Big Disappointment

Rating: 3/10 (5 October 2007)

The Silver Surfer coming to Earth is one of the classic comic stories. It was one of my favorite stories and the way it was butchered in this movie really bothers me. If you didn't know the story you might like the movie better, it's hard for me to say.
In the classic Stan Lee-Jack Kirby comic, the Silver Surfer arrives and over the course of the comic tells his story. Galactus is an ancient super powerful creature who needs energy to survive. To the extent he consumes the energy of an entire world. He arrived at a world where people had become jaded and only one person went to meet him. This person impressed Galactus and promised to go out and find other worlds if Galactus would spare his. Galactus agreed and turned him into the Silver Surfer. The Surfer returns to say good bye to his wife/lover and leaves forever. He condemns himself to a lonely existence to save her. When he arrives at Earth he had been looking for a suitable planet for a long time. Galactus needs to feed, there is no time to find another planet. The Surfer had made a point of finding worlds with no intelligent life but has no options. He condemns the Earth to save his home world. The Fanatasic Four fight Galactus and the Surfer, convinced by Alicia (Ben's girlfriend) he joins with them and they drive off Galactus who takes his revenge by forcing the Surfer to remain on Earth.
In another story Dr Doom steals the powers of the stranded Surfer. In this movie rather than spending time developing the character of the Surfer they decided to combine both stories, and cut Galactus completely out of the picture. They took 2 good stories and by smashing them together and then adding in some comedy and the wedding of Reed and Sue created a complete mess.
Whey don't they trust the material, why did they feel the need to cram 3 movies worth of stories into one? If they don't like the material why not create a new story?
So this truncated/corrupt version has some nice special effects but I didn't think the Surfer was particularly well done as a CGI. And Galactus is turned into a dust cloud? What a let down. It killed the whole series for me. I just wish they would let someone who liked the comics actually make the movie.