10 Best Movies Actors Did After The Lord Of The Rings

For the seventh instalment of a major blockbuster franchise this movie was surprisingly brilliant. There's a reason Star Wars, the Marvell universe and Pirates of the Caribbean have all become behemoths in modern pop culture. People love alternative worlds with their own unique characters, themes and in world rules. But, usually the insatiable appetite of fans is too much for film studios to indefinitely churn out high quality and original works.

It's not a controversial statement to say the X-Men film series has had it's share of flops. Last Stand was a jumbled mess of action sequences which prevented the characters from having any real moments of emotional development. And, we'll just leave X-Men Origins unmentioned...

But this movie seemed to successfully right the wrongs of those former entries in the saga. It's been a trope of super heroes to assemble as many impressively formidable individuals as the budget will allow, and have them duke it out with some omnipotent adversary. This can very often leave great characters fighting it out for screen time.

This movie managed to avoid that, however, and through some intangible bout of movie making magic it became the saving grace of the franchise. Of course anything with Ian Mckellen is watchable at least once, so his presence didn't hurt...