Ranking the X-Men movies

So I figured the time was right for another go at being an amateur film critic, the around three of my friends who read this seemed to like when I gave the Marvel Cinematic Universe this same treatment, and with the release of Logan there are now ten films in the X-Men series, a nice round number. It's going to be difficult for me to put these movies in any particular order, this isn't like the MCU where I basically liked all of them, the X-Men movies, in my opinion, have a couple of really good ones, a couple of really bad ones, and those between just stay in the middle to me in that haze of "basically okay in a fun but disposable way" but I'm gonna try anyway. Same deal as before I'll list each film in ascending order of preference and give reasons as to why each film falls where it does.

#10: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that this one is at the bottom of the list, better critics than me have been tearing this a new one since it came out, but my personal reasons for where this falls on the list are slightly different to what I imagine are the reasons of a lot of other people who didn't like this film, put simply, it's completely forgettable, I've seen this movie many times before for one reason or another, but even now I couldn't really tell you much that happened in it (in fact several repeat viewings happened because I couldn't remember whether I liked it or not.) which is not to say there is nothing of the film I remember, or even that everything I do remember is bad, Hugh Jackman is consistently great as Wolverine throughout the whole series and this one is no exception, but aside from a few spots of admittedly impressive cinematography there's not much else to recommend this one for. Also, just to bring up the red-and-black elephant in the room, at the time I first saw this I wasn't familiar with the Deadpool character, so the awful portrayal and how badly it missed the point of things didn't register for me then, and honestly still doesn't, the movie isn't memorable enough for me to be annoyed by that and we got Deadpool proper eventually anyway. 

#9: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

No, that is not a typo, Yes, this is where I think this one belongs.why? I'll answer your question with some more questions.

Why did no foreshadowing of this future happen in any of the other movies?

How did Xavier convince Magneto to cooperate with him? 

Why is Xavier alive after having been blown up in The Last Stand? (I'm aware he was shown to be alive in a post-credits sequence but a) that shouldn't count as part of the movie, and b) it still doesn't explain how)

When was this post-apocalyptic future meant to be happening?

Why does Kitty Pride, the one who can walk through walls, suddenly have the power to send people's consciousness back through time? She never had that power before in the movies or the comics, and it's not even tangentially related to the power she does have. How did she get it?

How does Mystique's DNA and her power of shapeshifting within it (which is completely cosmetic) enable the sentinels to adapt to mutant powers? it's shapeshifting, it just makes you look different it doesn't make you any stronger or change what you're made of.

Why is Bolivar Trask. previously played by Bill Duke, played by Peter Dinklage 30 years before the events of X-men 3? (look up pictures of the two if you haven't seen them) What the hell happened to him in the interim? 

Why, after the events of Last Stand has all the progress mutants have gained towards mainstream acceptance, literally the entire point of the first three movies, been completely disregarded for a story that came completely out of the blue with no build-up?

and just to get the nitpicking out of the way, why are Wolverine's left-hand claws still adamantium when they were established as having been cut off and regrown as bone in The Wolverine? 

those are all I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there are more

Now, I'm sure if you cornered Simon Kinberg and/or Bryan Singer on the street with these questions, they'd be more than happy to give you some answers, but for some reason, they didn't see fit to include them in the film...I grant you one or two of the above questions are nit-picks that don't really matter, but a lot of them are gaping plot holes that just go completely unaddressed, and that annoys me. This is to say nothing of the fact, that X-Men as a franchise started in 2000 with the premise that mutants must fight to protect the world that hates and fears them, and here they are in  2014, not only still stuck on that narrative which they really should've moved on from by now, but they've actively gone backwards.

I was once told in response to this that if you treat it as it's own standalone film, it makes more sense, but see, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to treat it as a standalone film for the simple reason that it isn't one and clearly isn't supposed to be. It was Simon Kinberg's actual job to write this screenplay, he got paid for it, and I am not getting paid to use weak excuses to justify bad writing (I'm also not getting paid to point it out but this is more therapeutic.) Not only is this not a standalone, it's the worst potential part of any franchise, it's the One More Day, of X-Men movies, it only exists to reset the continuity so that the ones that everybody hates never happened, I don't dispute that this was something that needed doing, but that doesn't make it a good reason to make a movie. 

On the positive side, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender remain brilliant choices for a young Charles Xavier and Magneto. they basically carry the lion's share of the film (though it is good to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in those parts again) and Hugh Jackman could basically play Wolverine in his sleep at this point, which actually is not inaccurate for his part in the future. the Quicksilver slo-mo scene is still funny, even if that raises the question of why they don't keep this, actually very useful guy around for the climax of the story. the action is at least fun and imaginative as well, these things put this movie above Origins: Wolverine in my opinion, but they aren't enough to save it from a nonsensical plot that pays no attention to detail and seems to exist only to thinly disguise franchise management as filmmaking. How this managed to achieve a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes will forever be a mystery to me. 

#8: X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Yeah, that's right, I thought this was very slightly better than Days of Future Past (fucking fight me!) don't get me wrong, it's still shit, I mean, it's not all bad I like the natural progression of mutant acceptance that has clearly happened here, I also like that the closer mutants get to their goal the bigger the obstacles they're facing seem to be, it just seems right. But  there are narrative problems that just can't be ignored, apparently mutants are now put into numbered "classes" to determine their threat level, e.g Magneto is apparently a "class three" mutant and Jean Grey is the only "class five" mutant ever to exist, this class system had never been brought up or mentioned before, and it has never been mentioned since, yet nobody ever questions it, like it's been around forever and the film expects it to mean something to the audience. It was kind of like when season 4 of Heroes just started referring to people with abilities as "specials" completely out of the blue and everyone just pretended this had always been the case. No, that's incredibly lazy writing, stop it! That's just one problem. For various reasons this film completely butchers the Dark Phoenix storyline by not really having much of a storyline, there was no build-up whatsoever, there was no foreshadowing in previous movies save a single post-credits scene after X2, and in an effort to retcon the Phoenix force into existence they gave the laziest, most boring excuse anyone has ever thought of. Charles Xavier discovered her as a child and she was basically Carrie-level dangerous so he altered her personality with his power. Which, by the way, is something the Charles Xavier of the previous films, it had been painstakingly established, would absolutely never, ever have done under any circumstances. When Wolverine expresses disgust at this Xavier says "I don't have to explain myself to you." That wasn't Xavier talking to Wolverine, that was Brett fucking Ratner talking to the audience, an example of director-mouthpiecing only slightly less condescending than Cyclops' "yellow spandex" remark at the end of the first one. The choices for mutants are also odd, Nightcrawler, a very popular mutant with a big part in X2 wasn't in this film, (unless he was and I just don't remember) but Phat somehow warrants an appearance?

Not the only example but I don't want to ramble on about this one too much, For the sake of being clear I should mention something. The fact is a lot of what went wrong with this one is clearly tied to the troubled production.

Bryan Singer left the franchise, taking the writers with him leaving only a partial story treatment because he apparently didn't have a full idea of what he wanted to do. Also to make Superman Returns which he apparently did have a more complete idea for. Okay, that's fair enough, and to be fair, Brett Ratner was not the first choice of replacement. Matthiew Vaughn (who would later go on to direct First Class) was forced to pull out and several other directors (including Zack Snyder, if you can imagine a possibly even worse version) were busy at the time, and Brett Ratner apparently knew little about the X-Men mythos at the time, and so trusted the screenwriters to come up with something good.

However, none of this is an excuse, if a movie cannot be made good in the time frame it should be delayed or canceled altogether, as Shigeru Miyamoto (I think) once said of games "delayed is eventually good, rushed is bad forever" I think the same principal applies here. But movies are still a business and business is about money so...rush out the movie I suppose.

#7: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

I struggled with where to put this one to be honest, on the one hand, I don't dislike it overall, I think it's fine, basically alright with a few standout moments, which pretty much sums up the entire X-Men franchise for me. On the other hand there really isn't that much remarkable about it, to the point I really don't have much to say, I remember enjoying some of the visuals, the Quicksilver slo-mo scene was a laugh, (even if it was a retread of a joke from a previous film) there's the odd forced time-period reference, and the villain looks like Ivan Ooze. One thing I do remember clearly about this one is Michael Fassbender, Magneto's character arc, or at least the conclusion to it is...less sensical than I would've liked, but it started out strong and stayed such for long enough to be memorable and Fassbender's performance was easily the highlight of the film. Not really sold on Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, James McAvoy is always good but wasn't given a huge amount to do here that didn't feel like checking off boxes. Also, what happened to any sense of continuity in this series? They don't seem to be following any kind of an overarching story anymore, the X-Men movies lately just kind of happen. With all that said it was entertaining enough that I like it more than the previous ones on this list but it still doesn't graduate from "basically inoffensive." Also, I don't know where Caliban is supposed to be from in this one. but it certainly wasn't Bristol.

#6: The Wolverine (2013)

I really don't know which way to go on The Wolverine, I mean, it's functional enough, there's an identifiable three-act structure, (sort of) the character's motivations are all clear and I don't know enough about the comics to get pissed off about any changes made to the continuity. Even so I find this one just a bit uninvolving, I like it quite a bit more than the last solo effort by Wolverine, but still, personally, I don't much care for the only notable protagonist being a grim growly man growling grimly. even if it is Hugh Jackman, (I do have to acknowledge then that I am probably not the target audience for the Wolverine character or anything solely about him) With that said I was entertained by this one, there was actually some drama as Wolverine doesn't heal like he usually does and so is actually in some real danger. the storyline...existed, it honestly seemed a bit like filler material but I can think of far worse ways to kill an hour or two, this one's basically alright. 

#5: X-Men (2000)

The original X-Men came about at a time before Superhero films were all that common, after Batman & Robin had all but destroyed any big business interest in the genre if the fandom is to be believed (it was still better than Batman v Superman) and before Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies would really show people how it was done. I believe that this timing is for the most part what cements X-Men as a classic to so many, because looking at it, this basically competent Superhero flick doesn't really hold up to modern standards. That's okay though, I'm still perfectly happy to watch it on any given night in. Some things you have to judge by the standards of their time, and in its time this was basically the best you could reasonably hope for in an X-Men movie. Self-serious and ashamed of  its source material though it was ("These outfits look stupid" "What would you prefer, yellow spandex?") it treated these characters with a maturity that at the time you just didn't expect. Patrick Stewart threatened to run away with the whole movie as Charles Xavier, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was an immense discovery. Ian McKellen as Magneto also deserves to be a part of that conversation. 

The film would suffer from issues common to the X-Men as a formula, for example, there are a few too many characters for all of them to get a decent amount of development. the tone was pretty dark at times, but thankfully not oppressively so. The stuff that works works so well that this film is still watchable today, though I do have to admit it hasn't aged as well as I would like to say it has.

#4: X2: X-Men United (2003)

Released simply as X-Men 2 in the UK. I actually think I first saw this on a plane when I was 12. the picture was awful and the headphones barely worked, but I enjoyed it enough to want to see it again, I've seen it many times since, and I still like it. How much of that is nostalgia I'd find difficult to say, but I remember finding this one fascinating as a kid, not to mention haunting as all hell with the Xavier brainwashing sequence with Stryker's son. the characters all get a fair share of the screen-time, (except Cyclops, but who the hell cares? Cyclops is boring) which allows the viewer to empathise with Magneto and Mystique in a way not really present in the original. X2 gets major points in my eyes simply for being one of those rare sequels that actually improves on the original. The action is a significant step up, as are the visual effects, and the script is sharper this time around too. This film still belongs very much to its time, but I have no trouble believing it was films like this one that lead to the Superhero genre being what it is today. 

#3: Deadpool (2016)

What can I say? I enjoyed this one more than most of them, yeah I know the plot is pretty by-the-numbers and any other character than Deadpool would've flopped incredibly hard, but that's the genius of it. Deadpool as a character was designed for stuff like this, the fact that they got the character down so well is exactly why I'm putting it so high on this list. holding a mirror up to formulaic stories is the sort of thing Deadpool does best and Ryan Reynolds does a bang-up job bringing that to life. this movie knows precisely what you came for and delivers it in spades, this is arguably a more complete version of what it's trying to be than anything else on this list, and I hope they don't mess up the sequel now that they've finally decided to give it a budget. 

#2: X-men: First Class (2011)

This is my personal favourite of the series, and for quite a while I was sure I'd put this at number 1. but I'll get to why I didn't in the next entry, Again, this is the one I personally enjoy the most out of the entire series. that Matthiew Vaughn almost directed X-Men 3 before this must now be acknowledged as one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of cinema. Our story begins as many often do, with a young boy threatening his mother with a baseball bat. This boy turns out to be Charles Xavier, who due to his telepathy can tell that the woman stood before him is not his mother. It turns out to be Mystique, he then immediately invites her to live with him so that she doesn't have to steal. (the story conveniently glosses over how he convinced his mother to allow this, but A, the scene implies that his mother doesn't care much for him, and B, he's Charles Xavier, if he needed to he could convince a one-eyed man to buy a 3D TV.) and so, now knowing there are more mutants like him out there, he rounds a few up including Magneto and forms the X-Men. that's enough plot as for some reason I've tried to keep this pretty much free of spoilers just in case someone somewhere hasn't seen these yet.

Anyway, this one features a very game James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as well as Jennifer Lawrence before she got obviously bored of these movies and began phoning it in. the younger Charles and Eric are different from their modern-day counterparts, but you can identify their personalities all the same, Here's why I should probably mention Mystique and the fact that she seems to be completely different from the Rebecca Romijn incarnation of the character. First Class was originally intended to be a soft reboot, so this isn't really a problem. Or rather, it wouldn't have been,  if Fox had not later chosen to reverse that decision and go with the "branching timelines" structure (if you can call it a structure) which future films seemed to completely forget about (except for when the plot needed them not to, no need to be coherent or anything.) But for now, given the benefit of judgment by its time and intent, this version of Mystique has more of a character arc which is only a good thing.

Kevin Bacon...is Kevin Bacon he's always fun, you know what you're in for there likely as not, and I'm really glossing over it here but there is not a person in the cast who didn't manage to make me care about them (except maybe Emma Frost, the diamond woman, she wasn't given much to do, but you can't win them all)

The thing I love most about this film above everything else on this list is the unabashed sincerity of the whole thing. the vibrant colour-pallette and Henry Jackman's brilliant score set the stage for a wholehearted and genuine X-Men movie that wasn't afraid to crack a smile and for the first time in this franchise was completely unashamed of its source material. (It's almost as if you'll get a better film out of your source material if you don't display contempt and apologize for it) Matthiew Vaughn, this franchise has sorely missed your direction. Ah, crap now I've written that out I want to put this at number one again, but I suppose in the name of honest appraisal, I just can't do that.

#1: Logan (2017)

Yes, it's the obvious choice, I'm not the type to be contrary just for the sake of it, and some things are obvious because they're right. I said I enjoyed First Class the most, and I do, but taken strictly as a piece of cinema, and, I think it's fair to say, one of cultural significance at that, there was really no other candidate for the top spot. 

(CAUTION: I'M GOING TO TALK SPOILERS FOR THIS ONE, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT, DON'T READ ON. TRUST ME IT'S WORTH SEEING UNSPOILED

Logan on paper is everything I profess to dislike about certain superhero films, in the not-too-distant future, everything is dark, depressing, and relentlessly grim. This film depressed me from start to finish, it is not a fun movie, certainly not "Saturday night with friends" material. Also, you'd be hard-pressed to even call this a superhero film, or even an X-Men movie if it weren't for the few mutants in it that survived the vaguely-established (but in the right way) borderline-extinction of mutant kind. for which Charles Xavier may or may not have been responsible. The movie does tell you what happened but doesn't hold your hand until you get it, or feel the need to frontload exposition, if you're paying attention you can piece it together. 

So, Logan himself is aging, his healing factor is waning and his youth with it, he makes his meager living as a limo driver in El Paso, Texas. The money from which he is saving to buy a boat so that he can take Xavier (who is suffering from a deteriorative brain disease that causes him to have kind of seizures which make him lose control of his telepathy in a way that could kill everyone around him) away onto the sea to live out his days where he's least likely to hurt anyone. It is not confirmed but implied, that these seizures were how the X-Men died. This bleak tone carries on through the film, but we do get some nice scenes with the characters and the oppressiveness of the rest of the film makes those scenes seem all the brighter and is all the more depressing for it when the story pulls the rug out from under you to remind you that niceness isn't a thing in this world anymore. there's also a constant theme of aging and mortality, with Logan (who was essentially ageless before) finally starting to succumb to the ravages of time, and Xavier, now 90 years old, slowly losing himself to his illness. (I'm sorry if this isn't a fun read, there's not a lot of humour in this film)

the action scenes are far between but there are plenty of them, the action itself is in keeping with the new R-rating for the film, much gorier and more visceral than before. Which, considering a lead character is a man who sprouts metal claws from his knuckles to fight with, you'd think would've been a no-brainer for the previous entries, but oh well. 

The cast all do a fantastic job, the story does a great job of leading us on with great character scenes like carrots on sticks, only to have us in a state of total despair by the end of them, but ultimately ends with a glimmer of hope (and probably the setup for a new franchise)

Hugh Jackman went into this knowing it would be his last outing as Wolverine and he played it to a tee, it couldn't have hurt that Wolverine was always an R-rated character, now in an R-rated movie, but Jackman has made the role his own over a period of 17 years and this was a worthy swansong. 

Patrick Stewart probably broke damn near everyone with this last outing as Charles Xavier, not just with his harrowing depiction of a deteriorating mind, but after everything he's done, all that he's worked for and everything he's been through, he dies thinking about a boat. A boat he only wants so that he can exist without hurting anyone. To top it off he's killed by who he believes to be Logan (it's actually a young, much angrier clone of him) after remembering what he'd done to the X-Men. The very symbol of utopian naivete and optimism for this universe killed by the man his friend might have been without him was a very poignant way to end things.

I went to see this originally, with three other people, and not one of us left the theater feeling okay. 

I stand by what I say in that this is the best film in the X-Men franchise, but I don't think I'd want to watch it again for a while, give me First Class any day, but Logan is one probably best reserved for very specific occasions, or if for some reason you enjoy feeling miserable. Still with that said it's a terrific film, and you should definitely see it at least once.

So, in case you just wanted the numbers and didn't care why we have...

#10: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

#9: X-Men: Days of Future Past

#8: X-Men: The Last Stand

#7: X-Men: Apocalypse

#6: The Wolverine

#5: X-Men

#4: X2: X-Men United

#3: Deadpool

#2: X-Men: First Class

#1: Logan