Every X-Men Movie Ranked Worst To Best

It’s been a long road for the X-Men movie franchise. Once a trailblazer for superhero movies, the franchise was seemingly finished after two consecutive movies that were reviled by critics and fans alike. But like a phoenix, all too appropriately, the franchise rose from the ashes and is now poised to become bigger than ever. The year 2016 will see the release of three new X-Men films: Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse and Gambit. With the future looking bright, it seemed like a good time to go back and reassess the X-Men movies that have come so far.

7. X-Men: the Last Stand

X-Men: The Last Stand is, by all accounts, a terrible movie. What might be most infuriating abouat it is that it uses two of the greatest X-Men stories of all time – The Dark Phoenix Saga and Astonishing X-Men: Gifted – as its source material and utterly squanders them both. This film sent the entire X-Men film franchise into a nosedive that, several years later, it is only now recovering from.

6. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If you’re a diehard Deadpool fan, the first solo Wolverine movie likely ranks as even worse than X-Men: The Last Stand in your heart. I can’t blame you there. The way this movie treats Wade Wilson is absurd, and totally squanders Ryan Reynolds’ natural ability to play the character. However, Deadpool problem aside, this movie is just as bad as X-Men: The Last Stand, but in different ways. Where X-Men: The Last Stand is bad in an infuriating way, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is bad in the stupidest ways, in a way that almost places it in that ironic place where it’s so bad it’s good. It’s a big budget movie that couldn’t do a quick Google search and realize that wolverines are not the same thing as wolves. Do I need to say more?

5. The Wolverine

Where the first Wolverine movie was a big dumb action movie in all the worst ways, The Wolverine is a big dumb action movie that you actually don’t mind catching during one of its many airings on a FOX cable network. Aside from the fact that Logan has claws and that it’s set in Japan, the movie doesn’t do a whole lot to differentiate itself from other action movies of its kin. However, with the exception of a questionable third act, it’s a competently made and enjoyable movie.

4. X-Men: First Class

Once thought buried under the weight of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class is the film that did the seemingly impossible and breathed new life into X-Men movies. The movie certainly has its problems. For a movie set in the 1960s and toying with themes of minority politics, the way it treats its minority characters is problematic at best, and, while fun and well executed, Matthew Vaughan’s retro-spy movie directing style feels like it belongs in a different movie. But if you’re watching X-Men: First Class, you’re watching it for the budding bromance between Professor X and Magneto, and thanks to the performances of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, that’s absolutely reason enough.

3. X-Men

Before The Avengers, before even Spider-Man, X-Men set the bar for what a modern superhero movie should be. While the plot is somewhat unassuming compared to superhero movies that would follow, the film brings most of the principal X-Men to life wonderfully (with the exception of the woefully miscast Halle Berry), and does a solid job of balancing action, drama, and a sprinkling of humor the way a good X-Men story should.

2. X2: X-Men United

First thing’s first: X2: X-Men United is a really stupid name for a movie. That said, while X-Men was a good start, X2 was an even better movie than its predecessor. Professor X and Magneto being forced to put their differences aside for the greater good of all mutants is pretty classic X-Men material, and they managed to wrap that around a plot that reveals some insight into Wolverine’s past and pays reverence to God Loves, Man Kills, perhaps the greatest X-Men story of all time. For a long time, X2 was the best of the X-Men movies, and it might have remained that way if not for the top film on this list.

1. X-Men: Days of Future Past

No film in the X-Men film franchise come anywhere close to the amition of Days of Future Past. The return of director Bryan Singer make that ambition a reality. Days of Future Past managed to push forward the story of the First Class characters and bring back the cast of the original X-Men movies for one last great adventure, and kept its balance. The movie has the best fight scenes of any in the franchise, and perhaps the best set piece in Quicksilver’s breakout scene. Days of Future Past should rank among the most challenging X-Men stories to adapt to film, but what a huge success it turned out to be.

And now that the franchise is fully righted and on its way to even bigger things, we look forward to X-Men: Apocalypse on May 27, 2016.