Every X-Men Movie, Definitively Ranked

Before the MCU ended an era of cinema as we know it, another extended family of Marvel superheroes dominated the multiplex: Fox’s X-Men franchise. Launched in 2000 with one of the pre-MCU era’s few actually good superhero movies, X-Men spawned 11 sequels, spin-offs, prequels and other such universe-extenders over the subsequent two decades. (Plus Deadpool & Wolverine, which we’ve listed below, even if it technically exists within the Marvel Cinematic Universe—it’s basically an X-Men film, and primarily functions as a love letter to 21st Century Fox’s legacy of comic-book movies.)

Based on the comics created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the X-Men movies kicked off with Bryan Singer’s trilogy of films, centered on the OG occupants of the X-Mansion: Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, James Marsden’s Cyclops, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, etc. Prequels set in the ‘60s and ’70s followed, bringing the likes of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence into the ensemble; meanwhile, Jackman—the unequivocal fan favorite of the X-Men universe—spun off into a string of Wolverine movies. A trilogy of Deadpool flicks leveraged Ryan Reynolds’ edgelord irreverence. There were a few genuine duds along the way, but the hit-to-miss ration was honestly pretty impressive.

Now that the X-Men have joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper— thanks to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019—and the original mutant players are set to appear in Avengers: Doomsday this Christmas, we’ve looked back at, and ranked, all of the major X-Men movies.

13. Dark Phoenix (2019)

Doane Gregory/Twentieth Century Fox/Everett Collection

Dark Phoenix is clearly the least valuable player of the X-Men’s Fox tenure—a forgettable entry that bombed at the box office and brought a miserable end to the franchise before it was absorbed into the MCU. It’s largely a retread of how Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) became the Phoenix, a story that was pretty exhaustively covered in Bryan Singer’s original, far superior movie trilogy. Even the impressively packed ensemble of the past-timeline flicks couldn’t help it rise from the ashes.

12. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

20th Century Fox/Everett Collection