A die-hard Marvel fan has created a complete timeline of the X-Men film franchise as the universe’s end presumably draws close.
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The X-Men have been saving the world in movies since 2000 thanks to 20th Century Fox. There are currently 13 movies in the line-up to account for, and Reddit user lachlan146 did their best to lay them out in the proper order.
This is no small task when it comes to the X-Men movies. The franchise has jumped around in its own history, undertaken a few time travel stories and even recast many characters while keeping others the same. This makes it a little hard to pin down which films follow which, and which are set in which timeline.
Either way, the franchise’s chronological origin is X-Men: First Class. Set in 1962, this was actually the fifth movie to come out. It was also the first to star James McAvoy as Professor Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. The movie recast some beloved roles from earlier films on the basis of showing younger versions of them, although the new actors have stayed with the movies ever since.
From there, lachlan146’s timeline splits in a way, while always ending up in the same place. It could jump straight to 1979 with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Filmed in 2009, this is the fourth film made and tells a relatively self-contained story about Wolverine’s past, going back several centuries.
This timeline then picks up a pretty straightforward pace — next comes X-Men, followed by X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine and then X-Men Days of Future Past. This last one — filmed in 2014 as the franchise’s seventh entry — involves some complicated time travel that lands us squarely back in 1973.
Alternatively, the timeline notes that you can jump straight from First Class to Days of Future Past, skipping the early movies altogether if you wish. This is because Days of Future Past reset the timeline, making it as if the first five movies never took place. This was a bold and controversial move for the franchise, but it served well enough to get several more movies made.
These include X-Men: Apocalypse, which is set in 1983, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which is set in 1992 but comes out next month. It also includes The New Mutants, a highly anticipated movie that has been trapped in development limbo since 2017. It is unclear at this point whether fans will ever see The New Mutants or what form it will take.
Both Deadpool movies also fall in this timeline, followed at last by Logan. The beloved drama is set in 2029, and serves as the definitive end for the X-Men franchise as we know it, at least for now.
This may be as satisfying a viewing order as fans can get for the X-Men movies, especially since the studio merged with Disney and, by extension, Marvel Studios earlier this year. Many are eager to see the X-Men appear in the MCU proper, but there are no public plans in place for that yet.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits theaters on Thursday, July 6.
