When the world’s first mutant Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) re-emerges after thousands of years, the X-Men must unite to defeat him and his plan to destroy all of humanity.

X-Men: Apocalypse see’s the return of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his students. There’s many familiar faces including Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Alex Summers/Havok (Lucas Till) and Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver (Evan Peters) as well as a host of new students. These newer characters, playing younger versions of characters we’ve seen before, all fit in well with the action and do a good job – especially Kodi Smit-McPhee as a young Nightcrawler. Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) also returns and she plays a bigger role and is on a different side to the one you might expect.

Quicksilver steals every scene he’s in. Much like in Days of Future Past, there’s a scene in X-Men: Apocalypse which really shows off his power and it’s both funny and exciting. Plus, he bounces off a lot of the other characters well and brings a level of humour to an otherwise potentially very grim movie.

X-Men: Apocalypse is surprisingly violent comic book superhero movie aimed primarily at kids. There’s scene where characters get brutally beaten and there’s a lot of blood, there’s what could be described as body horror with Angel (Ben Hardy) and overall it’s definitely the darkest and goriest X-Men movie to date. It is jarring and disturbing to see though it does the job of showing how powerful and threatening Apocalypse can be.

While Apocalypse is sometimes an opposing figure, he is not a terrifying villain. His four horseman, bar Magneto (Michael Fassbender) who gets another tragic backstory, are seriously underdeveloped. Angel’s character is non-existent and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) is given little to do, Storm (Alexandra Shipp) fares only slightly better as you encounter her before she becomes a disciple of Apocalypse.

X-Men: Apocalypse is an entertaining film, it’s gripping and exciting but it’s the heroes you find yourself more invested in than an average villain. 4/5.