X-Men: First Class hit first place at the UK Box Office with an opening of £5.4m. 

That sounds pretty groovy for a 60s-set mutant prequel, but it's actually the weakest of the franchise since the original X-Men back in 2000. Arriving without any audience awareness of the series, Bryan Singer's comic book movie opened on £4.8m - Fox would have been hoping for slightly more evolved figures by now.

With the other X-Men films taking between £6m and £7m on their debuts, Matthew Vaughn's excellent blockbuster is quite a way behind. Still, it has far more positive buzz than Brett Ratner's X-Men 3 or 2009's Wolverine outing, which may keep its powers strong enough to claw together a stronger total.

First Class almost took second place in the UK Top Ten thanks to The Hangover II. Even with a 15 certificate and a lot of backlash, Todd Phillips' sequel, which took just under £4m in its second weekend, has already passed the £20m barrier. 

That's a horrendously high amount for a 2D comedy - in fact, it's earned more than three times the £7.7m The Hangover had totalled up over two weeks in 2009. Feel free to bash your head against a brick wall at any point in the next seven days.

The Hangover: Part II hung over the UK Box Office this weekend, with a headache-inducing total of £10.4m.

That's a scarily high amount for Todd Phillips' offensively unfunny sequel. It's triple the amount of the first film, which took £3.2m on its opening weekend. That's the kind of figure you normally expect from a comedy (Paul opened earlier this year with a very strong £5.5m including previews), so £10.4m will be making Warner Bros very happy. Everyone else, of course, will just be dismayed.

Not even Jack Sparrow could hold it off the UK Top Ten top spot. Pirates of the Caribbean 4, which was considered to be doing well last week, earned half The Hangover 2's amount at number two, pillaging its way to a hoard of £4.7m.

That's a drop of around 40%, which gives it a large running total (just under £20m) but leaves it quite a way behind the last few in the franchise - Pirates 2 had £26.7m after two weeks in cinemas. With 567 and 469 screens respectively, though, Pirates 4 and The Hangover 2 will be serious competitors against X-Men: First Class this weekend.

With all the blockbuster action and 15-rated comedy on offer, parents with younger children have little other choice than Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. Which explains why Fox's sequel got almost £1.5m over the weekend - a great result given the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid debuted with £600k odd. 

Disney will be looking to take family audiences away from X-Men and Thor with Jack Sparrow, but the only other half-term option is Rio, which has been around for way too long already. Greg Hefley hung around for 5 weeks last year to chalk up a total of £2.5m, so Wimpy Kid 2 will be expecting a nice healthy run - at least until Kung Fu Panda 2 bounces into multiplexes (the previews this week have had a very strong response).

The rest of the UK Top Ten remains largely unchanged, as Fast Five continues to race towards a cumulative gross of £20m. Attack the Block, meanwhile, dropped 60% down at number nine, and will inevitably lose quite a few screens to Marvel's mutants and Dreamworks' panda. Bare sad, innit, blud.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides sailed to the top of the UK Box Office this weekend, pillaging its way to a treasure hoard of £11.63m. 

That's the biggest opening of the year so far, and also Disney's fourth biggest opening of all time. It's a fair bit behind At World's End's debut of £13.4m back in 2007, especially given the boost in 3D ticket revenue, but Disney will be pleased that Jack Sparrow still has some pirate gold in him after several (wrong) negative reviews. Yo ho and all that.

You can tell it's blockbuster season just by glancing at the rest of the UK Top Ten. Fast & Furious Five is still at full throttle in second place (continuing to beat its hairy rival Thor) but took just £587k. Marvel's superhero, meanwhile, hammered together a meagre £528k. 

Neither are very big figures for such large films, but they're far from failing (a £17m running total for Fast Five is way ahead of the rest of the series). It's just that there's no room for them. Pirates 4 has commandeered 569 sites across the UK. That's more than The King's Speech at its peak of dominance. As a result, Disney's franchise is earning around 20 times the amount of its closest runner-up.

Thor thundered ahead at the UK Box Office this week, holding on the top spot after its £5m debut. 

Marvel's superhero lost around 40% of last week's takings, but has hammered together a £9.5m running total, which will keep the makers of The Avengers happy for now.

Fast Five is right behind the God of Thunder with £1.6m stashed firmly in the boot. After three weeks on release, Vin Diesel's racer has accelerated past the £13.5m gross from the last Fast and Furious film, making it the fastest and most furious in the whole series. Bald men up and down the country will be sweating profusely with excitement.

Insidious, meanwhile, is in a strong third position, boasting a teeny 9% drop as people begin to spread the word about the Saw director's horror film. It's almost at the £4m mark in total, but expect this one to reach a fair bit higher than that.

All the three holdovers held back the weekend's new releases. Emerging at the head of the pack is Water for Elephants, the watery film about elephants and Robert Pattinson. Thanks to previews from Wednesday onwards, R-Patz beat Saoirse Ronan's Hanna to the UK Top Ten's fourth spot. But we all know she could take him in a proper fight.

Thor hammered its way to the top of the UK Box Office last weekend to take home £5.45m. 

Marvel were hoping that the Norse god of thunder would strike hard in the UK, given that Thor's the cornerstone for all upcoming Avengers releases.

To avoid any threat of the Royal Wedding distracting cinema-goers, they promptly stuck three days of previews on the front of the film, picking up £2.3m from Monday, Wednesday and Thursday combined. Include the bank holiday Monday on the other side of the weekend and Thor smashes clean past the £6m mark. 

It's a convincing show from Kenneth Branagh's superhero, one that matches the results from the less hirsute Fast and Furious Five on the weekend before. It's no surprise, then, that the Vin Diesel car flick is still speeding along in second place.

With a drop of less than 40%, Fast Five has a current total of £11m odd, which almost equals the £13.5m final gross from the fourth Fast and Furious film in 2009. No wonder Justin Lin is gearing up for a sixth.

 

 

Fast Five raced to the UK Box Office top spot last weekend, raking in £5.3m in an eggs-cellent Easter weekend turnover. For Universal, that's almost as good as the news that I won't make any more egg puns for the rest of this article.

The fourth sequel in the franchise outperformed all the other new releases (not to mention the previous Fast and Furious films - the last one opened on £4.9m), mostly thanks to a whole Thursday of previews.

With many films struggling to break the £1m weekly mark these days (partly down to the sunny weather), getting into the £5m zone is impressive. It's even better when you include the Monday's takings, which saw Fast Five's total jump to over £6m.

Arthur was the main contender for the UK public's affections, but Russell Brand's rather likeable comedy, which got several bad reviews, didn't win many fans - it opened with a moderately respectable £764k.

That's OK given the appeal of the pretty Easter outdoors, but it's a long way off what Warner Bros would have expected, even after Arthur's moderately lacklustre $12m opening in the US. Brand's last major comedy, Get Him to the Greek, debuted with £1.56m in the middle of June - over double the amount the rich billionaire racked up.

Director: Justin Lin
Cast: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson
Certificate: 15

Fast Five as a title makes no sense at all. There are 8 main characters, for one thing. They might as well call it Fast Fast Fast Fast Fast. In fact, everyone could say everything five times, just to make it all more exciting. Or, should I say, exciting exciting exciting exciting exciting. And so the boys are back for more cars cars cars cars cars, breasts breasts breasts breasts breasts and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - who's so fast and so furious he'll punch you in the face five times before you can even type his name once.

PAST FAST. BEYOND FURIOUS. MEANINGLESS SENTENCES.

The guys who put together the Fast & Furious franchise trailers have the easiest job in the world. Bald man? Check. Cars? Check. Explosions? Check. Loud music? Check.

Admittedly, they were thrown a curveball when they had to somehow squeeze in a second bald man (Mr. The Rock himself, Dwayne Johnson) alongside hirsutely-challenged Vin Diesel, but it turns out the solution is easy: just add in more shots of cars, explosions and loud music. At one point, they get really ambitious and show a car driving into a train.

But none of that will blow your mind quite like seeing Paul Walker and Mr. Diesel drive a car off a cliff and either jump for dear life or attempt to fly. If Justin Lin's sequel goes with the latter, it just might be the best of the whole series. 

Fast Five screeches into cinemas on Thursday 21st April. The trailer launched exclusively on Yahoo! Movies - read on to see the full video.

"This just went from Mission Impossible to Mission In-frickin-Sanity."

No change in the dialogue quality then. Still, it's not quite as bad as Vin Diesel's promise to do one last job and then disappear. Forever. But cliches and bald people are what get Fast and Furious fans going, so Fast Five can't really be blamed for living up to expectations. Especially since they've now got The Rock involved - that's double the bald action.

Even weirder than that, Universal let Vin Diesel premiere the trailer on his Facebook page. Bet Paul Walker was jealous of that decision. He's back too, ready to burn rubber (and brain cells) in Brazil. Does anyone care anymore? And, more importantly, will F5 refresh the franchise? Yes, I take full credit there for the GEEKIEST JOKE EVER.

Fast Five is out in cinemas on Friday 29th April. Read on for the trailer.