At a time when the Avengers are leading the way for comic book superheroes, it’s up to the others to keep up and that includes early pacesetters X-Men.

They kicked off the genre revival with X-Men (2000), defined it with X2 (2003) reinvigorated the series with reboot-cum-reset-cum-prequel First Class (2011) and then again with the timeline-bending Days of Future Past (2014) but sadly Apocalypse sees the mutants left staring at Captain America’s clean pair of star-spangled heels.

Set in 1983, a decade after the events of DOFP, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is running his school for gifted pupils, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is – uncharacteristically - living incognito in Poland with a wife and child and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is starting fights in disguise in grotty bars to protect vulnerable mutants.

Their peace is shattered when the world’s first mutant, the all-powerful Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) awakes from a thousands of years sleep and quickly decides he wants to destroy humanity. In order to do so he recruits his four horsemen, including a by-now understandably bitter Magneto.

Predictably, it’s up to the other mutants - corralled by Mystique and Xavier - to stop him.

Unfortunately Apocalypse is not a great baddie. Looking absurdly like a villain from Power Rangers, he is ‘generic bad guy intent on destroying the world’ rather than the more nuanced human-mutant battles the X-Men usually find themselves in.

Similarly the destruction he brings is too generic – whole cities are razed and crowds of people wiped out to little dramatic effect.

The large cast is not universally successful, either. Olivia Munn as Psylocke, Ben Hardy as Angel and Alexandra Shipp as Storm are particularly underused, Jennifer Lawrence’s role as Mystique has become two-dimensional and dry.

On the other hand, we get a nice introduction to Sophie Turner and Tye Sheridan’s versions of Cyclops and Jean Grey while Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) and movie leavening, scene stealing gold.

One Quicksilver scene in particular will be a stand-out favourite.

One of the most pleasing aspects of Apocalypse is that not only does it follow on from First Class and DOFP but it begins to bring events full circle towards 2000’s X-Men, and not just because McAvoy’s Charles Xavier ends up bald.

In a similar vein, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine - who doesn’t really fit this timeline - gets his rumoured cameo and it is a good ‘un that ties up a loose end in his story.

Arguably this film does sufficient to bring things full circle but let’s just assume that Fox wants to exploit their own cinematic universe at least once more. And surely this slight misstep is not sufficient to stop them.

X-Men: Apocalypse (12A) is out tomorrow (Wednesday, May 18).

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