Jennifer Lawrence makes an impressive switch from the Hunger Games heroine into the body-hugging blue reptilian skin of Mystique.

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'X-Men: Days of Future Past' premieres in London

Jumping to a similarly devastated Mos-cow, we watch Kitty, Iceman (Shawn Ash-more) and a small band of mutants face an attack from the deadly Sentinels. Dropped in from airborne carrier ships, these robots are designed to track and destroy the mutant gene. They resemble towering, muscular versions of the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, constructed out of magnetic plates that allow them to change shape and adapt to whatever force is unleashed against them.

The mutants escape and regroup in the rubble of an ancient Chinese monastery with Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry).

Threatened with extinction, the mutant holdouts hatch a plan to return to the post-Vietnam Paris Peace Accord(s) of 1973, when Mystique ( Jennifer Lawrence) killed Dr Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), a US military scientist developing the Sentinels program. Mystique was captured and experimented on, with the transformative powers of her DNA tapped to perfect the Sentinels.

Wolverine's ability to heal makes him the only one able to withstand the 40-year time jump. Kinberg's script milks welcome humor out of sending the least diplomatic of the X-Men back to convince the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to join forces and stop the assassination that triggered anti-mutant hysteria. Having Wolverine awaken on a waterbed staring at a lava lamp and listening to Roberta Flack lightens the mood at just the right moment.

There are also affecting moments when Wolverine encounters Major Bill Stryker (Josh Helman), triggering traumatic flash-forward memories of his painful physical transformation and his love for Jean Grey.