Look How I Overestimated a Movie! In Real Time!

(originally published at the now-defunct www.poweredbymovies.com, hence the delayed wrongness)

Two summers ago, one special movie took the country by storm, bringing delight to small children across the United States and ending up with at $150 million+ gross at the box office.

Unfortunately, that film was Fantastic Four, a film eviscerated by critics and comic book fans alike, decrying it for its juvenile wit and lackluster special effects. Those who were amazed by the great stories told in such Marvel Comics properties as the sequels to Spider-Man and X-Men, as well as the vastly misunderstood Ang Lee version of The Hulk, were left with a silly and incredibly dumb adventure film not suitable for anyone above the age of 12.

I don’t consider the film to be as awful as everybody else: I thought Michael Chiklis (from FX’s The Shield) gave a pretty riveting performance as The Thing considering being buried in about a foot of make-up, and as far as origin stories go, I’ve seen far worse. I didn’t think it merited all the money it raked in, though, so I was mildly dreading the sequel.

All things considered, the sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer will come out this Friday and overtake its competition at the weekend box office quite easily, and taking into account how well superhero sequels do, it could probably bring in $80 million easily, surpassing the $56 million opening weekend of the original. Little elementary school boys will buy up the Mr. Fantastic action figures from Toys ‘R’ Us and make their own Stan Lee stories, as they have every right to do.

But will the film be any good? The previews give an impression to those who were not fans of the original that the creators were, in fact, listening to the comic book nerds, and the portrayal given of fan-favorite the Silver Surfer is a marvel of character design that could sustain a good amount of interest for at least half of the running time. Another complaint of the first film was that nothing much happened, which is also true. However, this film is about nothing less than the destruction of Earth itself, brought forth by Galactus and perhaps the Surfer himself. That may even bring in those who hated the first film.

This weekend, we’ll know collectively whether or not we’ve been duped a second time. The poor pedigree of the first film keeps my anticipation of the sequel quite low, but something tells me I’ll be in the theatre, once again, chanting the movie geek mantra, “Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck. Please don’t suck.”