Marvel Comics' first family of heroes returns to movie theaters today in "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” Screenwriter Don Payne said he wanted to keep the film close to its comic-book origins. The Fantastic Four were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby in the pages of the Marvel comic book.
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"That's something that (director) Tim Story wanted, that's really something that I wanted,” Payne said.
Rather than seeing returning villain Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) as a corrupt billionaire, Payne wanted to set up Doom as a scientific genius.
"It's a question of, How can you take the way the character is set up in the first film and try to get him closer to the way he was in the comics?”
The Silver Surfer (played by Doug Jones and voiced by Laurence Fishburne), meanwhile, is a complex mix of hero and villain.
"He's heroic in a sense because he's sacrificed his freedom, and he's sacrificed his life basically to serve Galactus, in order to save his world and to save the woman he loves, but he's given up the chance of ever seeing them again, of ever being with this woman that he's loved. So, that's a noble, heroic act,” Payne said. "But he's also engaged in this kind of wholesale genocide on a cosmic scale, getting rid of entire planets and civilizations.”
Payne couldn't say much about how Galactus would be portrayed in the context of "Rise of the Silver Surfer,” but in the comics, Galactus is a powerful space-faring entity who must consume the life-force of planets to survive. The Surfer, his herald, seeks out new worlds for Galactus to consume.
Standing in the way of Galactus is the Fantastic Four.
Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is a scientific genius who leads the Fantastic Four as Mr. Fantastic, who can stretch his body like rubber.
"One thing I did want to do with Ioan was to write Reed Richards' character a little stronger, a little more of a leader. ... You can be the nerdy absent-minded professor, because that's who he is, but he's also got to be a leader and be tough when the situation calls for it. Especially when he's got to rein in the members of his own team, who all have very strong personalities themselves.”
Those strong personalities are The Thing (Ben Grimm, played by Michael Chiklis), the Human Torch (Johnny Storm, played by Chris Evans) and the Invisible Woman (Sue Storm, played by Jessica Alba).
"One of the things I thought the first film did really well was nail that dysfunctional family element down in the interplay among the characters. It's almost straight from the comics, and I wanted to keep that going,” said Payne, who also is a writer and producer for another dysfunctional family, "The Simpsons.”
"Ben and Johnny are squabbling brothers, and Reed is kind of the dad, and Sue is kind of the mom, even though she's Johnny's sister.”
Payne said "Rise of the Silver Surfer” is a self-contained film, but that there's plenty of opportunity to more fully explore the worlds of the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four.
"I doubt the Silver Surfer would be in the next Fantastic Four film. The more likely thing is he would be in his own film, and it would delve more into the origins of the character,” Payne said. "We touch on that, and we mention it, and it's there as a backstory, but we don't actually see it onscreen.”
Payne, who's been a comics fan from a young age, was steeped in Fantastic Four lore before taking on the film.
"There's a huge number of stories I've really enjoyed throughout the run of the comic, to tell you the truth,” he said. "There's a storyline in the (writer) Roy Thomas era with a parallel Earth where Nelson Rockefeller was president. I really enjoyed that. That was at the peak of when I was really into the comics. In this parallel Earth, Reed Richards had become the Thing, and you saw them kind of fighting side by side, so that was interesting.”
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