Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer film synopsis

The Fantastic Four meet their greatest challenge yet in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, as the enigmatic, intergalactic herald, The Silver Surfer, comes to Earth to prepare it for destruction. As he races around the globe wreaking havoc, Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben must unravel the mystery before all hope is lost. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is the second installment of the live-action film series based on what fans around the globe know as “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” Fantastic Four directed by Tim Story and released in the summer of 2005, had a worldwide theatrical gross of $330 million and became one of Twentieth Century Fox’s most successful DVD titles ever.

For Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, an intriguing element is added to the cast of characters of the 2005 hit – the Silver Surfer. Academy Award winning visual effects house Weta Digital (The Lord of the Rings, King Kong), working with the film’s visual effects supervisor Scott Squires (a three-time Oscar nominee whose credits include Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace), created the ultimate computer-generated Silver Surfer, which will be true to the Marvel Comics character beloved by fans worldwide. Weta developed an advanced CG process to bring added dimensionality to the character. Doug Jones provided character and movement references for the digital wizards at Weta.

The Silver Surfer joins the returning family of superheroes from the Marvel Comics universe, including Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards, who can stretch and contort his body into any shape he can imagine and, as the group’s leader, is known as Mister Fantastic; Jessica Alba as Sue Storm, who is able to render herself invisible and to create and project powerful force fields as Invisible Woman; Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, known as The Human Torch, who can engulf his body in flames and take flight at will; and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, whose freakish transmutation into a rock-like, superhumanly strong creature led him to be called The Thing. Julian McMahon reprises his Fantastic Four role as the Four’s steely-eyed, iron-fisted nemesis, Dr. Doom. Kerry Washington is back as Ben’s love interest, the blind sculptress Alicia Masters.

Recent Emmy-winner Andre Braugher joins the cast as General Hager, a tough Army official who seeks the Four’s help in combating a global menace, and Beau Garrett, who appeared in Fox Atomic’s debut film Turistas, plays the general’s aide, Captain Raye. And Oscar-nominee Laurence Fishburne, whose many credits include The Matrix and Mystic River, voices the Silver Surfer.

Fantastic Four helmer Tim Story returns, along with producers Ralph Winter, Avi Arad and Bernard Eichinger. The screenplay is by four-time Emmy winner Don Payne, a co-executive producer on The Simpsons, and noted author and screenwriter Mark Frost, who co-scripted Fantastic Four.

Academy Award-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Squires, who worked closely with Weta in creating the Silver Surfer, also supervised many of the film’s other state-of-the-art effects, including enhanced powers for the Four; mile-long, perfectly-smooth craters – the handiwork of the Surfer; and the creation of Galactus (also known as The World Destroyer), another character long-known to comics fans as a being of incredible power and scale. “It was a delicate balance meeting the comics fans’ expectations for the look of Galactus, and making him truly spectacular and cinematic to those not familiar with the character,” says Squires.