Professor X, Wolverine, Cyclops and co. have been stalwarts of the superhero genre ever since they first got the live-action treatment back in 2000 – setting the modern benchmark for what comic-book movie adaptations could be, and putting us on the path towards the age of super-powered cinematic universes we’re in the midst of right now.
There have been several iterations of the X-Men over the years – the original bunch, led by Patrick Stewart and menaced by Ian McKellen; their younger counterparts, including James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender; and offshoots into the fourth wall-breaking world of Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool – but which X-Men movie is the best? Read Empire’s official list:
14. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Read the Empire review here.
On paper, giving Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine an origin movie makes a lot of sense. Who wouldn’t want to see how the fan-favourite lynchpin of Fox’s original X-Men trilogy got his claws? In practice however, sense is just one of many things sorely lacking in Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine — along with humour, heart, or really any sort of basic narrative cohesion (adamantium bullets, anyone?). Jackman does his best to bring some weight to James Howlett’s quest for peace and pull to violence, and Liev Schreiber is solid as Wolvie’s feral half-brother Sabretooth, but the whole thing is an overwhelmingly dour, head-scratching affair. It’s somewhat apt that this one’s remembered best — or worst — for Ryan Reynolds’ inexplicably mute debut as Deadpool, because honestly, the less said about it the better.
13. X-Men Apocalypse
Read the Empire review here.
Bryan Singer’s 2016 effort X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t quite an Origins level disaster, and does have some solid mutant moments — that ‘Sweet Dreams’ Quicksilver scene; Magneto’s destruction of Auschwitz’s remains. But coming off the back of X-Men: Days Of Future Past’s timey-wimey thrills, here’s a classic case of a movie overpromising and under-delivering. You see, the real problem with Apocalypse is, well, Apocalypse — and his Four Horsemen. Oscar Isaac is criminally buried under eyesore prosthetics as Marvel’s ancient, all-powerful first mutant En Sabah Nur, whose motivations and powerset both go woefully ill-defined. Alongside him, Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Angel (Ben Hardy), and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) are given unforgivably short shrift, whilst Michael Fassbender’s Master of Magnetism is lumbered with a frustratingly predictable “Oh look, he’s bad again!” arc. But hey, Apocalypse isn’t the end of the world, right? Oh…
12. Dark Phoenix
Read the Empire review here.
Anyone who knows their X-Men knows that Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s Dark Phoenix Saga is arguably the single most beloved Marvel mutant story ever written. And to pay veteran X-Men movie scribe Simon Kinberg his dues, having failed to do the saga justice with his overstuffed X-Men: The Last Stand script, as the writer and first-time director of 2019’s Dark Phoenix he does a solid (if unspectacular) job of adapting it. Sophie Turner balances Jean’s fear and growing darkness well, her affecting relationships with Tye Sheridan Cyclops and James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier smuggling a refreshing intimacy into the movie’s otherwise all-too-familiar blockbuster framework. But plagued by reshoots, overshadowed by news of the Disney/Fox merger, and hampered by a disappointingly bombastic finale, Kinberg’s film only shines in flickers, never really threatening to burn bright.
11. The New Mutants
Read the Empire review here.
Having been hampered by delays, reshoots, the Disney/Fox merger (again), and a pandemic, that Josh Boone’s The New Mutants is actually a movie we got to see at all is frankly a miracle. The film itself — a hospital-set, horror-inflected take on mutants led by Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, and Charlie Heaton — is somewhat less so. The young cast bring some much-needed colour to the movie’s dark, gloomy palette: a pre-megastardom Taylor-Joy pops as sword-wielding Russian sorceress Ilyana ‘Magik’ Rasputin; and the queer romance between Williams’ Rahne and Alice Braga’s Dani carries a lovely tenderness. You just can’t help feeling that this was a bit of a missed opportunity. The horror is more Halloweentown than Halloween, the action is eminently forgettable, and any real depth was seemingly cut out in the editing suite. A disappointing (then-)curtain closer on Fox’s X-Men.
10. X-Men: The Last Stand
Read the Empire review.
Brett Ratner’s original X-Men trilogy-capper is very much a tale of two halves. On the one hand, we get a surprisingly well executed adaptation of Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men ‘Gifted’ arc, which centres around the discovery of a cure for mutants and the newly-sown divisions that creates. On the other, we get a seriously diluted take on the famously sprawling Dark Phoenix Saga that dispassionately bumps off James Marsden’s Scott Summers early doors, heinously speedruns Jean Grey’s Phoenix Force struggle, and loses the tragedy of that arc’s conclusion in favour of moments like, erm, Vinnie Jones’ abominable “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” meme reference. Magneto lifting the Golden Gate bridge, Wolvie lighting his cigar with fire mid-battle, and Anna Paquin’s soulful Rogue performance are highlights, but after the brilliance of X2, Ratner’s film is more a last stumble than a last stand.