Another summer, another avalanche of comic book films hits the big screen near you. This week we’ve got the latest in the venerable X-Men franchise: Days of Future Past. The film opens in the dystopian future of 2023, where mankind is being hunted by a race of highly adaptable autonomous robots called the Sentinels. In a last-ditch attempt to prevent the apocalypse, the surviving X-Men send Wolverine back to the 1970s (or rather, his future consciousness into his past body) to stop the Sentinels from ever being created. History is about to be made by the actions of enigmatic shape-shifter Mystique, so Wolverine has to convince the bitter idealist Professor Charles Xavier and imprisoned renegade Erik Lehnsherr (a.k.a Magneto) to bring her in.

Despite the plot involving time travel, killer robots and a protagonist with a metal skeleton, this is not just Terminator 2 with a hairier hero. Much like the previous instalment (X-Men: First Class), this is the Charles and Erik show, with most of the established cast of mutants pushed into supporting roles or cameos. Wolverine returns to being a capable supporting player rather than attempting to helm his own movie, and it works well – we’ve seen a lot of this character over seven films now, usually at the expense of screen time for the other mutants. The other big role actually belongs to Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, fighting the manipulations of both Professor X and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to further her own agenda. Lawrence brings a lot of emotional depth to a role that had up till now just been an excuse to put an attractive actress in blue body paint.

The movie pulls double duty as a follow-up to both the first prequel (First Class) and 2006’s critically reviled X-Men: The Last Stand. The time travel element gets abused a little to bring us some nifty interaction between the young and old Professor X (played by James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart respectively), but is otherwise of little importance. The distinction between the past and future scenes becomes greater as the story progresses, with all of the significant action and emotional heft squarely in the former. The dystopian future parts with Stewart and Ian Mackellen (as old Magneto) get really tedious as the two old thespians mumble while the diverse cast of a GAP advert hold back the boring robots. The 1970s plotline has all the humour (although there are fewer ‘man out of time’ gags than there could have been): a fun prison break with an intriguing new character and the best performances by an excellent ensemble cast (including Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones fans!). You may also get some enjoyment out of the worst Nixon impressionist ever used in a major Hollywood film.

All in all, X-Men: Days of Future Past is another example of Marvel cranking out another solidly entertaining blockbuster. It’s worth seeing for the performances alone, but if you’re tired of comic book movies, this probably won’t help.