Among “Tron: Legacy,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Blade Runner 2049,” this decade has seen no shortage of sequels that took several years to follow up on their previous films, but “The Incredibles 2” is the first time I've felt like I first saw the original just yesterday.

Just the fact it's been 14 years since “The Incredibles” came out could have been enough to derail the movie’s sequel, since that's an awful lot of time for audiences to build up their expectations, but writer-director Brad Bird delivers a pitch-perfect follow-up in “The Incredibles 2” by simply making fine-tuned improvements to what worked the first time.

The last time we saw these characters or their world on the big screen, back in 2004, Robert Downey Jr. was still four years away from the first time he said, “I am Iron Man,” so the superhero genre as a whole has undergone a significant evolution since then.

Nowhere is that evolution more clear than in re-watching the original “Incredibles.”

It still holds up, but it feels insular in retrospect, hemmed in by its tight focus on the Parr family to the exclusion of many supporting characters, besides family friend Frozone and the villain Syndrome, and by a 1960s-style art deco aesthetic that seems less like an homage and more like a period piece.

The sequel retains the authenticity of the family dynamic, as Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter and Samuel L. Jackson effortlessly step back into their voice-acting roles as Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone, respectively, but it fleshes out the history and atmosphere of its world more successfully this time, giving us an appealing blend of retro kitsch with modern tech, and a villain whose motivation is a bit more nuanced and less on-the-nose than Ayn Rand.

We're treated to the introduction of a whole new lineup of highly specialized but endearing superheroes, a more in-depth exploration of infant son Jack-Jack's burgeoning assortment of superpowers, and a succession of visually dazzling action sequences that make even better use of Elastigirl's powers.

“The Incredibles 2” is far from revolutionary, with Mr. Incredible going through the sitcom standard character arc of learning to be a stay-at-home parent while his wife steps up as the breadwinner for a change, but this is a sequel whose aim is simply to deliver another set of adventures with a family of characters whom we've already grown to enjoy.

Any halfway attentive viewer could probably predict half of the plot beats, including the true identity of the villain Screenslaver, but it's still fun to see it all play out, especially with the welcome additions of Bob Odenkirk (from AMC's “Better Call Saul”) and Catherine Keener as the would-be benefactors of a movement to make superheroes legal again.

The legality of superheroes is as close as this film comes to offering what feels like a concession to modern superhero films, especially Marvel's “Captain America: Civil War,” but the political dimensions of that debate are more understated here, perhaps because Bird has figured out that superhero politics work better as broad allegories for belief systems without delving into details.