Every Film in Fox's 'X-Men' Universe, Ranked

Where would the world of superhero films be without Fox's X-Men franchise? No, seriously, think about it: on July 14, 2000, Twentieth Century Fox released X-Men, bringing Marvel's ultra-popular band of mutants to the big screen. It was Hugh Jackman's big break, and set the stage for almost two-decades full of x-capades while lowkey giving Marvel Studios a blueprint on what to do right (and wrong) when it came to world-building. The twists and turns that the 12-deep film franchise took weren't always pretty, but when they shined, they shined bright AF.

Being that today is the 19th anniversary of X-Men in the year that also saw the end of the Fox-produced X-films with the release of Dark Phoenix, it's high time to take a hard look at the series and get down to adamantium brass tacks. Which of these 12 films is the best? You can imagine which ones occupy the lowest rungs of the ladder, but which film stands above the rest?

Strap on Cerebro, make sure your healing factor is intact and get ready to take this ride through Fox's' X-Men universe. These are the X-Men films, ranked.

Director: Gavin Hood

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Dominic Monaghan, Ryan Reynolds

Release Date: May 1, 2009

I’m going to be completely honest here. I never actually saw this movie. I watched the unfinished leaked version on my shitty laptop in a dorm room. This version had no added CGI and tbh, I don’t remember much else about the film. It was really bad. It’s last for a reason. I do remember it was hilarious to see a not funny Ryan Reynolds in this film, especially with what he did later with the Deadpool franchise. I also think Will.i.am was in this? Oh well, I think the FBI arrested the guy who leaked the film, and man, there’s no way leaking this movie was worth going to jail. —Zach Frydenlund

Director: Simon Kinberg

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Jessica Chastain

Release Date: June 7, 2019

I blame Frazier for tricking me into seeing a screening of this film. This film might feature the worst acting in an X-Men film ever. It was as if Jennifer Lawrence was being held hostage until her scenes were wrapped. The story was boring and didn’t carry much weight throughout the film. I’ll give the movie props in that the fight scenes were pretty cool, but honestly, the visuals reminded me so much of Captain Marvel, which was released just months before. I realize this is the last X-Men movie that will be released under Fox, but man, they really didn’t give a damn, it seems. —Zach Frydenlund

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till

Release Date: May 27, 2016

I may have put most of the events of this film out of my mind; I totally forgot that Oscar Isaac was the titular Apocalypse. Being a fan of Apocalypse, I really wanted this film to win. There was no reason to botch Apocalypse—he's the big dog when it came to X-villains! Somehow, they found a number of ways to make this film less than desirable, including taking what could've been the X-Men's Thanos and turning him into just another "big" bad. All they ended up doing was making a big, bad film. —khal

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Kelsey Grammer, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones, Patrick Stewart

Release Date: May 26, 2006

God, what a terrible blend of stories. While they surely didn't win any awards (maybe Razzies?) with Dark Phoenix, at least the final film in Fox's X-verse knew that if you're going to attempt the Dark Phoenix saga, you just make the whole fucking film about that. With The Last Stand shoehorning Jean's issues into a play on the Gifted storyline, you end up getting a film half-assing both stories...badly. It destroyed the box office, and had some solid performances, but really? It's no wonder that it took them five years to figure out how to rectify what they did with this mess of a flick. —khal

Director: David Leitch

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, Stefan Kapičić, T.J. Miller, Brianna Hildebrand, Jack Kesy

Release Date: May 18, 2018

For as much as I (and the rest of the world, seemingly) loved the first Deadpool, I was ultimately disappointed with the sequel. Did it have great moments? Of course—Ryan Reynolds knows his character, and did a great job of bringing Wade into a film that's got double the X-Men-related characters, double the laughs, double the explosions, and double the fourth wall breaks. For all of the extras brought into the film, this flick didn't knock the story out of the park. It was dope to see Cable brought into a film, and Josh Brolin played the time-hopper to a T. Zazie also gets points for playing Domino with style and a smirk (truth be told, we need more Domino in our lives). That said, focusing the film around the kid while reducing Juggernaut to a sidekick? It felt like a lot of dope got left on the table for a franchise that'll be waiting in the wings until Disney is ready to secure the R-rated bag. Even the clever twist of Once Upon a Deadpool, which used a masterful flip of The Princess Bride to turn the film into a PG-13 affair (and comment on the absurdity of the genre itself) wasn't enough to make this a truly superior sequel. —khal

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, Oliver Platt, Kevin Bacon

Release Date: June 3, 2011

Finally, I get to talk about a good movie. This might be my favorite of the franchise. They capture a perfect nostalgia factor in this film but also set up each character perfectly. Kevin Bacon is a superb villain and the plot is excellent. Tying in the Cuban Missile Crisis in with the X-Men was genius. This is sort of a bittersweet blurb because thinking about how fire First Class is reminds me of how bad they botched this series after Days of Future Past. This could have been the GOAT X-Men film series and they fumbled the lead after going up two scores [Ed Note: Can you tell Chopz runs the Sports vertical?]. Regardless, First Class is a top-tier comic book movie. The acting is next level and the action is insane. Shit, Fassbender picks up a fucking submarine with his mind. If you haven’t rewatched recently, now is the time. —Zach Frydenlund

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Famke Janssen, Will Yun Lee

Release Date: July 26, 2013

If Logan is the Dark Knight of Wolverine movies then The Wolverine is the Batman Begins: technically inferior, sure, but still great in its own right and undeservedly (but understandably) overshadowed by its successor. Wolverine in Japan! Fighting ninjas! Wolverine has a dozen great arcs and storylines in the source material but this has always been my favorite and Mangold does it justice. The Wolverine is stylishly shot, an aesthetic treat that also manages to solve the solo-Logan movies inherent flaw, the boredom of following an indestructible protagonist.

It's also deeply affecting on a character level, less so for the heavy-handed Jean Grey flashes and more thanks to Logan's haunted memories and complicated relationship with the strange land he once again finds himself a stranger in. The pacing is a little wonky, but I implore everyone who hails Logan as the only Wolverine film worth celebrating to go back to this one, proof. —Frazier Tharpe

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Ray Park, Anna Paquin

Release Date: July 14, 2000

It all started here—never forget. It's beyond arguable and borderline fact: in Charles Xavier-approved evolutionary terms, if the superhero boom of the last 10 years represents the next phase of moviegoing as we know it, then X-Men was the big bang. It knocked the box office doors down and began the slow process of both dusting off titles long considered un-adaptable and removing the stigma of what a comic book movie could do and be that flops like Batman & Robin contributed to.

Almost 20 years later though, the question remains: when we call X-Men underrated, are we grading on a curve simply because it shaped the film industry this century as we know it? No, X-Men is, genuinely as underrated as its greater impact. In a world where the superhero movie has become somewhat formulaic in tone and script, X1 is delightfully weird. In dialing up the outcast themes of the source material, Bryan Singer delivers a film full of melancholy and longing, perfectly paced and plotted.

Thanks to a retroactively quaint budget of $75 million, Singer is forced to find other ways to make the mutants seem awe-inspiring, which actually leads to more emphasis on their presentation—like Mystique coming off as almost alien in look and movement—and stronger sequences. Give me scenes that thoughtfully translate these classic characters onto the big screen like Magneto harrowingly turning a bunch of cops guns on them over CGI slapfests any day. With 20 years worth of successors, of course, we look at X-Men today and spot a dozen different details and attempts that would be executed with greater success, but in the broad strokes, X-Men is a flag bearer worth saluting beyond just influence. —Frazier Tharpe

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart

Release Date: May 23, 2014

If there were ever any indicator that the X-franchise is in sore need of Kevin Feige-type stewardship, it's the fact that Days of Future Past—one of the source's most celebrated arcs, and a story that presented the brilliant opportunity to bridge the original trilogy to the prequels—came and went with two films following. With due respect to Apocalypse and the Phoenix, this is one grand fucking moment that's hard to top, with a momentous crossover of the franchises' dual casts that wasn't even aggressively planned but moreso stumbled into.

And they pulled it off! Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique never quite gelled for me but despite shouldering much of the story's burden, there's too much great stuff happening here for her to make or break it on her own. This was the finale X-Men deserved, with Singer returned to the helm no less and an ending that brilliantly rights most of the series missteps. It was a helluva comeback at the time, now it's a rare bright spot before the franchise as we know it went out sad over a two-film crash-and-burn. —Frazier Tharpe

Director: Tim Miller

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, Gina Carano, Brianna Hildebrand

Release Date: February 12, 2016

After the nightmare that was Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which started out decently enough but went really, really wrong really, really fast), it was a tough road to get Deadpool turned into a film. Fuck the whole "it needs to be a hard R rating" thing for a minute (although everyone from the least heard pundit to the character's creator Rob Liefeld was right)—superhero films didn't see characters like Deadpool at all. Most comic book films aren't this bloody, this vulgar, or frankly this fun. Deadpool had all of that in spades. Reynolds knew Deadpool's voice, and from the marketing to the post-credits scene nailed the Merc With a Mouth that became a cult hit in the comics. Blending Wade's origin story with this tale of redemption was an awesome touch as well. It's one of the most fun Marvel films not in the MCU, perfectly giving its unique character a voice we'd not seen before, and laughed all the way to the bank. —khal

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Richard E. Grant, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Dafne Keen

Release Date: March 3, 2017

As the resident old in the Complex bullpen, I haven't felt this close to a film in eons. When you think of superhero films, it's usually filled with characters who are lit, but have to worry about keeping up with (or overcoming) the bad guys; it's rare that the hero is THIS past their prime. Logan borrowed elements from the brilliant Old Man Logan storyline, fast-forwarded the X-Men timeline into the future, and figured out how to craft the Mutant Odd Couple while upping the ante in four-letter words and stabby stabby violence. The major wins Fox had with Deadpool gave James Mangold (who also directed the better-than-you-remember The Wolverine) the ability to craft his western, giving Logan a child with similar abilities (and attitude), allowing Hugh Jackman to have his swan song. If only the X-Men universe got this awesome of an ending. —khal

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Brian Cox, Alan Cumming, Bruce Davison, Anna Paquin

Release Date: May 2, 2003

When rewatching a relic like X2 for the first time in a post-MCU world, there's a fear that it'll fall flat. We've seen too much in these 16 years since, and going back comes with the anxiety that we were all just quaint theatergoers in awe and fear that the train might leap out at us back then, an unsophisticated audience who had yet to experience The Biggest Crossover Event In Movie History.

But real classics persist in lieu of technological advancements, and X2 to this day is the classic we hailed it to be. Special effects have improved, budgets have tripled, but still few successors have a sequence that rivals the ingenuity and electricity of say, Nightcrawler teleporting through the Oval Office. Singer and his collaborators put time and care into translating these abilities on-screen. Has another film since boasted a detail more clever than Mystique springing Magneto from his glass prison by fucking raising the iron levels in his guard's blood? What the fuck are we even talking about here, truly? We give the first two McAvoy-Fassbender-Lawrence prequels their props, but this is where the buck stops.

X2 is just fantastic sequel-making in every regard, with a script that turns everything from the first film up to 10, excises what didn't and crafts one memorable setpiece after another over an ornately well-put-together plot. Every story beat and character arc clicks into place perfectly. Did Lady Deathstrike deserve much, much better? Of course. But deference to comic arcs has sunken many a promising superhero film in the past too. Above all, we want adaptations that honor the source's essence with a clever spin for the big screen. From the raid on the X-Mansion to Bobby's "coming out" scene and the Cerebro plot (and Magento's ingenious twist on it), X2 is everything you want from not just an X-film but comic blockbusters overall. Still. —Frazier Tharpe