Fantastic Doomed?

On a whim on our last night in Disney World, my family and I went to see Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I’d held out on seeing the film because I figured I’d feel exactly the same about it as I felt about the first film: I’d like most of the scenes that had nothing to do with Dr. Doom.

I was pretty close.

I liked almost all the scenes that had nothing to do with the bad guys.

I’m not such a fanboy that I griped about such things as who were the original X-Men, that Spider-Man has organic web shooters, or that Galactus is a cloud—spoiler alert, by the way, but it’s so late now that I assume everyone has seen the movie or has already had that little bit of news spoiled.

But, I will say this, as with the first film: every scene with Doctor Doom absolutely sucked me out of the movie and made me want to shoot myself in the face. Doom is the premiere villain of the Marvel universe. I mean, when they go and make a universe-spanning videogame (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance—more on that soon) he’s the main baddie for a reason, but the Doom of the film’s continuity is... well, I just can’t get behind the characterization and direction of him in the movies.

The primary problem is this: Doctor Doom is a super genius who takes over a freaking country by himself. He is a master of both technology and the mystic arts. He’s a ruthless bastard who is driven—to the point of insanity, really—to become the most powerful being on planet Earth as an extension of proving himself better than Reed Richards.

In essence, he is one royally bad dude.

But the Doctor Doom in the movie I just saw was a pathetic, whiny sissy. Admittedly, Doom is arrogant to the point of blindness—but the annoying haughtiness of the character (as well as the utterly superfluous lightning powers—what’s going on there?), I assume attempted to reflect this arrogance, comes off more as idiocy. Dr. Doom, a master genius, is stuck hiding in a back room to build a tiny device and then, to try and cover, throws a shirt over it? Every character should have faults, but Dr. Doom, Stan Lee’s professed favorite villain ever, should inspire more fear than that; instead he inspires... derision and mockery.

And that is the underlying fault of Fantastic Four. This movie tries really hard and that’s endearing. It has the right tone for a Fantastic Four movie, it’s corny and it’s fun and that’s good, but without enough explanation or sense of terror for Galactus himself and with Dr. Doom being a joke, it’s very difficult to feel any real danger for these characters, who, particularly in the case of Chris Evans as Johnny Storm (who easily the shining star of the movie—think of him as the anti-Dr. Doom), manage to transcend the mediocre, and at times groan-worthy, script to have genuine moments. Which, in the end, is really unfortunate, because this movie has heart—so I want to really like it—but it's just not enough to make it good, but is enough to keep it from being bad.

Oh, and Stan Lee is in it, too and he’s got a cameo right out of Reed and Sue’s comic book wedding. I liked that.