Complex choreography but immense fun

Rating: Null/10 (26 May 2014)

Including "The Wolverine", this is the seventh outing for the X-Men of the Marvel Comics franchise and Bryan Singer who helmed the first two, is back as director. He's not the only one who's back. Thanks to a time travel plot, we have both the old (Patrick Stewart) and the new (James McAvoy) Charles Xavier/Professor X and the old (Ian McKellen) and the new (Michael Fassbender) Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Fassbender is my favourite of this talented quartet). Lots of others return too: Wolverine, Mystique, Storm, Beast, Iceman, and more beside. So there are a plenitude of characters and powers on display here.
That's not all. a complicated narrative means that we have good mutants, bad mutants, past mutants, future mutants, one who manages to be in both the future and the past, and another who contrives to have a conversation between his past and future selves. Are you still following me? Do pay attention at the back.
So it's not always clear exactly what's going on in this complex choreography, but it is loads of fun with some terrific scenes even in the 2D format in which I (deliberately) chose to watch it. I especially enjoyed a freeze-time scene where a mutant called Quicksilver gets to do his stuff and a sequence in which Magneto raises an entire game stadium before putting it to original use. Now it's three years since Jennifer Lawrecne took over the role of Raven/Mystique from Rebecca Romijn and, in that time, Lawrence has become a major star, so it's not surprising that in this movie she is given a bigger role and it is a delight to see her in action.