Having just gotten comfortable with their newfound superpowers, Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing, face a world-devastating threat in the form of the Silver Surfer — a strange being who travels through space on a cosmic surfboard. But while trying to subdue their silvery foe, America's first superhero family discover to their horror that the Surfer is just a herald for an even bigger menace: The planet-devouring Galactus.

By there very nature comic book sequels almost always end up being the better of the two movies. Almost every modern day comic book movies second installment was better than the first. The reason why is simple, its because almost all comic book movies have almost too much story to introduce, to many characters to flesh out and not enough time to do so. You have to introduce the characters, you have to explain how they got their powers, you have to explain how the powers have changed them and made their life different and then almost as after thought you have to introduce a villain and a conflict for these new superheroes. That’s a lot of story for a two hour film and the conflict part is almost always crammed into the end of the film and not fully fleshed out. It’s the reason many didn’t like first Fantastic Four among other reasons, but I might be one of the rare ones out there that liked both films for what they are, and that’s super silly comic book movies full of action.

The second film is able to jump right into that action, we already know the characters, we already know how they got their powers and now we can play with their unique abilities, there banter with each other (especially between Ben and Johnny) and their relationships as a team and as a couple as Reed and Sue are about to be married. Plus they introduce one of the more fun anti-villains (he’s not truly a villain but he definitely does bad things) in the Silver Surfer. My one complaint is that they gave away way too much of the Silver Surfer in the trailers, most of the best moments you have already seen and that’s a travesty, it’s a shame that the studios won’t let you discover the movie by yourself and be surprised during the movie just so they can market the movie. The surfer is definitely the coolest part of the movie and he really ads depth to the movie which was missing from the first film as Dr. Doom never really took on that menacing villain every great comic book movie needs.

I mean the movie is still flawed and many who did not like the original will probably still not like the sequel. My biggest complaint of the movie was Galactus, this has to be the worst screen villain of all time. Galactus got bad press during production for good reason, because he is not menacing, is not a character and is almost downright silly when it appears on screen. The movie is too short about twenty to thirty minutes so the movie had plenty of time to introduce Galactus properly and to do the story arc right but instead he becomes a major let down and a vast disappointment nearly ruining the end of the movie.

One of the biggest problems with the original was the casting and that is even more evident in the sequel. I think they got the Thing and The Human Torch perfectly cast and the banter between these two characters in the sequel is spot onto the comics and I can imagine a better casting. The problem lies in Dr Doom and Sue Storm the Invisible Woman. It was obvious the only reason Jessica Alba was cast in the first place is because she was hot even though she was nothing like the character. Her acting is the major let down of both movies but now that hottnes has begun to fade as well. She like many current celebrities are on the anorexia diet from hell, and once was shapely curves is now ghastly and disgusting. You almost want to force feed her a burger. As far as Doom went he never felt like a great villain and he still doesn’t that’s why the addition of the surfer a much better villain is a welcome addition to the movie. Fantastic Four is still that fun and silly comic book movie brought to life and is the weakest of the major comic book movies but its still fun to watch.

Grade: B-