Dark, but action-packed fun for fans

X-MEN: Days of Future Past is the ultimate X-Men film.

It takes the best characters of the seven-part franchise, including Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Ian McKellen’s Magneto and Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier. Then through time-travel to the 1970s, it brings in their younger counterparts, who we’ve already met in the excellent reboot X-Men: First Class, including James McAvoy’s jaded young Xavier, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, Nicholas Hoult as Beast and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique.

As if that cast wasn’t good enough, there is the new addition of Peter Dinklage as the scientist-you-love-to-hate Dr Bolivar Trask and an Aussie in the mix, with Josh Helman starring as the much younger Major Bill Stryker.

On top of that, the director of the first and best two X-Men films, Bryan Singer, has taken back the reins.

But even with the high expectations and huge scale, X-Men: Days of Future Past hits the mark. It’s one of the darkest yet most enjoyable films of the franchise since 2003’s X2.

Adapted from the comics of the same name, the story picks up in a bleak dystopian future, where mutants and humans alike are hunted and killed en masse by robots called Sentinels.

To change the present, Xavier, Magneto, Storm, Kitty Pryde and several other X-Men, both old and new, send Wolverine back to the 70s. If he can change the course of history, he could alter all of their fates.

The plot is complex and at times confusing but it is generally well executed by its superb cast, bar a few hiccups. And just as X-Men: First Class linked to the Cuban missile crisis, this time it cleverly references Vietnam’s major power players.

It’s dark at times, but X-Men: Days of Future Past is also action-packed fun.

Once Wolverine lands in the 70s, there’s a lot of humour, mainly thanks to Jackman’s dry, deadpan delivery, visual 1970s gags (flares, lava lamps and waterbeds) and the surprisingly funny addition of the lightning-fast mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters).

This is definitely a film for fans, with references to every one of the previous X-Men films and a few cheeky inside jokes from the comics.

Right up until the end, you’re kept guessing as to how it will all play out, but when it does, it also leaves plenty of room for future franchises.

Remember to stick around for a postcredit sequence – an easter egg for the next movies. – Daily Mail