X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men: Days Of Future Past is not one of those sequels you can just turn up to with no prior knowledge.

With every character from both generations of X-Men movies coming together this is the franchise's Avengers.

It also almost hits the heights that Marvel set with that superhero team up.

Forsaking everything that happens in the original series in order to better represent the prequels the ending to this one will leave you scratching your head all the way home from the cinema, however that's not to dampen what is a cracking yarn before that.

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender continue their awesome reboots of Prof' X and Magneto (Fassbender in particular does an incredible Ian McKellan impersonation) and the 'rescue-the-future-by-changing-the-past' storyline is thrilling, curiously believable and different to what's come before (although the need to explain the intricacies to every subsequent character is a pain).

A lack of actual combat (Wolverine doesn't have a chance to get his claws dirty here) isn't actually too much of an issue because the politics and the rifts between the mutant left and right wing is engrossing enough.

Peter Dinklage is fantastic (Tyrion with a tache'!) and the only real gripe is the fact that a lot of major characters (especially the originals like Storm and *spoiler alert* Cyclops) get very little screen time.

Confusing, but ultimately rewarding if you decide to forgive them making the original trilogy redundant, and set up brilliantly for the third (like all Marvels this comes with a post-credits villain teaser) X-Men is probably the best superhero film of the year thus far.

4 stars ****