Ask anyone what’s worse than sequels and, with the memories of Jar Jar Binks still painfully clear, they’ll say prequels. Everybody hates prequels, because they’re rubbish. Not this one, though. X Men: First Class is a snazzy, sexy 60s reboot that tells the tale of how Magneto got his silly helmet and how Professor X got his wheelchair.

Starting in 1944, with a scene familiar from a flashback in the original X Men movie; a young boy in a Polish concentration camp discovers his power for the very first time. While in a huge house in New York, an over-privileged British boy meets a new friend, a mutant just like him. Then, boom, it’s 1962 and that little British boy is a flirtatious Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) while the little Polish boy is brooding Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) hell-bent on revenge. These two protagonists are the heart and soul of First Class, giving flawless performances that drive the whole thing. While McAvoy’s Charles is certainly sexier and, er, “groovier” than the old Professor X we know, he displays the old X’s fatal flaw; a blind faith in goodness. Fassbender, as Erik, is a revelation; his nuanced performance lending gravity to what could easily have been a silly comic book romp. He also looks pretty bloody tasty in a polo neck, eh, ladies? McAvoy and Fassbender play very well together, so well in fact that it is surely only a matter of time before someone YouTubes a Brokeback/First Class mashup…

The supporting cast is also largely brilliant, with Kevin Bacon playing shithead-in-chief Sebastian Shaw, Mad Men’s January Jones as uber bitch Emma Frost, and newcomer Jennifer Lawrence (robbed of an Oscar for her star turn in Winter’s Bone, if you ask us) as a young Mystique perfectly, stripping away the sexy, over confident character given to us by Rebecca Romjin-Stamos in the earlier films, and playing her with a great deal of vulnerability and fragility. Non-mutant, CIA agent Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne) is a joy to watch, with her non-mutant power of being seriously ballsy.

The young mutants, X Men in training, let down the overall action with below-standard acting; Angel, Havok and Banshee are all pretty lame, and we weren’t overly convinced by Nicholas Hoult’s turn as Beast Hank McCoy. Yes, Hoult gives an OK performance, but whether he has what it takes to shine next to stars like Fassbender and McAvoy, as his peer Jennifer Lawrence does, is yet to be seen. The lamest of the lame, though, is demon-mutant-thing Azazel. We hate Azazel.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn, who helmed tongue-in-cheek superhero zinger Kick Ass, First Class manages to maintain a humour and simplicity befitting the genre whilst also tackling the thornier issues of the Holocaust, the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Did you know the X Men played a big role in the Cuban Missile Crisis? Well, you do now. First Class breathes new life into a franchise that quickly grew tired until Last Stand and Wolverine  kicked it to death. We can only hope that we get the sequels that have been hinted at, to join First Class seamlessly with the first movie, so that all the sub-plots and threads that are left unexplored in this film are developed, and questions answered. Questions like; if Mystique has no nips, how does she know when she’s cold? And, while we understand the helmet, why does Magneto suddenly go from sexy knitwear to wearing a ridiculous cape? And what does Beast’s downstairs look like? So many questions…

X-Men First Class is out now in literally every cinema, everywhere.