X-Men: The Last Stand

Listen, oh X-Fans, and you will hear, of the summer spectacular drawing near! Yes, the thrilling third instalment of the X-Men movies is almost upon us, and if it's anything like the first two movies it'll have awesome action and adventure aplenty, with carefully crafted characters crammed in and even a little laughter!

For those who don't know, the X-Men are a team of superheroes who were created in 1963 by artist Jack 'King' Kirby and alliteration-loving author 'Smilin' Stan Lee, who (the story goes) was sick of scripting ways for characters to get super-powers, so decided that they'd just be born that way. So the X-Men were born, with differing, cool, mutant powers because they're "the next stage in evolution". But how, you ask, oh impatient readers, is the film series evolving? Though Brian 'Usual Suspects' Singer has departed as director, he's been replaced by Brett 'Rush Hour' Ratner, who's certainly skilled enough to provide another powerful package of excellent X-entertainment.

'Hot' Halle Berry, 'Professorial' Patrick Stewart, 'Intense' Ian McKellen, 'Hairy' Hugh Jackman and almost all the rest of the classy cast have all returned for the film, in which a contentious 'cure' for mutation is invented, which leads to the 'Last Stand' of the title. Not only this, but the decidedly deceased Jean Grey will – gasp! - return, but will she be different? Will there be - shudder - "a number of quite significant deaths" as Patrick Stewart has hinted? Will Woverine's weird nature become clearer as the mutants face war? And with a number of new characters to fit in, not least Vinny Jones as Juggernaut and Kelsey Grammer as the bookish 'Beast', will the filmmakers have enough time to tie all these threads together? This proficiently packaged product hasn't let anyone down yet, and if the film is half as exciting as the speculation surrounding it, it'll certainly be a success. Excelsior!... or something.