As others have said, the performances by Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart are very strong and the film evokes a powerful dark mood. If it were therefore not the sequel to many previous more upbeat movies, this movie would have worked very well as a standalone drama.

Because it is part of long-running franchise, however, it comes across as painfully incongruous with previous X-Men movies. At the outset of the movie, we see that Logan has descended once again into misery, so all of the gains made in "The Wolverine" are lost. Once again also, mutants are on the edge of extinction, so all gains made in "Days Of Future Past" are lost (and less than 10 years later, to add to the bewilderment). Basically, it looks like some writer liked the idea of rebooting the mutant doomsday concept of DOFP and taking it in a bleaker direction.

I'm sorry, but while excellent acting is something I like in a movie, a good story is at least as important, and to make a good story, you can't render previous entries in the franchise completely pointless. The fact that this happens in the final Wolverine outing, with no opportunity to recover is, of course, all the more heartbreaking. I was surprised when DOFP managed a decent recovery from the mistakes made by X-Men:Last Stand, but not as surprised as I was to see those same mistakes repeated here!