X-Men On The Big Screen: The Super-Team’s Films Ranked

X-Men

The X-Men films are pretty bizarre. They’re not the most popular or commercially successful or critically acclaimed. Bryan Singer’s first two films may have set precedents for the initial superhero blockbuster boom but they’re often eclipsed in popularity by Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight. What you might not know is that the history of the series’ production is as interesting as the films’ “plots” (using that word loosely). So rarely is a franchise at the center of so many seismic shifts in Hollywood. Before we dive into the list, let’s examine how we get to the list.

2004 saw one of the first volleys in the Marvel vs. D.C. film wars. That was when Singer jumped ship on the third film to direct Superman Returns. It was a fateful decision for both franchises. Matthew Vaughn, then an up-and-comer hot off his stylistic debut Layer Cake (starring some guy named Daniel Craig), was hired to direct. But the tight production schedule was too daunting and he dropped out, opening the door for Brett Ratner, a bro-ish and dull studio hire.

The ultimate irony was that, when Singer was forced to also drop out of directing X-Men: First Class in June 2010 after writing a treatment and developing the script, it was Vaughn who came back to save the day – with an even tighter schedule than the one he balked at in 2006. This time, the right combination of Singer, Vaughn and impeccable casting brought to life a retro X-film and the first that actually felt like the comics.

Vaughn is someone with a specific visual panache and, while it fit the low-expectations, soft-reboot nature of First Class, it was not surprising he’d be unexcited at the kind of filmmaking encouraged at studios a.k.a. the kind of filmmaking Singer excels in. When Vaughn departed to direct Kingsman: The Secret Service, 20th Century Fox turned back to Singer again to pull off the union of both trilogies’ casts in X-Men: Days of Future Past, a massive team-up clearly aping Marvel’s The Avengers.

Singer, like Kevin Feige at Marvel and Zack Snyder with D.C., is the through-line of the franchise and completely defines its weird Etch-a-Sketch-style of blockbuster, This is a franchise that opens during the Holocaust, in a Nazi concentration camp, before thrusting us into teen romance, Congressional hearings and Canadian cage fighting. Like I said, bizarre. Characters’ problems range from the relatable (Rogue) to the not-so-much (Wolverine).

The problem is these movies have never really been, shall we say, focused? And this lack of focus gives it no base of support. It’s basically the Marco Rubio of movie franchises. Ask somebody what a Marvel or D.C. film is, the answers will probably fall in the categories of “funny and colorful” for the former and “dark and epic” for the latter. Ask what an X-Men movie? Um, they face prejudice and, uh . . . they have powers? When your characters are little more than instruments for the action sequences, you end up with connective tissue that’s less connective and more just tissue. You get the impression some of these scripts consisted of note cards strung together.

Now without further ado, here my rankings for the six* X-films. Click Next below to start the list.

*I included X-Men Origins: Wolverine because studio interference made it as much the fourth X-Men film as a Wolverine spinoff (much to everyone’s despair). I did not include The Wolverine or Deadpool which only contain periphery aspects of the main X-Men series.

6. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I normally don’t condone piracy but thank god this turd leaked online prior to its May 2009 release. It’s truly an epic failure, slaughtering not only Wolverine’s origin but shredding whatever continuity the flimsy franchise had held on to. It’s especially humiliating given Hugh Jackman’s devotion to the character; you know this was painful for him. And don’t forget Ryan Reynolds, forcibly shoehorned in when Tom Rothman held a gun to Deadpool’s head, saw even worse happen to his character.

A big reason this one makes the list is the sheer level of ineptitude on display here. Shame needs to occur to prevent such a travesty repeating. Another fascinating part is the near-miss aspect. If this film was as successful as, say, any of the Transformers movies, you can bet 20th Century Fox would have kept beating audiences over the head with movies so bad as to be blunt murder weapons. Taylor Kitsch would be starring in Gambit instead of Channing Tatum, Deadpool as it was released wouldn’t exist, and a series of undoubtedly awful X-Men Origins films would have super-seceded the franchise’s First Class renaissance. Bullet=dodged.

5. X-Men

X-Men was the first of the 21st century superhero films but it was made with 90s logic. Singer wasn’t a comics fan and the studio’s mandate seemed to be that it couldn’t look or feel like them anyway. So the world was gifted with such “realistic” touches like the infamous black leather outfits that are as at home in an X-Men film as a BDSM club. There’s little sense of direction in the early goings; Anna Paquin’s Rogue is integral in X-Men 1 but in 2 and 3, they barely find time for her. We know less about Storm and Cyclops combined than her for Christ’s sake.  You could argue it deserves more credit for coming first but being early does not a good film make. Plan 9 From Outer Space came out the same year as Ben-Hur. They are not equal. For better or worse though, this film would set the tone for the franchise and standards for future superhero movies.

Singer should be commended for making a socially-conscious film focused on intolerance theme of comic lore but he completely forgets the team dynamics and soapy relationships that formed the spine of the comics. Let’s play a game: tell me something about Storm that isn’t her power. Drawing a blank? That’s a big problem. Nowhere is this more evident than the comparative screentime of Wolverine and Cyclops. Cyclops, the team leader in the comics, is reduced to a third wheel as Wolvie gobbled up his screentime, until James Marsden literally disappeared off-screen in the next film on our list . . .

4. X-Men: The Last Stand

Placing this reviled threequel above the original is controversial, I understand, but let me explain. I read some of the comics growing up but I didn’t have a particular set of X-Men I grew up with or a team dynamic I enjoyed most. I just knew the characters I liked. So, yes, Dark Phoenix is wasted. Yes, the movie basically takes a dump on Cyclops. Yes, it’s overstuffed, goofy hodgepodge. But it’s also operatic in its unwieldiness, with the soapy elements missing from Singer’s more self-serious X-films – and it has the balls to kill characters and take arcs (like Rogue’s) to a logical conclusion. And, hey, I like massive mutant-on-mutant battle scenes. Sue me.

The Last Stand also functions as the autopsy (X-Men Origins was the cremation) of the first decade of the superhero era. You can see the studio’s notes: “Characters=powers,” “throw all the comics together, combine every element everyone likes individually then disregard those who actually make the things interesting.” Without a Feige or even a Snyder or Singer, we end up messes like The Last Stand, where coherence and continuity become obstacles to be avoided because no one’s guiding these stories beyond each individual film. It’s something Marvel studiously avoided and they won because of it. Of course, the pendulum can swing the other way . . .

3. X-Men: Days of Future Past

. . . And give us pandering, which is Days of Future Past. Don’t get me wrong; a lot of it is good pandering. But the film was such an active apology tour that it seeped into the story until it was indistinguishable from metafiction. It’s not like they chose Days of Future Past because they planned it; they chose it because time travel is a convenient story loophole to erase bad continuity. The comics do it all the time and it’s the perfect indication of how much superhero franchises are absorbing tropes usually associated with comics. It’s a dangerous move; time travel is a deus ex machina that can threaten to undo any dramatic tension. When it doesn’t work, it can end franchises (looking at you, Terminator Genisys). When it does, you get this film.

You can ding it for its sprawling ensemble, its endless exposition, and Wolverine’s lead role but in my opinion you can’t take away from the film working. Its dramatically-compelling theory of time travel and large amount of fan service act as spackle for the film’s holes, such killing the almost the entire First Class supporting class off screen. Wolverine, in either a brilliant case of dramatic irony or a ignorant case of bad writing, is pretty ineffectual as a protagonist. Like First Class was Magneto’s story, this film is Xavier’s and it’s smart (or just savvy) enough to give Jennifer Lawrence an integral role without being reductive to her character’s independence.

2. X-Men: First Class

Before Days of Future Past awkwardly acknowledged the changes to the franchise, X-Men: First Class could have been mistaken for a straight up reboot. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine was just careless with continuity, First Class seems to go out of its way to alter what the previous films established as the past; the opening scene repeats the concentration camp scene from the first film but then diverges, almost asking “what if?” If the movie is good enough, problems like these become secondary. Fortunately, X-Men: First Class is very good.

Really good superhero films find things to be about other than superheroes. X-Men: First Class is a Bond film, if Bond were a Nazi-hunting Holocaust survivor with the power of magnetism. Vaughn is such a powerful stylist that he makes more of a proto-Kingsman than an X-Men film, taking full advantage of the period setting and embracing a fun, throwback tone. Michael Fassbender owns as a young, smoldering Byronic hero/super-spy version of Magneto (he and Tom Hiddleston should have a staring contest) with James McAvoy doing a commendable inversion of the monk-like Professor X as a raucous, partying youth.

1. X2: X-Men United

Really good superhero films find things other than the superheroes to explore but great superhero films find the core humanity within all superheroes. The intolerance the first X-Men film merely glanced at is on full display here, whether it’s the spine-tingling opening sequence of Nightcrawler in the White House (hands down, the best action sequence of the franchise), the scene of Iceman “coming out” as a mutant to his parents or the haunting flashbacks of Wolverine’s traumatic past. Brian Cox puts an all-too-human face on that intolerance as the genuinely-terrifying William Stryker, who’s experience with his mutant son taught him mutants need to be controlled and, if necessary, put down.

Before we close, let’s take about X-Men: Apocalypse.

If I had to guess right now, I’d say Apocalypse will wind up below Days of Future Past in my rankings. The moment I saw those stupid black armor-outfits, I knew we were destined to get what we always get from Singer. which has issues, at least with me.

This series, like superhero cinema, was struggling to define itself early in its inception and only in 2016 does the creative team seem to have finally figured out how to expand the series properly. Deadpool was a roaring success, Apocalypse, which reintroduces the original team as youngsters, will probably do very well (the fact that the next film would chronologically be set in the 90s and be considered a period film blows my Millennial mind). Gambit, a third Wolverine and a Deadpool sequel are being made and future projects include X-Force and New Mutants. 

Meanwhile Singer, who will shoot his adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea this fall, has said he has no intentions of stepping away, conceivably setting up his potential return for his fifth X-Men film in 2019. McAvoy and Fassbender are said to have signed contract extensions while Lawrence has said she is done after Apocalypse. Singer and his creative imprint, though, will remain inextricable from the X-Men film series.

But most of all, as I wrote in the introduction, expect more messy stories expanding and contracting at will, an utterly-unique beast among more traditional superhero blockbusters. A mutant, you might say.

Sam Flynn

Sam Flynn

Sam is a writer and journalist whose passion for pop culture burns with the fire of a thousand suns and at least three LED lamps.