The turnaround from summer movie hit to DVD release gets quicker every year, and so it goes with the latest Fantastic Four movie, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer which will be available to buy/rent/whing like a frisbee/use as beer coaster/whatever next Tuesday (10/2/07) — a mere three months since its theatrical release.

So how was the movie? What are the extras? Check out the rest of our review after the jump.

The movie:

Although it’s absolutely damning with faint praise, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer is a marked improvement over the first Fantastic Four, which somehow managed the feat of making a big-budgeted Hollywood superhero movie more excrutiatingly dull and moronic than usual.

Rise of the Silver Surfer maintains some of the problems the first film — and many of today’s blockbusters — has: it delusionally thinks it’s some kind of masterpiece, it’s predictible and lazily written, lacks storytelling logic, thinks its audience is a bunch of complete idiots (the main signifier here is any plot-recap dialogue that starts with: “so what you’re saying is…” or “are you telling me that…”), and poorly cast. Julian McMahon is still just about the worst, most toothless Doctor Doom possible, and Jessica Alba, one of the most beautiful women on the planet, just looks weird. In short, like the majority of Hollywood product these days it’s a flat, crowd-pleasing, test-marketed-to-death mediocrity without any self-awareness or charm or style or imagination.

That all said, it is thankfully zippier than the first film, and there are a couple neat-o scenes with the Surfer. A future weekend afternoon rainy day diversion for the kids while you nap/get drunk/cruise for internet porn is essentially what we’re talking about here.

The extras (Power Cosmic Edition):

Here’s where things get a little curious. There’s the who cares? de rigueur stuff: commentaries from the ironically surnamed Tim Story, Avi Arad, writer Don Payne, and editors Peter S. Elliott and William Hoy; extended and deleted scenes; Making Of doc; and Interactive Fantasticar.

But then, randomly enough, there are a few genuinely watchable featurettes, the best of which — and the reason most superhero comic fans will want to check this DVD out — is a punchy half-hour number called “Comic Book Origins of the Silver Surfer.” It’s a genuinely well-produced documentary where the Surfer’s most “famous” writers — Stan Lee, Jim Starlin, Steve Englehart, Ron Marz, and J.M. DeMatteis — thoughtfully and artfully deconstruct and reflect on the character’s history and various motivations and meanings. Among other revelations, Stan the Man even goes as far to directly credit Jack Kirby with inventing the Surfer. No kidding. About half way through this featurette The Old Lady™ said, “this is way more interesting than the actual movie.”

The other featurettes include in-depth looks at the Fantasticar, Power Cosmic, character design, and musical score.

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