David Pierdomenico
Fox’s X-Men franchise has spanned an impressive 20 years and 13 movies. Comic book fans have a lot to be grateful for, as without its early success, things like the MCU wouldn’t be possible. The original movie (along with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man) helped lay the foundation for the complete box office dominance of comic book movies now.
The franchise itself was one filled with high and lows, both on and off screen. While we’ll probably see these characters again in the MCU in the next 5-10 years, these versions of them will always be our first.
So as this film series comes to its official end with the release of The New Mutants, let’s take a look back on the whole thing and reflect on the best (and worst) movies that came from it!
13. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
After ending the “original trilogy” of movies, Fox followed in the footsteps of Star Wars by going into prequel territory of their series’ most beloved character. The frustrating thing about this movie is that it has a legitimately awesome opening.
We saw a brilliant montage of Logan and Victor fighting in all the wars over the years, and watched Victor slowly descend into his primal, animalistic tendencies. Why wasn’t this the whole movie?!
Because after that, all we got was a cheesy plot filled with unnecessary “prequel” expositions, some laughably bad, unfinished CGI shots, and the absolute decimation of Deadpool’s character. It was just a mess from the moment the opening montage ended, and Wolverine deserved better, which fortunately he did get.
12. Dark Phoenix
Had New Mutants not been postponed so many times, this would have been the ending to the Fox franchise, which would have been a bit tragic. The series had already botched the Phoenix storyline with Last Stand, and while it told a more complete and comic book accurate version of it here, the movie itself suffered from some questionable choices.
For some reason, after going back to the 1960’s, Fox was really anxious to get the series up to modern day, skipping a decade each movie. This resulted in Xavier and Magneto looking the same in 1992 as they did in 1963, and somehow looking much older only a decade later.
And that’s the least of this movie’s problems. Between Jessica Chastain’s strange performance, to mishandling Mystique’s character, to really under-developing everyone’s character growth because they had to rush and play catch up (again), since it had been a decade since the last movie.
11. X-Men: Apocalypse
Following the hit that was Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer was brought back to adapt one of the most iconic villains from X-Men comics. However, the result was far less well received. Apocalypse is known as one of the most powerful characters not just in X-Men, but in all of Marvel.
Oscar Isaac did the best he could, but rushed character developments, and a really contrived plot led to this moving being incredibly underwhelming. They really knocked it out of the park with casting James MacAvoy and Michael Fassbender as young Xavier and Magneto back in First Class.
The same cannot be said for casting young Cyclops or Jean Grey. It’s nothing against Tye Sheridan or Sophie Turner, they just couldn’t quite live up to James Marsden or Famke Janssen, and they sadly weren’t given much to work with.
This was also the movie where they pretty much gave up trying to have a real Mystique, and just let Jennifer Lawrence play herself as Katniss Everdeen.
10. X-Men: The Last Stand
For many fans, this was a disappointing ending to the aforementioned “original trilogy”. Looking back at it, there are certainly pretty steep flaws, but it has its moments.
It features the natural escalation into all-out war that Magneto predicted in the first two films, Juggernaut is cheesy as hell but in a fun way, Kelsey Grammar was an absolutely perfect Beast, and it made some pretty bold choices in killing off characters, that they weren’t planning on immediately bringing back (at that time at least).
That said, it does rush the Phoenix storyline and treats it like a subplot. Plus it foregoes the dark and stylish tone of the previous movies in favor of a more generic action-movie vibe that feels a bit tacky at times. But pretty much every decision made in it was completely undone by Days of Future Past so who cares?
9. The Wolverine
After the looming disappointment that was Origins, James Mangold was given the reigns to Wolverine and showed us all what he could do. It’s a really fun spinoff adventure that’s still deeply rooted in historical events, which is where the series always shined most.
Logan himself is sort of the perfect modern representation of the ronin (or samurai without a master) and this movie plays into that really well with its setting and tone. It’s not really trying to advance the franchise in any direction, nor does it try too hard to connect to the other movies (except the for the Jean Grey hallucinations), but rather it just seeks to tell an interesting story with its title character.
8. Deadpool 2
Following up the smash surprise hit that was Deadpool was no easy task. Its sequel doesn’t quite hit the same levels of outrageous comedy as the first one did, but it feels more like an X-Men movie, if that makes sense. It leans more heavily into the whole mythology, with a time travel subplot, and Deadpool forming his own (albeit short-lived) team.
It’s fun and entertaining, but feels like a sequel more than it should. It’s quite clear that Fox was very hands off with the first one, because they didn’t expect it to do well, and they were much more involved in this one. However, this is probably the last R-rated Deadpool adventure we’ll get following the Disney/Fox merger.
7. X-Men
The movie that started it all, the original X-Men launched the franchise itself, as well as the entire superhero boom! In hindsight, it takes itself very seriously with a dark and gritty 90’s grunge, “trench coat” vibe. But at the time superhero movies were still largely seen as kids’ stuff, what with Batman and Robin having only come out a few years earlier.
While this resulted in the tone being a bit grimmer than it needed to be, this was one of the first comic book movies to deal with very real issues like discrimination and prejudice, even opening with a scene of young Magneto at a concentration camp. It showed the studio that comic books films could be enjoyed by adults, and that they could deal with very complex and dramatic themes.
6. Deadpool
The little R-rated superhero that could, Deadpool remains the highest grossing movie in the franchise (US/Canada, it was just barely beaten by Deadpool 2 worldwide), and also shockingly has the lowest budget, including the first X-Men, which came out 16 years earlier.
One part superhero origin, one part raunchy comedy, and one part romance movie, Deadpool is truly unlike any other. Its constant meta references seem to troll but celebrate the comic book genre at the very same time. And as these movies dominated the box office in the 2010’s, this movie was the perfect satire of them
5. The New Mutants
In some ways, New Mutants is both the most and least ambitious of any movie in the series. It doesn’t try to cram in multiple subplots and instead goes for a simple, isolated story. But the way that it toys with genre and goes full teen horror was a risk that paid off, for the most part.
More of a coming of age story than large stake superhero action film, it feels sort of like Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, but set in the X-Men universe. For fans of both horror and comic book movies, it’s the perfect combination. (You can check out my full review of it here).
4. X-Men: First Class
For three movies, we saw Xavier and Magneto contend with each other as respectful adversaries, only hearing stories of their friendship. First Class sought to not only tell the origin story of the “X-Men” team itself, but it’s also a tragic tale of two friends who fall out due to their ideological differences.
They both want the same thing (or at least similar things), but have incredibly different methods. It’s not hard to understand why hidden. Woven in First Class’ plot is a dark, but compelling revenge story. The young and radicalized Magneto is one that we really get behind after witness the atrocities committed against him.
The only real issue with First Class is that it contradicts the continuity of previous movies. But this franchise’s timeline is so out of whack overall, that it’s not really a big deal.
3. Logan
How do you give a grand sendoff to the most popular X-Men character, while also transcending the genre itself and going much darker than ever before? The answer, quite simply is Logan. Until this point, Logan was the only character that had appeared in every single movie since the very beginning.
He was the heart and soul of the franchise itself, and for fans who had been there since the beginning, Logan was the emotional and poignant ending to his character arc that made us all teary-eyed. It reminds us of the tragic beauty in redemption.
And in many ways we felt like we had lived that long life with Logan over the years. There’s a reason it remains the only Marvel movie nominated for Best Screenplay at the Oscars. Even just watching the trailer, featuring Johnny Cash’s rendition of “Hurt” was an emotional experience for fans!
2. X-Men: Days of Future Past
Speaking of poignant trailers that made fans look back on the series as a whole, Days of Future Past had the most mammoth goal of all. Somehow it managed to combine both the “old” cast of the original X-Men trilogy and the “new” cast of First Class in a Terminator-inspired story that look back on the Xavier/Magneto “frenemy-ship” with self-reflection, and also gave the old cast a better send off than Last Stand (while reconciling everything wrong with that movie).
The conversation between both Xaviers stands out in particular, because who among us hasn’t wished we could talk to our younger self and offer words of advice and encouragement? Many have argued that this probably would have been the perfect place to end the series. And it probably would have been better off that way, assuming we were still able to get the Logan spinoff too.
1. X2: X-Men United
It’s not the grandest movie of the series, nor is it the most emotional, nor is it even the most creative. However, X2 is the best overall put together X-Men movie that came early enough in the timeline that it wasn’t trying to do too much plot-wise. Its only goal was to be a good sequel, and take the universe another step forward, which it did.
We’ve seen a total of 3 iterations of Colonel William Stryker over the years, but none are as charismatically callous as the first, Brian Cox. And his politically corrupt nature makes him a far more threatening villain, because unlike Apocalypse, people like Stryker exist in positions of power in the real world.
Plus, it’s a lot of fun to watch Magneto begrudgingly team up with the X-Men, all while being hilariously snippy and sarcastic. Between the attack on the mansion, the tragic rejection of Bobby by his family, and the battle for Pyro’s soul, X2 has everything we want from an X-Men movie, and does it all brilliantly!
What a franchise this turned out to be! But sadly all things must come to an end. It’s likely we’ll see all these characters again (albeit recast) in a new continuity, as part of the MCU. The only one likely to carryover is Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, but he’s sort of a in a mini-universe that’s all his own. No matter the future of these characters, we’ll always have these 13 movies, and the 20 years of joy they brought us!
Which ones are your favorite/least favorite? How do you feel about the X-Men joining the MCU eventually? Let us know in the comments!
David Pierdomenico is a former History/English Teacher, and currently works as an HR Professional. His dorky passion is an absolute love of film, especially horror and comic book. He is also the founder of Halloween Year-Round (a site solely devoted to horror) and the author of horror novels Kushtaka and Veritas.
Contact: Twitter
