Movies of the X-Men Universe Ranked

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

With the release of the latest X-Men movie, DARK PHOENIX, comes the end of an era as the characters who have had a fixture on the big screen now converge under the all-encompassing Disney umbrella, which means that from here on out the mutant family will go through a drastic change on the big screen. What that will entail, no one knows, but we can surmise they will join the ever-growing Marvel Cinematic Universe and join (or fight) another team that rhymes with the "Schebengers". 

So, given that this will be the last time we see the Marvel superhero team on the big screen for some time, we here at JoBlo thought it would be prudent to rank each and every movie from the X-Men universe for good and all. That means going back to 2000's X-MEN, all the way through the reboot with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, paying a visit to the Merc With a Mouth, Deadpool, and including the movie hitting theaters today.

Across this mighty canon of films are triumphs of the genre and ones that stand apart from it, and all the way down to some that do the genre and the characters some serious disservice. Which are the best of the best, and which are best left sliced and diced into a million pieces? Pop out your claws and dive on in. 

———-

12. X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE:

After THE LAST STAND Fox couldn’t just pick up with the X-Men for another random adventure, what with Professor X being obliterated, Jean Grey being killed, and Magneto left alone in the park with not but some pigeons to keep him company. So, they did what any studio does when they’ve reached the end and went back to the beginning, moving forward with a planned slate of movies that would explore the origins of their famous characters, and would start with their most popular character – Wolverine. This meant going back in time to the 1800s to explain his origins, and while it would’ve been fun to see Logan having adventures in history – getting to meet Teddy Roosevelt and being at the birth of Stan Lee – the movie squanders any attempts to explore the character, provide superhero thrills, or be mentioned in the same breath as some of the other X-Men movies. Barreling through one section of his origin where Sabretooth/Victor Creed is his brother, only to get to another section of his origin as if two movies mushed together, ORIGINS cycles through a series of random mutants to flesh out the movie and distract from the title character, like Gambit before the character became synonymous with “development hell” (Taylor Kitsch), one of the Black-Eyed Peas (Will.i.am as John Wraith) and one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings (Dominic Monaghan). And look what they did to Deadpool! Looks like Keanu Reeves after he woke up from the goo in The Matrix and given red slacks. Between a rushed, cobbled together story, overly-CGIed action, and an ensemble of useless characters that aren’t Wolverine, ORIGINS feels so far removed from the movies that came before and after in the worst ways. If there was anything good that came from it, it formed the basis of failure that everyone involved with the movies would crawl back out of and look back on as a cursed fever dream.

 

11. X-MEN: APOCALYPSE:

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE was a once-in-a-lifetime event that brought together two separate series of characters for an adventure the leaps between the turbulent 70s and the bleak future, all while juggling compelling character arcs. How the hell do you live up to something like that? Turns out, the answer is to try and double down on the action and cataclysm by turning one of the X-Men’s most dangerous foes into a one-off villain who looks like a pile of Play-Doh left out in the sun for too long and who spends most of the time slogging around and lecturing with the self-satisfaction of a graduate student. APOCALYPSE once again found Fox worked into a story development hole where they didn’t quite know how what to do with the characters it had been working with and tried to mask it with epic action. Sadly, not only did it lack the forward character development for characters like Professor X, Magneto and Mystique, but it’s a bloated slog that tried to juggle said development with new ones for young heroes like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler and Storm. There’s too much in this movie that tries to get fans excited about the formation of the X-Men they know and love that it just comes off as disingenuous, muddled and just an absolute swamp of a summer blockbuster – and featuring one of the blandest villains in the entire series. It's okay, Oscar Isaac; we know it's not your fault. 

10. DARK PHOENIX:

The latest entry in the X-Men series – and perhaps the last for a while as far as the whole team is concerned – has a lot more pressure to live up to than just adapting one of the most famous comic book arcs in history (again). Costly reshoots and release delays meant talks of trouble on the internet before the first trailer even dropped, so the movie was basically having to push a boulder uphill from moment one. The end result is hardly as bad as people expected to be, but make no mistake, this is indeed a bad movie, and once again means Fox is 0-2 with the Dark Phoenix storyline. The plot is muddled by trying to fit in so many characters but having nothing to use them for other than fodder (and because of those pesky contract obligations), with nothing on either the emotional or action stage that gives the movie any sense of scope or momentum. In trying to be both dramatically weighty and epic in scale the movie mostly fails to be either with rushed character development and unimpressive action , and the only saving grace are some solid performances from James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult and Sophie Turner and one or two effective moments between them. It's a shame this era of the X-Men movies is going out with such a fizzle while wasting some of the best performances of the series on a bleak, sometimes unintentionally funny final outing that's less of an epic series conclusion akin to ENDGAME, and more of a listless example of "Let's get this over with."

9. X-MEN: THE LAST STAND:

The first two X-Men movies (along with Spider-Man) deserve to be credited for rejuvenating the superhero movie genre and setting it all down the path we’re at now, with costumed heroes dominating the box office. After those first thrilling outings that balanced comic book action with compelling characters, Fox decided to let director Brett Ratner get his hands on the series after Bryan Singer left to fail at Superman. Everyone should’ve known Ratner is not one for nuanced character development, so what LAST STAND ended up being was nothing more than big, narratively bloated action flick that featured characters we had grown to love over the years, but that did nothing with them. You got Jean Grey coming back as Dark Phoenix and causing panic, the cure for mutants also causing panic, and Magneto trying to take advantage of both and throwing around bridges in the process. Everything about the movie is trying to live up to the title of THE LAST STAND with doom-laden, “This is It” conflicts that made the stakes high but gives the heroes nothing to do but get out of the way and make room for Wolverine. The action may be cool in spots, which at least makes it entertaining as a mindless summer action flick, but compared to the previous two movies it’s a prime example of what happens when you spend years developing characters only to, well, hand it all over to Brett Ratner. At least Ben Foster landed on his feet.

 

8. THE WOLVERINE:

After the tragedy of ORIGINS there was really nowhere to go but up for the character and the series as a whole, and after rousing back with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, Fox continued on with another adventure for their most popular X-Man, this time ignoring everything from his last adventure and taking him to Japan and putting a sword in his hand. The first smart move was getting WALK THE LINE director James Mangold in the mix, and the second was putting the focus back on Logan’s arc and lessening the number of other mutants on screen, ultimately ignoring ORIGINS and acting as a sequel to THE LAST STAND (lesser of two evils and all that). The result is a mixed bag that mostly gets points for being a step in the right direction more than anything else. The final act is a bit of a mess of action and the plot points don't get much mileage of the story, but the end does ultimately find him learning to move on from Jean Grey, even if he didn’t get there in the most compelling way. Still, if the aim was to smooth things over after ORIGINS and to make sure people remembered Jackman’s Wolverine fondly enough to be excited for what DAYS OF FUTURE PAST had in store, then THE WOLVERINE is a mild success in brand maintenance.

 

7. X-MEN:

For years the only superhero movies that found huge success on the big screen were Superman and Batman, and while the former ended the 80s on a note that would freeze him until 2006, and with the latter literally failing among a series of frozen set pieces, the X-Men were tasked with earning that same success with a whole new team of heroes. By all accounts, the first X-MEN could’ve been terrible, but the care and attention were put into it where it needed to count – the characters – and thanks to a game ensemble and an explosive entrance onto the scene from Hugh Jackman, the movie was a solid debut for Marvel’s ultimate fighting team. The action is a bit humdrum in spots, the desire for Matrix-esque costumes robbed it of some of the colorful magic from the comics, and not everything about it has aged as well as it could’ve, but the core mechanics are sound, and I still get some chills after Rogue asks Logan if it hurts whenever his claws come out, and Jackman responds with a pitch-perfect, "Every time."

 

6. DEADPOOL 2:

I defy anyone on the planet to say that they knew the first DEADPOOL would be as big as it ended up being. Fox, Ryan Reynolds and everyone else involved may or may not have, but either way, they weren’t going to let that filthy train stop soon, and a sequel was rushed into development. Sequels to movies as uniquely entertaining as the first DEADPOOL don’t always turn out so well, but luckily, much of the heart, vulgarity, gleeful violence and charms of its star made their way over to the bigger and bolder sequel. Bigger is the opportune word, with the violence ramped up, more money for additional X-Men, and more visual flair with David Leitch at the helm. The addition of Josh Brolin’s Cable gave the Merc With a Mouth a worthy foil, his stoic demeanor undercut by bursts of flagrant profanity and put-downs. The abundance of new characters like Cable, Domino and more took away a slight amount of the narrative power from the main character in the sequel, but in all the ways that count this is a worthy sequel to a movie that sliced its way through the superhero genre to carve out its own place.

 

5. X2: X-MEN UNITED:

While the keyword with sequels is usually “bigger and better,” the sequel to the first X-Men mostly avoided this when it came to the area most studios want this to apply to – namely bigger visuals, more cast, and bolder action. X2 manages to have all that in the small ways that upgrade from the first movie but makes the largest improvements in the character department where they need to be. We get to see more from characters like Wolverine, who confronts his origins (oh, what little we knew was in store), Jean Grey, who starts unlocking her true powers, and as Charles Xavier, who gets put into a darker scenario as he confronts his past mistakes with a former student. The curtain is drawn back more on beloved characters and expands the world in small, meaningful ways, making for what still stands as one of the best outings of the main X-Men series, and still one of the best of the mutant franchise as a whole.

 

4. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS:

Remember when I said a bit back that one good thing that came out of ORIGINS was the studio trying to dig itself out of that pit of despair. Well, that came out of scrapping the proposed X-MEN ORIGINS: MAGNETO story they had planned and what came out of that was the series reboot, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS. Getting a director with a fresh perspective at the helm – Matthew Vaughn – and a cast of game actors like Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Jennifer Lawrence front and center, this new outing rejuvenated the series by showing a whole new side of beloved characters. Perhaps no one thought anyone could bring these characters to life the same way actors like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen did, but the movie is entirely buoyed by fantastic performances from the whole cast, not to mention their characters’ engaging storylines, the movie recalls the best of the first two movies while giving it all a modern, exciting new spin that brought the mutant team into the new decade with style and gravitas.

 

3. DEADPOOL:

Poor Wade Wilson. After being neutered in every sense of the word in ORIGINS the character was perhaps down and out for good, and that would’ve stayed true had actor Ryan Reynolds not fought so hard to get his own, faithful solo story told. After years of being in development hell, which included a full start on production before the movie was brought to a halt, only for test footage (leaked by who, no one knows — *coyly winks towards Reynolds*), but the rousing reception made the studio think twice, and a year later the movie was ready for theaters. Thanks to a genius viral marketing campaign that was validated by a product that lived up to the profane hilarity and unapologetic violence it promised, it was clear the superhero world had found its new, modern voice. Reynolds owns the character like Jackman with Wolverine and Downey with Iron Man, adding to his raunchy personality a beating heart and soul that drives the whole movie. Everything about this first DEADPOOL works so perfectly in establishing the character and the tone of his movies, and it’s perhaps the most effortlessly entertaining and rewatchable of all the movies on this list.

 

2. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST:

We’ve seen X-Men movies deliver on the character work and on the action front before, but never have they nailed the exact level of both and laced in with an unseen kind of scope as we got in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. Taking the characters across time and generations in more ways than one, this is the one time both the new school and old school era of the X-Men would ever be able to merge in a single, cohesive storyline, and the result is an affecting, rousing blockbuster that gets more mileage out of the team than any movie before it. McAvoy turns in his best work as Xavier in his tenure here as a broken down and emotionally depleted Charles, as Jackman’s shows a more honest and wiser version of Wolverine than past outings offered him. Even in a movie landscape filled with AVENGERS movies, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST has a thrilling narrative scope that stands out from the pack, and that could’ve easily been buried under exposition and time travel confusion. But no, it all worked seamlessly and provided the once-in-a-lifetime X-Men movie we aren’t ever going to get again.

 

1. LOGAN:

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST may have gotten some great mileage out of Jackman and Wolverine, but the character had only had terrible-to-passable solo outings, which is a shame given the impact of the character and the man who had made him an icon over almost two decades.  Enter a more committed-than-ever leading man and returning director James Mangold, who after his last experience knew exactly where to take the character and how uncompromising his outing needed to be. The result is not only the best X-Men movie across the whole canon but one of the greatest comic book movies of all time. Effective in its rough and tumble minimalism, palpable in its drama and engaging in its story centered on Logan and Charles trying to exist in a world where mutants are all but gone and aiding a young mutant girl – LOGAN is a comic book movie that doubles as a subtle and engrossing western drama. Jackman is the best he’s ever been here, bringing out a jaded, haunted version of the character who is done giving fucks, and Stewart also turns in some career-defining work as Charles, reflective and weary after seeing all his students lost behind him. Violent, mature, challenging and sometimes sweet, LOGAN ranks as one of the best examples in what can happen when studios take a chance on filmmakers and their actors with a massive IP property, and it will forever remain a landmark achievement in the field.

———-

So, there you have it. Almost 20 years, and a lot of highs and lows. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe may get a lot of credit today for its breadth of superhero storytelling over the last decade-plus, let it never be said the X-Men movies didn't pave the way for it to come barrelling down with its sacks of cash. You'll find in these dozen entries are an incredibly diverse selection of movies that prove just how bad comic book movies can get when hearts are in the wrong place, as well as how magnificent they can be when passion, boldness and ingenuity are the driving forces. What the future has in store for these characters we do not know, but they've already had one helluva run, so here's to more mutant excitement and, hopefully, their boldest adventures yet. 

DARK PHOENIX is in theaters now.