Nostalgia Doesn’t Convince That A Marvel Dud Is Worth Another Look | Popgen Tech

Nostalgia can be a powerful tool when used correctly, but it hasn’t been enough to convince skeptics that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is worthy of re-examination as an overlooked minor Marvel classic.

The Tim Story duology was so mid-2000s it almost caused physical pain at times, but the franchise fell out of favor after just two installments following a lukewarm critical reception, poor box office returns, and the lack of forward movement on the planned Silver Surfer spinoff, leaving the property to drift into development hell.

Obviously, we’d rather see Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis return if it hadn’t saved us from Josh Trank’s disastrous reboot, which easily ranks as one of the worst comic book adaptations of all of time. However, a Reddit thread is trying to drum up support for Rise of the Silver Surfer is falling on deaf ears, with the consensus stating that it’s not a very good film, a film that doesn’t deserve to be re-evaluated as being unfairly overlooked.

That’s fair enough, when people are still pissed about Galactus being introduced as an awkward space fart, hardly a fitting description for one of Marvel’s most iconic and terrifying villains. Doug Jones and Laurence Fishburne combine to make a decent enough Norrin Radd, however, but that one minor silver lining isn’t enough to put the entire film on a pedestal that it shouldn’t be considered.

It’s better than its predecessor and unintentionally rebooted, but that’s about as damning as faint praise.