The X-Men franchise started way back in 2000 and we are here, ranking every one of the movies, including Deadpool and Wolverine.
With “Deadpool and Wolverine” breaking box office records, “X-Men 97” winning over critics and audiences on Disney+ and Marvel Studios on the precipice of a full-blown live-action reboot, everything is coming up “X-Men.”
It’s easy to overlook the fact that “X-Men,” released in 2000, effectively kicked off the era of the modern superhero movie. It proved that you could take oversized characters and make them relatable and fun for modern audiences. And they have continued to delight ever since.
So, to celebrate our favorite mutants (and the milestones “Deadpool and Wolverine” are gamely crossing almost daily), we thought we’d rank every single “X-Men” movie, from the superpowered to the woefully underwhelming.
SNIKT!
After the initial trilogy of movies, Fox decided to try and expand the “X-Men” universe. There were going to be a whole suite of “X-Men Origins” movies. In fact, some of the planned Magneto movie got folded into “X-Men: First Class” (more on that in a minute), while others were just abandoned completely. An early, R-rated script by “Game of Thrones” co-creator David Benioff was heavily reworked by Skip Woods at the behest of studio executives and director Gavin Hood, coming off the Oscar-nominated “Tsotsi,” was hired to direct.
The resulting feature is an unmitigated disaster that speeds through Logan’s (Hugh Jackman) backstory, his relationship with his brother Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) and his transformation into Wolverine. Add to that the clunky introduction of several key X-universe heroes and villains, including the introduction of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and sprinkle in some historical context, and you’ve got a big old mess. (For some reason the climax is set during the Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster.)
The movie is poorly shot and staged, with unfinished-looking visual effects and a plot that just thuds from one scene to the next with little conviction. It’s a dreary mess of a movie, whose release was marred by a leak that saw the whole movie show up online (and led to one critic’s dismissal for reviewing a pirated copy). The less said about “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” the better.
“X-Men: The Last Stand” is when stuff really started skidding sideways. And it was only three movies in! Original director Matthew Vaughn, who also worked on the script, departed last minute (more on him in a minute), leaving Fox scrambling to replace him. They settled on Brett Ratner, who is now persona non grata but was then known as the director of the “Rush Hour” movies.
Ratner squanders all the goodwill from “X2,” along with the cliffhanger ending, instead creating a noisy collection of disjointed scenes that don’t amount to much. (There were three credited editors working around the clock to get this thing ready for its summer 2006 release. That means there were at least a half-dozen actually working on the movie.) Instead of giving us a proper version of the Dark Phoenix saga, something that was teased at the end of “X2” and a storyline familiar to most through the 1990s animated series, “The Last Stand” is content to have the Dark Phoenix be one of a number of storylines fighting for supremacy (there’s also something about a mutant “curse” and several new characters who are introduced and developed).
This is a movie that starts with the death of Professor X and Cyclops and then builds to a clumsily photographed battle on Alcatraz. Painfully forgettable.
Whew boy. The first trailer for “The New Mutants,” which was meant to open up a new avenue of X-storytelling with a more horror-focused vibe, was released back in 2017, on October 13, a Friday. It was meant to be released the following spring. But the Disney acquisition of Fox and a seemingly unending series of reshoots delayed the movie until late summer 2020, you know a typically wonderful time to go to the movies.
While the movie seemed to have a lot going for it – direction from Josh Boone who was coming off “The Fault in Our Stars,” a starry young cast led by Anya Taylor-Joy, cinematography by “Evil Dead 2” legend Peter Deming – but ultimately none of that mattered thanks to a nonsensical plot involving alternate dimensions and a demonic bear and a scaled back setting that was meant to be intimate and claustrophobic but just came across as cheap. If you saw this movie and remember anything about it, you should be commended. Your mutant superpower has been revealed.
“The New Mutants” wasn’t the only casualty of Disney’s absorption of the 21st Century assets. They were also saddled with “Dark Phoenix,” the fourth film in the series of prequel movies with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender (among others). Set in the 1990s, so, right before the events of the original “X-Men,” this recounts the Dark Phoenix storyline in an even looser way. (It negates the events of “X-Men: The Last Stand,” we suppose? But that could be true of everything that came after “X-Men: The Last Stand.”)
Sophie Turner was introduced as the new, young Jean Grey, who once again becomes possessed with almost infinite power, leading to some very tough decisions from the rest of the X-Men. Simon Kinberg, who had written on several of the other movies, also directs this time, without much success. Once again, the production was befallen by competing corporate priorities, copyright issues (initially, the Skrulls were part of the storyline) and an endless series of test screenings and reshoots.
The end result feels like something neither fish nor fowl, although there is a cool train sequence towards the end and a lot of scenery chewing by a villainous Jessica Chastain. (She’s an evil alien, of course.) This doesn’t add anything to the already confusing timeline and felt like a lot of effort, mostly in securing the deals for actors who had agreed to a three-picture pact, for no payoff.
“X-Men: Apocalypse” is such a baffling misfire that Oscar Issac, who played the titular bad guy, still seems bewildered by the experience all these years later. If there is a reason to watch “X-Men: Apocalypse,” then it is for the sequence where Quicksilver (Evan Peters) saves the rest of the X-Men — and indeed the whole of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters — while “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics blares across the soundtrack. (It directly follows an “X-Men go to the mall” scene, which is also pretty good.) It’s a genuinely incredible sequence, building on the “Ship in a Bottle” scene from “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and overcoming occasionally chintzy visual effects, for a moment that makes you want to pump your first. It also makes you wish the rest of the movie that surrounded the sequence was better. Ah, 1980s “X-Men.” You could have been so cool.
It’s a miracle that “Deadpool” exists at all, much less that it became a multibillion-dollar franchise.
