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The X-Men are dead. Well, the first set of movie X-Men, anyway.
After decades of thrilling readers with soapy, intricate stories in the pages of Marvel Comics, the X-Men finally made it to the big screen with 2000’s X-Men. Despite its clear limitations, including unconvincing CGI and black leather instead of comics’ accurate costumes, X-Men set off a long and profitable franchise, one that stretches over 13 movies and 20 years. That run (kind of) came to an end after Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019. While the Mouse was obligated to release a handful of more mutant movies from the Fox, it was obviously the end of an era.
Even so, letting go of the past has proved difficult, even for Disney’s Marvel Studios, which is bringing back two of Fox’s most popular castings—Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine—for at least one more ride. Clearly, there remains a lot of affection for the high points of Fox’s decades-spanning superhero run.
So before we join those Fox heroes for (possibly?) one last adventure inside the Void, let’s rank all their entries, from worst to best.
13. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
As with the comics beforehand, Wolverine was the clear breakout of the X-Men film franchise. Hugh Jackman shaved off most the rough edges of the Canucklehead, especially as the sequels rolled along. He and the producers reimagined Logan as a tall, handsome guy with a dark side and a bad attitude. So it makes sense that Wolvie would get a solo spin-off movie with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, one that built on his secret history. It would also prove to be the most clean-cut and shadowless interpretation of the character ever put to film.
Compelling as that idea might seem, director Gavin Hood and writers David Benioff and Skip Woods make the worst possible decisions at every turn. Overstuffed with un-compelling takes on additional X-characters and filled with terrible effects, X-Men Origins doesn’t even get help from Jackman, who seems to resent how his signature character is being written and directed this time around. We wouldn’t blame him. Only Liev Schreiber seems to be having fun as a sadistic Sabertooth.
12. Dark Phoenix (2019)
One has only to look at the next entry on this list to see the immense folly of Dark Phoenix. Somehow after turning the grand “Dark Phoenix Saga” into a pedestrian, Earth-bound tale, X-Men: The Last Stand writer Simon Kinberg got another crack at the story, this time as director. Even taking into account the fact that Fox insisted on reshooting the cosmic climax of Dark Phoenix, claiming it felt too close to Captain Marvel, Kinberg clearly has no sense of the story’s operatic scale.
Worse, Dark Phoenix wants to be a comment upon the mistreatment and mistrust of powerful women but saddles its female characters with terrible lines and roles. Jessica Chastain barely registers as vengeful alien Vuk, Jennifer Lawrence suggests Xavier call the team “X-Women” with all the passion the line deserves, and Sophie Turner doesn’t seem to have anything going on behind her eyes as Jean Grey, least of all a malevolent space entity.
11. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
If you weren’t there in 2006, it’s hard to appreciate the depth of disappointment wrought by X-Men: The Last Stand. Still, at the start of the second wave of superhero movies, it felt audacious for X2 to end by promising the “Dark Phoenix Saga,” a beloved comic book story. Instead director Brett Ratner delivered a tone deaf mess of a film, driven by Kinberg and Zak Penn’s mediocre script, and boneheaded studio notes that bizarrely insisted the film should also be about the “mutant cure” and a needless “ending” to the franchise.
The Last Stand has its moments, including Wolverine and Colossus finally giving us a “fastball special,” and a pitch-perfect casting with Kelsey Grammer‘s Beast. Outside of that, the movie went for comic book winks instead of compelling story and bobbled every one of them. Remember how Quentin Quire has quills? And Juggarnaut actually says, “I’m the Juggarnaut, bitch?” We wanted space opera and The Last Stand gave us internet memes. The franchise never really recovered from the amount of damage this thing did.
10. The New Mutants (2020)
The “Demon Bear Saga” from 1984’s New Mutants #18 – 20 is one of the all-time great X-stories, a compelling blend of superheroics, character drama, and horror. But still, it is a comic book from the ’80s and for all his progressivism, writer Chris Claremont has real blind spots when writing ethnicities. So, surely, a 21st century film adaptation will at least clean up those problems, right?
No. Not at all. Yes, director Josh Boone does manage avoid the “white people turn Native” subplot from the comic, and does cast Indigenous actor Blu Hunt as a compelling Dani Moonstar. But that’s where the good stuff stops, because he also cast white actor Henry Zaga as the Afro-Latino Roberto de Costa, the light-skinned Alice Braga as dark-skinned Celia Reyes (oh, and made her a baddie), and filled Magik’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) dialogue with racial slurs. Even if we let that all slide, The New Mutants plays like sub-Stranger Things horror homage, never able to develop its own authentic scares. Instead it just imitates better ones from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Boone finds some sweet moments in the romance between Dani and Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), but those grace notes come too little in this pile of ugly mess.
9. Deadpool 2 (2018)
The first Deadpool has its pleasures, but it largely felt like a proof of concept. Would audiences go in for a raunchy, self-aware, super-violent superhero? The answer was a resounding “yes!” Which should have given star Ryan Reynolds (who co-wrote the script wiht Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) and director David Leitch room to expand in the sequel. In a sense, Deadpool 2 does get bigger, adding Josh Brolin as Cable, Zazie Beetz as Domino, Julian Dennison as Rusty/Firefist, and other members of the X-Force. But theme and humor-wise, it’s more of the same.
Deadpool 2 somehow fails to do any better than The Last Stand with its depiction of Juggernaut, this time voiced by Reynolds and portrayed by CG. Instead the tired humor of The Last Stand returns with Deadpool 2, obscuring any legitimate attempts to find pathos or heroism in Wade Wilson. Some of the gags do land, but the overwhelming majority of them don’t, making Deadpool 2 a missed opportunity.
8. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
Okay, yes. X-Men: Apocalypse does take the title villain, one of the most grandiloquent and imposing in comic book history, and ask him to stare at a TV screen and purr, “Leeeaarning.” And yes, Apocalypse does have far too many digressions, adding Ben Hardy as punk rock Angel, Lana Condor as Jubilee, Olivia Munn as Psylocke, and Alexandra Shipp as Storm, and giving them nothing to do.
Yet somehow, credited director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Kinberg pause the movie long enough to include some powerful moments. The sequence of Quicksilver saving the mutants from an exploding X-Mansion holds up to the “Time in a Bottle” scene of the previous movie, and the death of Magneto’s family and its violent aftermath manages to hit an emotional resonance not seen since the Auschwitz opening of the first film. The opening sequence in ancient Egypt also has some amusing grandiosity. It’s not enough to make Apocalypse a good movie, but it is enough to put it over the worst that Fox had to offer.
7. The Wolverine (2013)
It’s the Silver Samurai’s fault. Anytime I rewatch The Wolverine, director James Mangold‘s first crack at Wolvie, I spend the first two-thirds thinking it’s the second best X-movie, even higher than Logan. The movie accurately adapts the first Wolverine miniseries by Claremont and Frank Miller without ever being too slavish. It brings to the screen themes about fallen honor and Logan’s bestial nature.
Along the way, The Wolverine features some outstanding set-pieces, most notably a fight atop a bullet train that takes advantage of both the fast moving setting and Wolvie’s claws. The opening sequence during the bombing of Nagasaki is still chill-inducing, achieving an eerie reality not seen in most of The Wolverine‘s 2010s superhero movie contemporaries. But then, the movie ultimately falls into the same trap as so many others of its genre, sacrificing thematic depth for a big, spectacular finale—this one featuring a giant Silver Samurai. Superhero movies always have to be at least a little silly, but they can still retain some pathos at the same time. The Wolverine spends most of its runtime proving that claim, only to flush it all away at the end.
6. Deadpool (2016)
On the one hand, superhero comics have never been just for kids, as American GIs made up a significant portion of the genre’s first audience. On the other, superhero stories are inherently silly, and attempts to avoid that by adding doom and gloom only accentuate the goofiness. So in hindsight, it almost seems obvious that Deadpool would be the first major hit R-rated superhero movie, precisely because it embraced its silly concept even as it added blood and swears.
Deadpool strives for comic accuracy in almost every way, from Wade’s origin and costume to his fourth-wall breaking sense of humor. But it’s Ryan Reynolds’ committed performance that makes the movie so palatable to audiences. Reynolds somehow toes the line between snark and sincerity, vulgarity and wholesomeness, letting the audience in on the anarchic fun while ensuring no one will feel guilty about it in the morning.
5. X-Men (2000)
Okay, lets talk about all of the problems in X-Men. It’s plot kinda doesn’t make sense. The CG is dated. Halle Berry has nothing to do and says something about a Toad getting hit by lightning. All bad, all discussed in the past.
Now, let’s talk about the good stuff. Even the great stuff. X-Men totally nails the casting in a way that never happened pre-2000, outside of Christopher Reeve as Superman and Wesley Snipes as Blade. It’s not just that Hugh Jackman captured everything wild and wonderful about Wolverine. It’s that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen embodied the operatic tension between old freniemies Charles Xavier and Magneto. When the two have their standoff in the hallway early in the movie, they deliver their lines with an intensity and sincerity that no fight scene can match. They are playing a chess game the whole film, one in which the pieces felt particularly human in this entry.
4. X-Men: First Class (2011)
Looking back at director Matthew Vaughn‘s oeuvre, it’s hard to believe that X-Men: First Class works so well. Vaughn works best as a movie version of comic writer Mark Millar, stumbling on moments of pathos and mixing them with sequences of shockingly bad taste. So on paper, a film that delves into Magneto’s trauma from the death camps should be far beyond Vaughn’s reach.
And yet, Vaughn and his bevy of screenwriters, most important of which is the great Jane Goldman, pull it off thanks in large part to getting James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender to step in as Xavier and Magneto. The two share the same theatricality as their predecessors and have great chemistry together. They also embrace Vaughn’s fixation with 1960s Bondmania aesthetics, giving First Class a chic, Kennedy-era giddiness. So even when other aspects of the film don’t work so well (looking at you, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique or killing Darwin first), Fassbender and McAvoy carry the day, at least until Vaughn can get back on safer ground with some dazzling actions sequences.
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
X-Men: Days of Future Past shouldn’t work. Not only does it make Wolverine the protagonist again (instead of Kitty Pryde, hero of the comic book story), but it doubles down on the X-movies’ greatest folly with an overstuffed cast. Days of Future Past has two Professors Xavier in Stewart and McAvoy, two Magnetos in McKellen and Fassbender, and even two Beasts with Nicolas Hoult and Grammer. The time travel story could have overwhelmed viewers, losing sight of the past X-Men’s fight to save the future.
And yet, it all works out. Beautifully. McAvoy’s bitter and broken Xavier serves as the perfect counterpart to the more trusting and patrician character played by Stewart. He also captures the growing sense of cynicism in early ’70s youth culture, which serves its setting and the context from which the X-Men comics came to prominence. Moreover, the movie best embodies the hope that drives the X-Men franchise, the belief that they can show the rest of the world a better way. For all of its spectacular razzle dazzle, Days of Future Past goes back to the principles that made the first movies so good, with compelling characters and strong performances.
2. X2: X-Men United (2003)
“You came to the wrong house, bub.” When Wolverine sneered that line and popped his claws midway through X2: X-Men United, it felt like superhero movies had finally made it. We finally got the Wolverine we know and love from the comics onto the screen, unleashing a bezerker rage interrupted by cameos from Colossus, Syrin, and other deep-cut mutants. But X2 isn’t really about paying homage to the source material, as demonstrated by shifting Brian Cox‘s William Stryker from a hateful preacher to a cold military man.
No, X2 is pure superhero action. From its opening scene of Nightcrawler wreaking havoc in the White House to a super stabby battle between Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike, X2 understands that all of the franchise’s heavy themes and compelling characters must serve the end of exciting fights. X2 combines all these aspects into the purest expression of everything the X-Men can offer.
1. Logan (2017)
Superheroes never die, least of all Wolverine. The very nature of ongoing adventures mean that superheroes need to return to their status quo, never letting Wolverine really grow beyond his constant state of struggling to reconcile his human and beastly sides. By jumping ahead into an undisclosed future, Logan can avoid that problem. Instead it lets Wolverine face his final days and end his struggle, once and for all.
Jackman puts in a career-best performance as an old man Logan. His healing factor is diminished, his friends are dead or vanished, and he’s reduced to playing chauffeur at the border so as to care for an aged and dying father figure. He finds something like a purpose when he meets a daughter he didn’t know existed, Laura (Dafne Keen), and fights to give her the chance he never got. There is even especially pointed meaning in this X-Men film centering on a Mexican child who is chased across multiple borders by men with guns. But the real scene-stealer is Stewart as an aged Professor X, suffering from dementia. Stewart crystalizes the movie’s inverted take on superhero power fantasies, never shying away from the anger, shame, and impotence that Xavier feels, while also illustrating his destructive abilities.
The post The Fox X-Men Movies Ranked from Worst to Best appeared first on Den of Geek.
