her being unable to handle human emotion as well as a little mind fucking from Mastermind.
Despite all that’s said and done and while it’s nowhere near to being spiritually accurate and clearly lacks consistency, it’s good to finally bid farewell to some of the greatest comic heroes of all time.
Anyway, it is all history. I respect your viewpoint. I just needed to explain to some degree where I came from… which in reading back what I have written, may not seem like it at all. It comes across more like a bitch and moan session. My comic geek days are over.