Fantastic Four / Rise of the Silver Surfer

In the past when our comic book heroes have been brought to the screen it has either been in the guise of a low to medium budget film or a developed project for TV. But then with the success of Spider-Man the floodgates were opened to explore a whole new realm of stories with big budgets and state of the art special effects. So with forty years of storylines 20^th Century Fox picked up The Fantastic Four and began to put together a franchise that could last quite a while. With characters that are as familiar as Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, the audience is given a treat to see some of the most famous super heroes in the comic book universe.
Fantastic Four - After being exposed to cosmic radiation in space four astronauts are given amazing powers that they must learn to use to defeat a super villain bent on world domination. The CGI effects are so beyond what most people were expecting that when the characters breakout with their new powers its totally believable. The origin storyline is altered a bit but with bringing this story to a whole new audience the alterations aren't so bad, and the integrity of the original story is kept within sight. All five characters are played wonderfully by this cast of actors, Jessica Alba (Sue Storm-The Invisible Woman), Ioan Gruffudd (Reed Richards - Mister Fantastic), Chris Evans (Johnny Storm - Human Torch), Michael Chiklis (Ben Grimm - The Thing) and Julian MacMahon (Victor von Doom - Dr. Doom).
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - As Reed Richards and Sue Storm prepare for their wedding, a silver being from space arrives on Earth and prepares it for its destruction. Bringing in one of the more loved characters from the comic series to life in the Silver Surfer was a tough under taking, some of the coolest effects are wrapped around the Surfer and his board. Even though most of the first movie was used to set up the characters and their powers, here with the Surfer in the mix they're tossed a curve ball and must reexamine how they can interact with each other. There's a little bit more action in this film but with the introduction of a new character it usually drives the storyline into a new direction, and this film is no different.
Seeing these characters come to life on the big screen is a wonderful and breathtaking thing to watch, the actions that these individuals go through in order to defeat their enemies were amazing in the comic books but now that they're life-like it's just like; wow. I've always been a huge FF fan and was overjoyed when I heard that a big budget version was going to be made. I was also hoping that it was going to be better than the low budget version done by Roger Corman in the 90s. But I'm happy to say that these two films are just as much fun as the comics and the characters are just as free spirited and playful.