For the Silver Surfer fans dying to see his spin-off movie, this will come as a bitter disappointment. AMC's SciFi Scanner caught up with J. Michael Straczynski and asked him about the status of his Silver Surfer script. Not surprisingly, it is in the dead zone.
"Whether or not it ever gets made, I don't know, because they were kind of disappointed in how Fantastic Four 2 did. And given how this will be a subset of FF2 in terms of the marketing strategy, I think there is hesitation there about putting it forward. The script is pretty good, I like it, but whether or not it goes into production, I have no idea."
Silver Surfer would have taken place minutes after Fantastic Four 2 ended, and his surfboard raced back to his open arms. "You find out why Silver Surfer was there and what happened to him. We would have seen Galactus, his home world, what happened and him trying to get back there, because now that he's betrayed Galactus, he's concerned his home world might be in jeopardy."
And what about Galactus' appearence? He would no longer be a menacing cloud, a decision which annoyed everyone, but was done in order to reveal his comic-book self in the eventual spin-off. "In the script I come up with some ways to visualize him that are true to the original, but take it one step further using the current CGI technology that we have. So we would have seen him as a character on numerous occasions in the second movie, not inconsistent with the first distant shot of him in that that's just a way of concealing who and what he really is. Believe me, he would be not at all silly looking."
I find the Silver Surfer too goofy for anything but the comics page (and even then, he's pushing it), so I can't say I'm sorry that the adaptation is languishing. But I know a lot of people adore this character -- oddly, I'm thinking primarily of a man I used to sit next to on the train, who was always reading the latest Surfer issue. For him, and all the fans like him, I hope Fox relents and gives it the green light.
[via SuperheroHype.com]
1. Well here we have the dreaded results of what I call "Machinations of Marvel". These are Hollywood interventions that go against the grain of what's made Marvel Comics characters such successes for almost 50 years now.
Anyone remember the first Punisher movie where they removed the skull from his uniform? You went through the entire movie not knowing who the heck he was. Remember the last Capt. America movie where they made the Red Skull an Italian fascist? Bombed didn't it? The first Hulk movie that got so psychological and artsy fartsy they forgot that what makes Hulk popular is that he's a rampaging monster caught up in the body of a peaceful scientist?
FF 2 didn't work because how do you introduce a character like the Silver Surfer and not reveal his origin? Why did they divert from the best 3 issue story arc in comic book history? It's simple, they got greedy and stupid and figured they could franchise before they solidified the main franchise. FF is cool but it should be a blockbuster franchise not hanging on by a thread.
Don't futz with the characters and stories too much and you'll have a hit Marvel movie!
Posted at 2:14PM on Jun 20th 2008 by Greg