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All 12 X-Men Movies, Ranked

On the occasion of the release of Dark Phoenix, we ranked the 12 films in the X-Men series from worst to best.

Dark Phoenix
Photo: 20th Century Fox

Ostensibly an attempt to atone for the flaws of the much-reviled X-Men: The Last Stand, which was loosely based on “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” Simon Kinberg returns to the well with Dark Phoenix, a more direct adaptation that essentially repeats the 2006 film’s offenses, only this time with a different cast. Kinberg’s film, set a decade after the events depicted in X-Men: Apocalypse, is a stultifying affair that strips Chris Claremont’s classic story down to its basic narrative beats at the expense of the deep character relationships that give the extended X-Men storyline its emotional resonance. On the occasion of the film’s release, we ranked the 12 films in the X-Men series from worst to best. Jake Cole



X-Men: The Last Stand

12. X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006)

Throughout Brett Ranter’s X-Men: The Last Stand, issues of inclusion, intolerance, self-acceptance, and self-actualization are superficially trotted out to eat up time between the flashy, frantic set pieces and countless Marvel aficionados-directed references. The film eventually proves far more concerned with CG extravagance and big melodramatic moments full of grave soundbite-ready pronouncements than affecting relationships, thrilling conflict resolution, or a sense that the hectic proceedings are of any great consequence. Even if his animalistic Wolverine is reduced to a handful of tame one-liners, studly poses, and swift slayings, Hugh Jackman proves far more capable of transcending his goofy hairstyle than Halle Berry, unwisely given more to do this time around as dull weather woman Storm. Yet The Last Stand is ultimately a dreary species of empty pomp and circumstance, far too similar to many of its summer-movie brethren—and disappointingly dissimilar from its superior predecessors—in that, in its single-minded preference for spectacle over substance, it seems to have been put together primarily with its theatrical trailer in mind. Nick Schager



X-Men Origins: Wolverine

11. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Gavin Hood, 2009)

Fox may have been robbed of box-office booty when a leaked workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine landed online a month before its release, but the real victim of theft in this ordeal seems to have been the adamantium-clawed Canuck himself. Purists will surely bristle at the alterations made by Gavin Hood’s prequel to the origin story of feral Canadian mutant Logan (Hugh Jackman). Yet far more troubling than the specifics surrounding his transformation into the nearly indestructible Wolverine is the film’s fundamentally wishy-washy characterization of its protagonist, whose inherent animalism is oft-mentioned but never witnessed. In an attempt to pay lip service to his inner struggle with unseemly bestial instincts while simultaneously maintaining his unquestionable heroism, Wolverine turns its future X-Man into a blandly brooding bore too grumpy to be a prototypical do-gooder yet too noble to be a cold-blooded antihero. Schager



Dark Phoenix

10. Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg, 2019)

The mounting stress of Jean Grey’s (Sophie Turner) powers and suppressed trauma explodes in bursts of violence that have global, if not cosmic, implications of chaos, yet Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix remains inanely fixated on the immediacy of Jean’s impact on her friends. In the comics, an unfathomably powered Jean literally consumes the energy of a star, killing billions in an entire solar system. Here, her uncontrolled powers result in the death of a comrade—an emotional loss, sure, but not one with the genocidal stakes that prompted retaliatory action in the original story. “The Dark Phoenix Saga” saga boldly asked if a group of unambiguous heroes to weigh the desire to save a beloved a friend not in her right mind against the moral imperative to protect the countless lives she could, and did, terminate. Here, those who hunt Jean want nothing more than revenge, which divorces the film further from its source than even X-Men: The Last Stand. Cole



X-Men: First Class

9. X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011)

Despite his apparent comfort with F/X-heavy projects, the obligations of duty to the brand are too much for Matthew Vaughn’s strange, singular voice, which rarely has the chance to shape the film unmolested by a curiously bland script, a dominant sense of too-much-ness, and the simple fact that such super-productions as these, with too much merchandising and cross-pollination at stake, are downright hostile to the director’s impulse to use more than a fraction of the potential of a large, diverse cast. The film is ultimately undone by that old paradox of Hollywood movie production: If you’re given an enormous budget, you have to spend every penny—a little like telling a chef he needs to use all of the spices in his cabinet, for a sauce that would be much improved by discipline and moderation. Historically, this results in modestly pleasurable films that run 20 minutes to an hour too long, distended by innumerable instances where the director is under orders to capture on film the exchange of cash for a thing of equal value (here, it’s a fleet of Soviet and U.S. battleships, a dozen massive sets, and January Jones’s eyesore of a mutation), and the fact that it’s 99% digital changes nothing about the way the slightest hint of specialness in X-Men: First Class is smothered in numbing exhibits of conspicuous consumption. Jaime N. Christley

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X-Men: Apocalypse

8. X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer, 2016)

The main problem with X-Men Apocalypse isn’t, as it turns out, that the franchise left itself with too little to work with after the tidy ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past, but that Bryan Singer suggests so many possible directions to go in and still chooses the least interesting one. Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) and his end-times aspirations drive the film in the direction of a disaster movie; large portions of the last act are devoted to terraforming Cairo, where the genocidal warlord plans to start his “new world.” Which is to say that instead of changing the narrative of the superhero film, as Singer’s already done for the narrative of the franchise he returned to, the filmmaker yields to its most generic, commercially viable plot progression. The final battle sequence is a twentysomething-on-one battle royale that shows just how much the film has come down from its promising start. Instead of emphasizing the dynamics of the filmmaking, or the 3D image, Singer sets up wide shots of each X-Man, in fighting stance, launching their respective assaults. All the thematic interest and character dimension that’s defined the best of this series falls away for a conventional action display. Somewhere in there, you’ll swear you hear, “Avengers, assemble.” Sam C. Mac



The Wolverine

7. The Wolverine (James Mangold, 2013)

James Mangold’s The Wolverine suffers most from its plot’s eventual lack of risk, as the film proceeds to include a contrived romance, a pile-up of double-crosses, a lengthy villain’s manifesto, martyrdom, and fisticuffs with an end-level monster—because, well, that’s what happens in the finales of Hollywood flicks these days. Luckily, the film establishes an initial brute strength and uniqueness that work wonders to sustain its merit. Whereas Gavin Hood’s horrid X-Men Origins: Wolverine included foes like Sabretooth, The Wolverine almost entirely isolates its star from his popular cohorts and surroundings, and the benefits are immediately palpable. The first act is a largely muted character study, and when events shift over to Japan, which is presented with a refreshing lack of cultural condescension, there’s an invaluable appeal to the exotic locale—a colorful, history-laden, and architecturally varied realm that, for Wolverine, feels both new and natural. Mangold knows just when to ditch the dolly, when to have slain thugs fall into the camera, and when to fluidly follow a fighter as he (or she) leaps across buildings and vehicles (one sequence on the roof of a speeding train is at once ridiculous and spectacular). If The Wolverine may be remembered as the best superhero movie of its year, that’s because, for a sufficient amount of time, it doesn’t feel like a superhero movie at all. R. Kurt Osenlund



Deadpool 2

6. Deadpool 2 (David Leitch, 2018)

Like its predecessor, David Leitch’s Deadpool 2 muddies the distinction between parodying comic-book-movie conventions and perfunctorily adhering to them. Vanessa’s (Morena Baccarin) appearances are obligatory emotional signposts in a film that otherwise breezes right past her death in order to cede the stage to Deadpool’s (Ryan Reynolds) trademark wisecracking. As for the jokes themselves, they frequently fall flat, as Deadpool’s witticisms are mostly empty rejoinders to easy setups by other characters. Deadpool 2 believes this to all be peevish, deconstructive parody, even though it’s how most major comic-book movies are now written. At least the film climaxes with a clever workaround of the average superhero blockbuster’s overreliance on apocalyptic finales by presenting a small-scale skirmish that, per Cable’s (Josh Brolin) future knowledge, will have dire consequences down the line. The action remains mostly routine, but the film allows Deadpool’s sudden tenderness for the fire-wielding Russell (Julian Dennison) to bleed through his smarm without delving into mawkishness. More importantly, Reynolds and Brolin have chemistry to burn, with latter resurrecting some of the same funnier-than-he-looks straight-man intensity that he brought to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. Deadpool 2 finds itself in its homestretch, with solid enough narrative and comic plotting to make the prospect of further exploration of the longstanding history between its two leads an enticing one. Cole



X-Men: Days of Future Past

5. X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer, 2014)

Mired by two thoroughly uninventive parallel storylines, separated by some 50 years, X-Men: Days of Future Past only conveys the awesome strangeness of its characters and their universe when director Bryan Singer breaks away from the perpetual build-up of the film’s unwieldy plot. When Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back to 1973 to unite young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy) by their older selves (Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart), he relies on Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters), a.k.a. Quicksilver, to stage a prison break out of the Pentagon. It’s the first step in bringing the mutant leaders together, but the entire sequence feels as if it’s lifted from an entirely different, far more fun and engaging film. Peters evokes the wise-ass bravado befitting a teenager who can run so fast he might as well be teleporting, and his scenes radiate with a vivid understanding of a unique personality. Here, Singer encapsulates the sense of super powers as honed expressive talents that’s at the heart of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s source material, but few of the filmmaker’s remaining spectacles are steeped so thoughtfully in the attitude and wit of the characters who set them in motion. Ultimately, the time-traveling conceit feels like a shameless ploy to further expand the franchise’s narrative universe, while also indulging a more recent nostalgia for Singer’s original X-Men films and the beloved cast that brought them to life. Chris Cabin

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Deadpool

4. Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016)

The stench of relentless snark hangs over Deadpool’s opening, of credits such as “A British Villain” and “Some Douchebag’s Film” popping up on screen while the camera roams over a freeze frame of a car collision, all ironically set to Juice Newton’s cover of “Angel of the Morning.” Given such an intro, you may expect the film proper to exist not just to send up the conventions of the superhero genre, but to endlessly congratulate itself on just how aware of said conventions the filmmakers are. And, indeed, Tim Miller’s film is chock-full of wiseass dialogue, with Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) constantly breaking the fourth wall to comment on the mayhem he’s embroiled in, and peppering his speech with loads of gratuitous pop-culture references. But Deadpool occasionally surprises for how it couches its hip one-liners in something resembling actual character drama. Take the anguished way in which Wade utters a jab at the Taken franchise while lying in bed next to the love of his life, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), who he’s about to abandon in pursuit of a possible cure for his terminal cancer—a torture-like genetic-mutation treatment that eventually leads him to become the eponymous anti-superhero. Reynolds’s delivery of the line is so poignantly earnest that the joke itself immediately dissolves and a melancholic undertone lingers. Deadpool as a whole operates like that: For every moment that the film threatens to exasperate with its meta-movie irreverence, another catches one off guard with its emotional forthrightness. Kenji Fujishima



X-Men

3. X-Men (Bryan Singer, 2000)

Nothing in the history of the X-Men’s cinematic forays has lived up to the intensity of the first images from Bryan Singer’s original film, of a young Magneto being separated from his parents at Auschwitz and inadvertently discovering his mutant powers as his outstretched hands bend the concentration camp’s metal gates toward him. The rest of X-Men suffers in its clumsy, thin depiction of the public’s paranoia over mutants, but this remains the only film in the series to truly capture the crux of the source material: the internal bonds and tensions between its young outcasts and the ongoing struggle to embrace one’s own differences in the face of social rejection. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan effortlessly capture the spirits of Professor X and Magneto, respectively, and Anna Paquin excels at depicting the anxiety of Rogue, a teen whose powers are so dangerous that she cannot even feel comfortable or safe among other mutants. But it’s Hugh Jackman who walks away with the film for the way he immediately and vividly taps into Wolverine’s ferocity, sarcasm, and brooding loneliness. Cole



Logan

2. Logan (James Mangold, 2017)

It’s all too predictable that of all the X-Men, a group that’s forever served as a metaphor for marginalized people the world over, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) would become its breakout character on both the page and screen. The most generically individualistic hero in a group committed to the principle of cooperation, Logan (as Wolverine is also known) has been both the mascot and root problem of the film franchise, to the extent that 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2013’s The Wolverine delved deeper into the character only to find a man who’s lived multiple lifetimes but has just one story to tell. Logan rectifies this issue, recognizing that the thinly veiled secret of Logan’s loner act is that he’s always been a cog of some kind, be it for the military industrial complex or Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), and James Mangold’s film highlights that aspect of Wolverine’s personality by finally understanding him as a loner by default. That said, the fundamental limitations of the character and franchise occasionally stunt the film’s momentum. The use of George Stevens’s classic 1953 western telegraphs too much of the story’s events, and to see Wolverine’s arc and personality change so little throughout Jackman’s 17-year run as the character saps Logan of some of its resonance. Still, the film attains a haunting, poignant quality. Logan understands—and contrary to most superhero stories—that the most powerful villains are the most ordinary. Cole



X2

1. X2 (Bryan Singer, 2003)

The subtitle of the second X-Men film is something of a misnomer, as one can already see the franchise pivoting to spotlight Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) over the rest of the cast. Logan’s cryptic past forms the bedrock of this adventure, limiting what is otherwise an improvement over its predecessor’s grim assessment of mutant social integration. Much of this owes to Brian Cox’s performance as military experimental scientist William Stryker, whose contempt for mutants is rendered in hauntingly dispassionate tones. The calmness that masks Stryker’s genocidal fervor emphasizes one of the sharper commentaries of the comic books: that society defaults to exclusion and fear of the unknown and that the forces arrayed against its mostly young characters are coldly rational. X2’s show-stopping action sequences haven’t aged well, but the film is best in its less grandiose moments, from the brief but brutal scene of Magneto’s (Ian McKellan) jailbreak to Iceman’s (Shawn Ashmore) parents making the subtext text when they ask their son if he ever considered not being a mutant. Cole

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