This isn't one of the early Marvel movies I expected to revisit any time soon ... but I've begun exposing my young twins to the genre, and I decided to start at the (relative) beginning, back before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing. So, after plowing through the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield versions of Spider-Man, we went next to the Fantastic Four. We started, of course, with the 2005 introduction to the team, which I still very much like. (We will, of course, skip entirely the 2015 reboot.) Next up: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Well, my kids liked it, so if 10 is the target audience, good job! I was reminded how good the cast really was, and how let down they were by a tepid plot.

Just in case you've forgotten, here's the team: Ioan Gruffudd is Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards, the scientist and stretchy guy; Jessica Alba is his fiancee, fellow scientist Sue "Invisible Woman" Storm, who can manipulate force fields and turn invisible; Michael Chiklis is Ben "The Thing" Grimm, Reed's best friend and the team's rocky muscle; and Chris Evans is Johnny "The Human Torch" Storm, Sue's brother, who can turn to flame and fly.

Also returning are Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, who has been languishing in statue form back in his native Latveria and is now resurrected from stasis just in time for the sequel, and Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters, the Thing's blind girlfriend. Newcomers include Laurence Fishburne and Doug Jones as the voice and body of the Silver Surfer, Andre Braugher as the arrogant General Hager, and Beau Garrett as Captain Frankie Raye.

The Surfer interrupts Reed and Sue's wedding plans by buzzing the planet and drilling holes through its core. Eventually, they learn he's the herald of Galactus, conceived here as a giant planet-eating cloud, and Earth is doomed. (Although it turns out the Surfer had the power to stop Galactus all along, he just ... didn't.) Hager, dissatisfied by the Fantastic Four's first attempt to stop the Surfer, summons Von Doom, ignoring for the moment that he's a villain. Of course, Doom is going to villain some more -- this time, he wants the Surfer's high-powered cosmic surfboard, somehow lusting so much for its ample energy potential that he doesn't care if its loss leads to the destruction of Earth. (What was he planning to do without a planet to live on? He doesn't think that far ahead, it seems.)

Although the stakes of this movie are certainly higher than the last, they somehow feel less. There's some exciting action here and there, but not as much as you'd expect. Sure, the Surfer causes mischief with his massive tunnels through the Earth -- one of which completely drains the Thames, which is a bummer for London -- but there's no real sense of menace from Galactus, who manifests as some nasty weather effects, and Doom on a surfboard just looks silly.

A quirky glitch in the FF's powers causes them to switch abilities for a while, but it's mostly played for laughs (and so Alba's clothes can burn off), but they seem able to master the wrinkle pretty quickly.

It's a shame. In retrospect, I really like this cast, but the second time around, director Tim Story just didn't seem to know what to do with them. Rise of the Silver Surfer is a step or two down from 2005's Fantastic Four ... but, let's be honest, it's still whole staircases above the awful 2015 version. In any case, the movie flopped and killed the franchise. I guess we'll see what Marvel can do with them in 2025.