The Coming of Galactus!

There’s been a lot of bitching from fanboys that the Very Big Disappointment in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which opened this weekend, is the portrayal of planet-destroying Galactus as a kind of giant, purplish, cosmic tornado. Personally, I found it effective, and I shudder to think what might have resulted if director Tim Story had tried to present literally Jack Kirby’s Enormous Purple Helmeted Man in the Sky. The audience laughter could have been ear-shattering. Anyway, was I the only one to notice something, maybe something big and mechanical, lurking behind Story’s cosmic clouds?

Rise of the Surfer manages to be every bit as good, if not a wee bit better, than its Fantastic Four predecessor. Of all comic book superhero groups, the Fantastic Four as created 46 years ago by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was the only one that was truly a family — a sitting-around-the-kitchen family. And the movies have done a spectacular job of presenting that uniqueness. I love that. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer gets a solid thumbs-up from me.