Stan Lee hang your head in shame you money-grabbing old goat!!!

Rating: 2/10 (18 June 2007)

Galactus? No, it seems the biggest threat to the Fantastic Four is Tim "Destroyer Of" Story!
Okay, I admit it. I'm a big fan of the Marvel universe, and I've always found Galactus particularly intriguing. Even though I thought the first FF movie sucked big time, when I heard the sequel would revolve around the Silver Surfer & Galactus I was psyched! Possibly more than I had been for a movie since X-Men or maybe even Return Of The Jedi! Now although I adore the comics, I can forgive changes for the big screen. I didn't complain (too much) about the re-writing/complete ignoring of the Phoenix origin in X-Men 2/3, or the lack of any Secret Wars origin for the alien symbiote in Spiderman 3 (or that Topher Grace is far too small and wimpy to play Eddie Brock/Venom). Even when watching the first FF movie, I didn't mind Michael Chiklis being way too small as the Thing because he portrayed the character well. I should have known better than to get my hopes up! I have NEVER been so disappointed in all of my life! There are a LOT of things wrong with this movie. Frankly, with the exception of Chiklis and Chris Evans, the acting was poor. Ioan Gruffudd is a plank, Andre Braugher was wasted & don't get me started on Julian McMahon! Why was Doom even in this movie? I see people say Jessica Alba can't act but I don't have a problem with her in these films because to me Sue Storm has always been a limp character anyway. Her lack of sexual chemistry with Gruffudd is obvious, and at times she looked like she had more of a fancy for her brother than her fiancé! I understand that the writers perhaps felt the need to cut back on the grandiose cosmic back-story of Galactus for the sake of the (obviously) young demographic they were aiming for, but there is nothing there at all! All we see is a massive space-tornado! There is no explanation of why Galactus wants to destroy Earth! There is not even any indication whatsoever that Galactus is a sentient being! We are told nothing! As for the Silver Surfer, well, I thought that visually he was the one saving grace in this pile of garbage. Kudos to Doug Jones, and to the CGI guys for a great job. Charismatic though his voice may be, Lawrence Fishburne was perhaps the wrong choice for the voice of the Surfer. Although I could be wrong as he does not have a lot of dialogue, and the script writers have taken all of the feeling from the character. The surfer is usually filled with more angst than a My Chemical Romance fan, but there was none of that here for Fishburne to convey. And the whole 'seperate the Surfer from his board and he'll be powerless' thing. Oh my God! Did the studio shove 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters into a room to get that plot line? Terrible! Turning Johnny into a rip off of the Super Skrull? Awful. What was the point of the Frankie Raye character? Anyone who knows the comics will know what happens to her, but in this movie she is completely unnecessary. And the ending? Absolutely Abysmal. Surfer goes boom, takes out the massively more powerful being that gave him his powers in the first place. Uh-huh. Just like that. Hooray! Earth is safe, thanks to the Fantastic Four. Er, no, wait, they didn't do squat! Right, comic fan rant over. But even if I had never read the comics, this movie would still be a disaster, filled with horrible dialogue and plot jumps. It seems like a lot of reviewers the only good thing I can say about it (CGI Surfer aside) is that it's still better than the first one! Tim Story needs a good slapping, the butcher! Stan Lee needs to take a long hard look in his gold-plated diamond-encrusted mirror hanging on wallpaper made of hundred dollar bills and ask himself why he is allowing his fine legacy to be turned into trash like this. For shame Stan, for shame.