When it first came out that Marvel’s ultimate, planet-eating bad guy Galactus was going to make an appearance in the Fantastic Four’s second outing, there was a fair amount of optimistic buzz. And when it was revealed that the filmmakers had decided not to portray him as a gigantic guy in purple armour and a dumb-looking helmet, the reaction turned to outrage. But it’s a safe bet that if director Tim Story had gone with Jack Kirby’s original design (or omitted the old world-devourer altogether) then he’d probably have been lynched. The guy just can’t win.

Except, of course, that he can – because Rise of the Silver Surfer, like its predecessor, will most likely make buckets of money regardless of the opinions of critics or comics fans. Whatever its flaws, (and as much as I liked it, there were a fair few), the first Fantastic Four was a distinctive and refreshingly cynicism-free entry into the genre that dared to try and capture the spirit of its source material without drifting into Batman and Robin-style camp. Commercially it succeeded by being a comic book adventure that parents could take their younger kids to without fear of the little blighters seeing anyone get maimed with adamantium claws. It wasn’t a great movie, but it wasn’t half as bad as a lot of people liked to make out.

The good news is that its sequel gets the same things right whilst fixing a fair few of the more gaping flaws. Like the first film, it aims for the same goofy charm that Richard Donner’s classic Superman possessed in spades – and more often than not, gets it right. Writers Don Payne and Mark Frost are clearly aware that The Fantastic Four aren’t superheroes like Spiderman or the X-Men, who spend their time battling nemeses and bemoaning how nobody really understands them. They’re science heroes, explorers, but more than anything they’re a family, who spend as much page-time bickering amongst themselves as tussling with implausibly-named enemies.

So, as in the first film, we get a fair amount of light-hearted comedy – less intrusive this time around thanks to a better script, a more satisfying plot, and the fact that all of the cast are getting settled into their roles. Once again, bizarrely, Chris Evans steals the show as the narcissistic, endorsement-obsessed Human Torch – and his constant battling with Michael Chiklis’ Thing still makes for the funniest scenes. But Ioan Gruffudd and Jessica Alba have improved greatly, and their romance (complete with incessantly disrupted wedding plans) is nowhere near as leaden as before, and is even fairly charming in places.

It’s a good job, really, because up against the Silver Surfer, the four always ran the risk of disappearing into the background of their own sequel. He’s an awesome character, both visually and thematically, and he single-handedly adds the two things that the first Fantastic Four really lacked – namely spectacle and a touch of gravitas. This time around the action sequences are far better, the special effects are genuinely special in places, and the plot – whilst still hardly Shakespeare – is rewarding and suitably dramatic.

Having said that, Story’s direction is still frustratingly episodic and he still stumbles with the action set pieces, although never quite as badly as in the first film. But this time around, Payne and Frost have brought enough new ingredients to the mix that it mostly doesn’t matter much. It’s nice, for example, that all the set pieces don’t revolve around fights and aren’t all confined to America – how often in film history have we seen superheroes doing something other than beating people up, or actually saving the world rather than one relatively small part of it?

In short, Rise of the Silver Surfer succeeds not so much by being out-and-out great, (the formulas still not quite there yet, though fingers crossed for round three), but by being an enjoyable attempt to do something different with the comic movie genre. On those terms it’s a success, and that’s enough to make it, for my money, the best of this year’s batch of Marvel adaptations.