As promised, and after a multitude of teasers on Twitter, returning director Bryan Singer and 20th Century Fox have released the first trailer for the latest film in the wildly successful X-Men franchise, X-Men: Apocalypse.

Continuing the events of X-Men: First Class and 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, Apocalypse – first glimpsed in the post-credits sequence of last year’s blockbuster – has returned to remake the world in his image, promising all-out war between him and James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier.

Today’s trailer reveal isn’t the first footage the world has seen of this film, however, as a sizzle reel was shown exclusively to attendees at this year’s Comic-Con event back in the summer. That footage was ultimately leaked and made its way onto the Internet, but unlike Warner Bros. with their Suicide Squad trailer, 20th Century Fox chose to keep the full trailer off the web until now; presumably to give them time to give the trailer its full attention and clean up any incomplete VFX shots to showcase the film in its best light – one of the key takeaways from this footage is the lack of purple in Apocalypse’s design, which was a particular bone of contention amongst fans after US magazine Entertainment Weekly published a first look at the film a few months ago.

In any case, we think the trailer does a fantastic job of showcasing all that’s new to the X-Men saga in Apocalypse, without giving too much away at this stage – a criticism that has been heavily applied to the Batman v Superman trailers released this far. New mutants in the form of Olivia Munn’s (The Newsroom) Psylocke and Ben Hardy’s (EastEnders) Angel are teased, as is some top quality Cerebro action and the full reveal of Professor X in all his balding glory at the very end of the footage. Next seen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse seems suitably imposing, laying waste to Xavier’s X-Men in true villain style, crashing into what looks like the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters to terrorise our heroes.

X-Men: Apocalypse releases in the UK on 19 May 2016 and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Ben Hardy, Olivia Munn, Oscar Isaac, Sophie Turner, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters and Lucas Till.