Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer returns all four members from the first movie with Julian Mcmahon again as Doctor Doom. This movie deals with Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman trying to plan their wedding and get married. It is all society can talk about as they have become bigger celebrities then superheroes. The whole time, against his fiancé’s wishes, Mr. Fantastic is working on helping the government solve mysterious global events that have occurred involving that turn out to be the Silver Surfer. Now I don’t know why you would be preoccupied with other things when you were about to marry someone that looks like Jessica Alba but the movie does need a plot. In reality, the Silver Surfer is just the servant to a world devouring creature known as Galactus. With the help of Dr. Doom, who they rightfully don’t trust, the Fantastic Four must figure out a way to stop him and save the planet.

In my opinion it isn’t quite as good as the first one, although still good. There is some good humor and some great special effects. The initial scene when the silver surfer flies through the city being chased by the Human Torch is great; there was definitely more action in this one then the first. The main problem I have with this movie comes from the fact that I was big comic book fan when I was younger and still own dozens of Silver Surfer comic books. There were certain changes that were made such as the Surfer being able to fly through objects and Galactus being represented as a giant cloud of smoke and energy as opposed to the human like form he had in the comic books. For those viewers who weren’t quite as familiar with the comic books those differences wouldn’t make a difference and would enjoy the movie even more. There was definitely more action in this one then the first.

Video

The movie itself uses an AVC MPEG-4 encoding on a 50 GB Disc and Fox used it well. They have been slacking on the number of releases lately but they are out of the world on this one - the video is top notch. The details are very crisp and sharp. The surfer himself looked amazing as did the Human Torch. Fire and water are two of the best looking things in hi def. This movie has plenty of both as there are many scenes that have them flying over water. I was expecting great things from this disc as it is a new movie with a lot of special effects and it completely lived up to my expectations.

Audio

The audio includes a Lossless English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English: Dolby Digital 5.1, French: Dolby Digital 5.1, and Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1. The audio isn’t quite as good as the picture but is more do to the picture being great and the audio just being very good. It kept all of my speakers busy during several of the action scenes. You could here the Surfer and the Human Torch coming at you from all angles. The dialogue was always at the proper levels despite what other noise was occurring. The audio on the disc definitely doesn’t let you down either.

Special Features

Releases like this are why 50GB Blu-ray Discs were created. They loaded it up with a variety of extras for those that are interested. It starts of with two commentaries - one with director Tim Story and another one with two of the film’s editors. The one with the Director was a little more interesting but I still wish they had some of the actors involved. If you like to actually interact with the disc you can play along in a trivia game and a strategy game. Both are cool and you probably won’t play them more then a couple of times but I’m glad they were there. If you are a fan of the Fantastic Four you will enjoy all the documentaries they included, as they cover a wide variety of topics including making of the film, the fantastic car that was used in the film, and even one the film’s score. All of which are worth watching and didn’t consider them to be a waste of time by any means. This disc was even enhanced for D-Box motion sensor systems, which for those of you that don’t know, interact with motion sensors that are included on a special chair you can buy to make you vibrate along with the movie. Obviously this is something 99.9% of us don’t have yet but it’s nice to know they are planning for the future.

Final Thoughts

Fox has been known to be the most overpriced studio so far when it comes to their Blu-ray discs and they usually haven’t given you much for your money. But not this time. This a must own for comic book fans or fans of the Fantastic Four. Even those of you that are mixed on the genre but enjoy fun action flicks that look and sound great then this is your disc. With all the extras packed in it is worth the money to add it to your collection. So surf on out to the store and pick it up.