Aint it Cool News has one of those unverified scoops they like to run a lot, and this one is about Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer. This scooper claims to have a source in Spectral Motion FX who tells him that the Surfer is “NOT going to be a computer generated or motion capture based character like Davy Jones from Pirates 2. The character is being created using a body-suit that is sprayed in a chrome-ish, silver paint scheme.It also appears that the face of the surfer is a fixed, contemplative expression in the head piece appliance with limited mouth movement that will be articulated by Jones’ performance in the suit.”
This sounds patently ridiculous, and I don’t mean that it will look ridiculous on screen. I think it sounds like a ridiculous and fake scoop. This is how you would do the Surfer if you were putting on Fantastic Four as a high school play. Hell, the idea of having a fixed-expression mask couldn’t make any less sense.
The only way that I could believe this is if the outfit is real is if it was a motion capture suit, and in that case painting it silver wouldn’t make a lot of sense – unless they want to capture light reflecting off the Surfer in real environments? Still doesn’t make a lick of sense. Could the suit be a different take on the character? Maybe Surfer is an energy being in a containment suit? If so, it seems like a pointless change to make, and the description given above sounds like Slim Goodbody’s outfit done up in spraypaint.
As fucked up as Fox is with their superhero franchises, and as much as Tim Story is not a visionary director, I just can’t believe that they would have a guy in a Jet Jaguar suit star in their 2007 tentpole film. Hopefully this story will kick up enough of a ruckus that Story or Fox will comment, or even release Surfer designs and tests.