I like J Michael Straczynski. Seriously, its ridiculous, and borders on being a man crush. I saw every episode of the guys Babylon 5 TV show, despite the fact that my local area kept showing it in syndication at around 3:00 in the morning. Luckily, I was pulling down a second shift job at the time, and was always able to catch every new episode. So yes, while Im happy that ol Mikey has gone on to write everything from Clint Eastwoods The Changeling to the proposed Silver Surfer movie, the very idea of seeing more of the Fantastic Four universe leaves me, shall we say, shaking in my boots. By which I mean, I dont think I can stomach another FF movie, much less a lesser spin-off. Can you imagine being lesser to the two Fantastic Four movies? The horror, the horror
But hey, maybe J Michael Straczynski has a take on the Surfer that would improve upon his FF appearance. Of course, the first thing they need to do is get rid of Laurence Fishburnes voice. Seriously, whoever came up with the idea of putting Morpheus voice in the Surfer needs to get tarred and feathered, and then run over with a car.
Heres what The J-ster said to AMCs Sci Fi Blog about his Silver Surfer script, and the possibility (not looking very good) of it ever getting made:
Q: Did your work on Silver Surfer: Requiem comic bring about the offer to write the Silver Surfer movie?
A: It was one of those weird synchronicities. Whether or not it ever gets made I dont know because they were kind of disappointed in how Fantastic Four 2 did. And given how this will be a subset of FF2 in terms of the marketing strategy, I think there is hesitation there about putting it forward. The script is pretty good, I like it, but whether or not it goes into production, I have no idea.
Q: Does this pick up where Silver Surfer left off in Fantastic Four 2?
A: I was writing it as FF2 was about to come out, and the theory was for it to pick up literally the next frame after the FF2 movie, where you find out why Silver Surfer was there and what happened to him. We would have seen Galactus, his home world, what happened and him trying to get back there, because now that hes betrayed Galactus, hes concerned his home world might be in jeopardy.
Q: When do you mean when you say,We see Galactus?
A: In the script I come up with some ways to visualize him that are true to the original, but take it one step further using the current CGI technology that we have. So we would have seen him as a character on numerous occasions in the second movie, not inconsistent with the first distant shot of him in that thats just a way of concealing who and what he really is. Believe me, he would be not at all silly looking.
Im sure Straczynski would have found a way to make Galactus believable, but does it matter? FF2 was Godawful, even by the lowly standards of comic book movie sequels. Straczynski should take the money they paid him for the Surfer script and try to get another Babylon 5 movie made. Now thats something Id pay to see.
