See The Surfer In Action

So it’s finally here, a real honest-to-God cinematic version of my all-time favorite comic book character, the Silver Surfer.  It’s not his own film—that’s been supposedly lurching through development hell for a number of years—but rather, he’ll be appearing in the second Fantastic Four movie, Rise Of The Silver Surfer.

The official teaser trailer for the sequel is now on-line, and features quite a lot of silver surfing action, as the Surfer arrives on Earth and is pursued by the Human Torch.

Overall, it doesn’t look too bad, and the fanboy in me is positively all a-twitter.  The Surfer looks a little too T-1000-ish for my taste, but given the fact that he’s, well, covered in silver, I suppose that’s unavoidable.  And I wish they’d shown him showing off a bit more of the Power Cosmic than he does—all he really does is pass through solid matter, including his own board (which I suppose he could do with the P.C., but I don’t think he ever did that in the comics—yes, I’m a dork).  An energy bolt or two wouldn’t have hurt matters, but I suppose you have to save the big guns for the big screen.

I hope that the Surfer isn’t the villain of the film.  In the comics, the Surfer is actually the herald for the planet-eating monster Galactus, tasked with finding planets suitable for his master to devour.  The Fantastic Four are instrumental in reawakening the Surfer’s nobility, enabling him to rebel against his master and fight for Earth.  I hope that particular bit of character development is there, that the Surfer’s nobility—arguably his defining characteristic—is left intact.

I guess we’ll find out on June 15, 2007, when the movie arrives in theatres.