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In order to do my review of the Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray Disc Player, I went out to the local Blockbuster to see what Blu-ray movies were available. I wanted to make sure that whatever movie I selected was action-packed and busting at the seams with a myriad of special effects. The actual storyline, character development, or any of that other fluff that the Oscar guys seem to care about… well, those weren’t quite as important, at least under the context of the review. And Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer fit the bill to a tee.

Sequel to the 2005 Fantastic Four movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer presents our four heroes with a new challenge. An extra-terrestial being has arrived, drilling massive holes the size of football fields at various locations on the globe. He’s causing power outages everywhere he goes and when confronted, he’s known to get violent. This being, of course, is the Silver Surfer, arguably one of the coolest characters ever to come out of the Marvel camp.

I’ve never been all that big a fan of the Fantastic Four series, being more interested in the universe of the X-Men, but there were two very key reasons to why I was interested in this particular film. First, Silver Surfer is just freaking cool-looking and it would be fun to check out how the special effects artists would handle his liquid-metallic nature. Naturally, it was handled better than T-1000 from Terminator 2 given that they’ve had, what, 15 years of further development under their belts. The second reason was I heard Galactus, the planet-swallowing mega-being, was going to be in Rise of the Silver Surfer. Even if the story development sucked (it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t great either), seeing Galactus would make it all worth it.

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Unfortunately, it never really came to fruition. Spoiler alert: Galactus is only presented as a swirling mass of clouds and nebulae (or something) and we never see his funky purple helmet or larger-than-life stature. I would have been perfectly okay with Galactus getting served up with more cheese than Velveeta, because the entire film is a big cheese-fest anyways. This was perhaps the biggest disappointment. At least I had Jessica Alba to look at… in high-def to boot!

In the end, I can say that watching a movie on Blu-ray is definitely better than watching the same movie on DVD, but the Samsung BD-P1200 is pretty freaking slow. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer booted up a lot faster on the PlayStation 3 than it did on the Samsung player, which leads me to believe that Sony could be “hiding” something to encourage people to buy their wares rather than someone else’s. In terms of the movie, Silver Surfer is pretty much what you’d expect it to be. There’s some eye candy, some explosions, and some larger-than-life battles involving a seemingly invincible intergalactic being. Suspend your disbelief and just enjoy the science fiction ride.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer gets 3.5 Stars Out of 5. Check out the review on ThinkComputers to read what I have to say on the Samsung BD-P1200 Blu-ray Disc Player.