Hollywood is bashed - and rightly so - for an over-reliance on sequels, remakes and rebooted franchises. This year’s 7 highest grossing movies (worldwide, according to THR) were all sequels: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Pirates of the Caribbean: on Stranger Tides, Kung Fu Panda 2, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (Part One), Fast Five, and The Hangover 2. Potter aside, that list makes me sad.

So let’s give credit where credit is due. Last year, two very different bands of misfits got franchise reboots well worth seeing: The Muppets and X-Men: First Class.

Jason Segal is clearly a lifelong Muppets fan. For my money, his clever update did Jim Henson proud, reminding us what makes these characters indelible for those of us who grew up with them. 

Meanwhile, who would have dreamed Mad Men-plus-mutants would work so spectacularly? Sending the franchise back to it’s swinging ’60s Cold War origins was a stroke of genius. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender pull off the neat trick of evoking and surpassing Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan’s performances as Professor X and Magneto.

Added bonus: putting the ubiquitous (and enormously talented) Fassbender on screen with Kevin Bacon as the villainous Sebastian Shaw automatically changes the game to “Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”