The X-Men film franchise was, for a while, the cornerstone of the superhero movie genre. Long before Marvel’s MCU kicked off, 20th Century Fox led the way, though they couldn’t keep the lead.

The films and spin-offs that make up the franchise vary insanely in quality and focus, which is why we’re ranking them now so we can get an understanding both for what the best movies are but also how Fox’s efforts spiraled out of control to the point where the X-Men were basically worthless to them and helped trigger the eventual sale of the studio to Disney

All X-Men Movies Ranked

What, however, is an X-Men movie? Well, one could argue that any film with a character who has been an X-Men is an X-Men film, though then we’d have to include the likes of Spider-Man films in this and things just start spiraling totally out of control. There is the line of any 20th Century Fox film produced under the rights contract they made with Marvel to make the movies, but that also includes Wolverine films and Deadpool ones, and while those feature X-Men, it’s hard to argue they’re X-Men movies. Given that, an easy demarcation is whether or not the movie’s title has the word “X-Men” in it. If it does, it’s definitely an X-Men movie, right? So that’s the rule we’re running with here and it will help keep our ranking both in line and interesting.

Establishing what films should be included is only half the work, however. We also have to know what we’re ranking on. For this list, we’re focussing both on the quality of the movie and on the quality of the film as an X-Men movie. The latter is different in that some of the films on this list, despite having “X-Men” in the title just aren’t actually all that good at being X-Men films.

Now that we’ve knocked that out of the way, here’s every X-Men movie ranked from worst to best.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Is X-Men Origins: Wolverine the defacto worst movie on this list? Debatable. It is, however, definitely a terrible movie jam-packed with insipid writing, crummy special effects, and direction that just screams “trying too hard.” It speaks to the power of Wolverine as a character and the X-Men brand that more films were made after this one.

PowerShot, the final nail in the adamantium coffin for the film on this list is the fact that it’s not really an X-Men film at all. Sure it’s got “X-Men” in the title, but that’s just because skittish marketing execs were afraid people wouldn’t come to a movie that was just called “Wolverine” and felt the need to tack “X-Men” on to the beginning like they were about to launch some sort of successful ongoing origin series for all the X-Men with this turd.

X-Men: The Last Stand

In almost every movie on this list, there can be found some good. Even the movie ranked lower than this, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, at least has Lieb Schrieber as Sabertooth. There is, however, nothing good about X-Men: The Last Stand. Devoid of any understanding of what makes these characters work, the film was seemingly born out of the desire to shove as many mutants on screen as possible.

We can all harp on the idiotic decision to kill Cyclops off (a mistake writer Simon Kinberg makes yet again in Dark Phoenix with Mystique), but the real issue of this film is that it wants to be a grand war between mutants but feels more like a kid throwing his action figures in front of a camcorder. A boring mess from beginning to end, not even Hugh Jackman, a man who loves playing the character of Wolverine, seems to be interested in being in this movie.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix

I know you’re already crying foul as we established that a film needed to have “X-Men” in the title to be counted and Dark Phoenix was titled only that in the U.S., but internationally it received the “X-Men” moniker and that moniker came along with it when the film released on home video. That’s a lot of text to devote to explaining the title in a short paragraph, but it’s more text than this dud of a film deserves.

Mishandling the prolific Jean Grey/Phoenix storyline from the comics for a second time, Dark Phoenix is a movie that is wholly terrible. None of the actors seem to want to be there, Simon Kinberg’s screenplay and direction are so heavy-handed he should be a mutant called Rock Fist, and, much like X3, the film feels like it has next to no scale while telling a prolific story.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Look, X-Men: Apocalypse is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. Overstuffed with characters and desperate to live up to its predecessor, the film is simply an uninteresting, bloated mess. Cramming in character development that should have taken multiple films and introducing lame-duck X-Men characters that deserved better makes the movie feel hollow throughout and turns Apocalypse into a rushed villain instead of one of the X-Men’s most feared enemies.

The need to cram Magneto into the film feels like a desperate ploy to keep Michael Fassbender in the role as he’s basically shoved to the side during most of the film anyway. However, X-Men: Apocalypse is at least somewhat entertaining to look at, and the newly-formed X-Men team led by Mystique doesn’t feel like the total dud it does in Dark Phoenix.

X2

The jump in quality in the X-Men movies from here on out is a bit shocking. The first four films on this list are truly awful, but the rest of the list is made up of movies that are all good. There’s no middle ground here. You’re either watching a bad X-Men movie or a good one. X2 is the worst of the good ones. Mired a bit by the inclusion of a few too many characters but still carrying on the storyline of the first film, X2 delivers what all sequels should: more.

Everything in X2 feels bigger, and the decision to veer the film towards Wolverine after Jackman’s breakout performance in X-Men thankfully doesn’t turn the movie into a Wolverine solo film. Characters like Storm are actually more fleshed out than in the first film, and the addition of a secondary villain helps the frenemy battle between Magneto and Xavier play out all the better.

X-Men

When X-Men first came out, superhero movies were few and far between, and superhero team movies were non-existent. It is an incredible feat, then, that X-Men is as good as it is. While full of clunky dialogue and often being “comic book-y” in all the wrong ways, the movie is fantastic.

The four-person X-Men crew (Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm) allows the film space to explore the world without feeling overcrowded, and the focus on Rogue as the plot’s main driver helps deliver some pathos into a movie that could have been nothing but superpowers. Perfectly cast and directed with creativity by Brian Singer, X-Men may have been the first true superhero team movie, but it still stands as one of the best.

X-Men: First Class

Fox kind of dug themselves into a hole after The Last Stand sucked, got rid of popular X-Men, and ruined all the rest, so a reset was definitely in order. Jumping back in time to show the establishment of the X-Men was a great idea, even if they couldn’t actually use the original characters from the comic’s “first class.”

Instead, the film pivots to focus on Magneto and Xavier and finds gold. Both Fassbender and McAvoy are surprisingly perfect for the roles, imbuing Magneto and Professor X with a humanity that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were never given the opportunity to deliver. It helps that pushing the time frame back to the past sets the mutants’ struggle squarely during the civil rights movement and creates a powerful metaphor for their struggle, which was the core concept of the original comics. A thrilling conclusion that is both massive and personal at the same time delivers what could arguably be the best X-Men film.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

If you were to look at the history of X-Men movies and make a list of what goes wrong with the bad ones, X-Men: Days of Future Past would check off nearly every one of them … and yet, it is the best X-Men movie of them all. Crammed full of mutants, juggling multiple timelines, heavily focused on Wolverine, and with a screenplay by Simon Kingberg, it feels like this movie should be a trainwreck from start to finish.

Yet, it all works. Not only does the film feel like the massive blockbuster it should be with prolific action sequences strewn throughout but it’s also an emotional gut punch as we say goodbye to the cast of actors who helped make the X-Men films work while introducing a new slate of performers to carry on the torch. The film deftly weaves complex time travel storylines with more personal tales all while maintaining the backbone of the X-Men universe by telling a story of human rights and equality.

And that’s every X-Men movie ranked. If you’re interested in watching all the X-Men films but don’t know where to start, check out our guide on how to watch the X-Men movies in order — as you can imagine, the timeline gets pretty wonky.