The superhero franchise is and has been king of the blockbuster box office for some time now, and while we're inundated with new superhero movies ever year, X-Men is something of a minor miracle of a franchise. The first film redefined what a superhero movie could be 20 years ago, and and the franchise remained alive and going (though not always well) for nearly two decades. The longevity of this franchise is wildly impressive, and while it's almost certainly come to an end now that Disney has acquired Fox and will likely reboot the franchise at some point in the future, it remains a tremendously impressive achievement.

So with that said, now feels like an appropriate time to go back and revisit the franchise thus far, from X-Men all the way up through the likely swan song Dark Phoenix. Below, I present to you my ranking of every X-Men movie from worst to best.

[Editor's note: X-Men directors Bryan Singer and Brett Ratner are, by most accounts, troubling individuals. This list is in no way an endorsement of their behavior, but instead a reflection on films that were made by many, many people.]

12.) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Hugh Jackman in X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Image via 20th Century Fox

Let’s get this out of the way: X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an unmitigated disaster. It wasn’t supposed to be a disaster, mind you—director Gavin Hood had just won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film when he signed on to direct—but disputes with the studio during production and an overall lack of vision led to the garbage fire that we have today. The film is intended to be an origin story, but pretty much drops that aspect after the first act in favor of sprinkling in as many mutants as possible before finally melding together a hodgepodge of comics characters—both figuratively and literally—into the embarrassment that is this movie’s Weapon XI/Deadpool. It makes no sense, but little of this movie does.

The emotional throughline of the film (ie. Lynn Collins’ Kayla) is also dropped at the end of the first act before magically reappearing at the end for no good reason, and then there’s Liev Schreiber’s Victor Creed—Wolverine’s brother. There’s a fascinating brother story in here somewhere, but X-Men Origins fails to find it, instead opting to use Victor as a plot device serving another plot device, which would be Danny Huston’s Major William Stryker.

The film’s action is embarrassingly lackluster, the visual effects are sloppy and roughshod, and the storytelling is an absolute disaster. Pretty much the only non-terrible thing about the movie is Hugh Jackman, but even he has trouble selling some of the silliness this script calls dialogue. Oh yeah, this is also the X-Men movie where they let will.i.am. from the Black Eyed Peas play a mutant for... reasons? Days of Future Past erased this film from the official canon, and Deadpool 2 went one further, and it’s best to just continue pretending like it never existed at all.

11.) X-Men: Apocalypse

Oscar Isaac in X-Men Apocalypse
Image via 20th Century Fox

Filmmaker Bryan Singer made his return to the X-Men franchise with the pretty good X-Men: Days of Future Past, but his follow-up film fell way short of expectations. X-Men: Apocalypse suffers from many of the same problems that plague today’s blockbusters—an uninteresting villain, bloated runtime, over-reliance on set pieces, too-complicated-for-its-own-good narrative. And while Days of Future Past had a lot of characters, the fractured time periods served as a great way to focus the narrative. The future-set stuff was really just an excuse to show off some really cool action with serious stakes, while the 70s-set scenes were where the emotion and payoff came through. With Apocalypse, the film is juggling too much. It wants to have the grounded reality of the first X-Men by showing Erik with a family and literally returning to the concentration camp where his parents were killed. It also wants to introduce a new younger subset of famous mutants, like First Class. And it wants to showcase worldwide destruction via a two-dimensional villain/complete waste of Oscar Isaac’s time. It’s trying to do too many things at once, and all things we’ve seen before. And it fails on almost every level.

Evan Peters is actually kind of the best thing about this movie, as the Quicksilver sequence is once again downright thrilling, and the balance of comedy and drama with which he plays his search for his father is spot-on. It’s a shame he doesn’t have much screentime, whereas characters like Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and even Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) fall mostly flat as they feel like they’re in a different movie entirely. And don’t get me started on that dreadfully dumb Wolverine cameo.

Apocalypse may have been better if Singer and Co. had just focused on one set of mutants instead of also trying to introduce a new generation. There’s a lack of cohesion that prevents any sense of satisfaction from the story, and as the tone shifts wildly from deep emotional drama to disaster epic, nothing really sticks. To be blunt, X-Men: Apocalypse is a forgettable waste of everyone's time.

10.) Dark Phoenix

Sophie Turner in Dark Phoenix
Image via Fox

As a longtime fan of the X-Men franchise (for better and worse), it is a supreme bummer to discover that the series' likely final proper installment is as limp and mediocre as Dark PhoenixLongtime franchise writer/producer Simon Kinberg made his directorial debut with the Apocalypse follow-up, intending to finally make good on the Dark Phoenix storyline after botching it in X-Men: The Last Stand, but the film fails as both a Dark Phoenix adaptation and as an X-Men movie. Unlike The Last Stand, we barely know Sophie Turner's Jean Grey so the film sloppily tries to tie in some emotional investment via a tragic backstory, and we also aren't familiar enough with Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan) to empathize with his pain at watching Jean go kaboom. But even the characters we do know and love have little to do here, with Magneto (Michael Fassbender) boiled down to a mere plot device and Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique unceremoniously jettisoned before the end of the first act—although Fassbender, unsurprisingly, manages to still be the best thing about this movie.

There's an interesting angle with regards to Xavier's (James McAvoy) plotline and digging into the character's ego-centrism, but again the film isn't elegant enough to ever really pay it off in a satisfying way. Ironically, Dark Phoenix suffers many of the same issues that plagued The Last Stand, as the befuddling villain plot not only wastes Jessica Chastain's talent but detracts from the main story at hand while also managing to go absolutely nowhere.

Dark Phoenix isn't a complete disaster. It's competently made and Turner delivers a solid performance given what she has to work with. But it's not compelling or satisfying enough to ever really click, and as an "ending" to the First Class characters, it's an utter disappointment. So this is how the X-Men franchise ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

9.) X-Men: The Last Stand

Famke Janssen in X-Men The Last Stand
Image via 20th Century Fox

After two successful X-Men movies, 2006 is where things started to go south. X-Men: The Last Stand begins well enough, once again showing the team working together while introducing a new outside threat, but signs of the glut and monotony of the picture start seeping in just as Magneto begins forming his Brotherhood of Mutants. The Last Stand has two plot devices too many, as the film simultaneously tries to juggle the Dark Phoenix storyline, the prospect of a mutant cure, and the formation of the Brotherhood of Mutants. Had the filmmakers settled on just one of these and focused on fleshing that out from a character perspective, we could’ve been in for something more in line with the previous two features. But as it stands—and under Brett Ratner’s stale direction—the film is overstuffed and, frankly, pretty boring.

Granted, this is a movie that was racing towards a release date without a director. After Bryan Singer left the director’s chair, eventual First Class helmer Matthew Vaughn stepped in. But after developing the picture for a few months, Vaughn departed to attend to personal matters, and Ratner hopped into the driver’s seat of a fast-moving train. There was little time to hone the film to Ratner’s sensibilities, but that didn’t seem to matter as the filmmaker’s lack of sophistication is nevertheless plenty prevalent throughout the movie—each new mutant seems to be crafted with an air of silliness rather than the grounded nature of Singer’s previous films.

The picture culminates in a forgettable and very expensive-looking finale, but the real drag is that from a story point of view, The Last Stand is one of the most significant films in the franchise—it kills off Cyclops, Professor X, and Jean Grey, three of the key characters of the series. That it does so with such flippancy is all the more frustrating, and luckily screenwriter Simon Kinberg would undo his own mistakes with the ending of Days of Future Past. Still, The Last Stand marks the moment where this series started getting really shaky, and it took a few movies until the ship could be righted.

8.) Deadpool 2

Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool holding up a boom box in Deadpool 2
Image via 20th Century Fox

Deadpool 2 is fine. It's a sequel that improves upon its predecessor in some ways, like offering up more dynamic action and a more complex story, but it also lags behind in other key areas—like lacking the first film's razor sharp focus. You definitely can't say Deadpool 2 isn't true to its source material, but your mileage may vary depending on whether you find the Merc with a Mouth's motormouth charming or grating.

Director David Leitch ups the ante visually, and the prison break set piece in particular is one of the best action set pieces in the X-Men franchise thus far. The inclusion of some other key X-Men characters is also pretty delightful, and indeed Deadpool 2's strongest aspect may be its supporting cast. Zazie Beets is effortlessly winning as Domino, a character you're dying to see more of by the film's end, and Josh Brolin brings a gravitas to Cable that serves as a vital foil to Deadpool's silliness. The film's emotional centerpiece is also admirable, grounding Wade Wilson's journey in his desire to be reunited with Vanessa while teaching him the value of Family with a capital F along the way.

And yet, despite all the visual flourishes and shiny new toys, it can't help but feel like something's missing in contrast to the first film. Perhaps it's the shagginess of the original Deadpool that was part of its charm, as the tiny budget forced the filmmakers to essentially stretch a single set piece over the course of a single movie. Or maybe more obviously, putting "the girlfriend in the refrigerator" robbed the sequel of the first film's romanticism, which was one of its more pleasant surprises. Keeping Wade's emotional stakes with Vanessa was smart, but her absence from a lot of the sequel was definitely felt in the end.

Deadpool 2 isn't a bad movie, and it's certainly in the mid-upper tier as far as X-Men movies go, but it's not quite as good as the first film and with some distance, feels pretty forgettable.

7.) X-Men

Patrick Stewart in X-Men
Image via 20th Century Fox

The effect of 2000’s X-Men on the blockbuster landscape cannot be understated. The approach of Bryan Singer and Co. literally defined what a superhero movie could do by grounding the film with real emotions and real characters rather than approaching the whole thing as a disposable popcorn movie. I mean, the movie opens with Auschwitz during World War II—that takes guts. And while in retrospect the scale of X-Men feels quaint, its impact is still felt to this day, and as a standalone film it actually holds up pretty well.

X-Men’s greatest asset is Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and it was a stroke of genius for the filmmakers to hinge the whole movie on this character whose entire lack of familiarity with the mutant world mimics the vast majority of audiences. He’s our “in”, and Jackman plays it perfectly while also setting up a tremendous dynamic with Anna Paquin’s Rogue, the emotional center of the film. Rogue epitomizes the fear and self-loathing that comes with being categorized as “different” and/or “dangerous,” and the film doesn’t shy away from the real-world parallels of the marginalization of this particular group of individuals.

Even nearly 20 years later, the themes of X-Men are just as prescient. The action sequences are admittedly dated, but the rapport between the characters is the foundation of the movie, and this ensemble works terrifically off of one another—well, aside from Halle Berry’s Storm, who maybe speaks 10 words in the entire movie. And the dynamic between Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as a parallel of the Martin Luther King Jr./Malcolm X relationship is yet another one of the unique touches that made this film such a landmark achievement in its day.

While pretty much all involved would improve upon the foundation that was built with X-Men in future installments, it remains an effective and refreshingly (in hindsight) intimate superhero tale all the same.

6.) Deadpool

Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool
Image via 20th Century Fox

The movie that Fox was so hesitant to greenlight turned out to be the highest grossing X-Men movie so far (though it was eventually usurped by its sequel). Granted, Deadpool is leagues different than any X-Men film thus far, and the first to be R-rated, but director Tim Miller’s foul-mouthed adaptation struck a major chord with audiences. And it’s a fun movie! Ryan Reynolds was pretty much born to play this character, and he injects Wade Wilson with the humanity necessary to emotionally ground the film. Deadpool’s strongest aspect is its progressive romantic relationship, as Morena Baccarin not only plays a fine foil for Wilson, but the depiction of their relationship is refreshingly confident and rejects the traditional gender dynamics found in most Hollywood blockbusters. And while getting Vanessa back ultimately serves as the driving plot point of the film, the character reacts to Wilson’s selfish actions appropriately.

Miller does a solid job of crafting a genuine superhero movie on a very tight budget, and while the scale of the film does indeed feel small, Miller excels with action—especially in the final set piece. But the juvenile nature of the humor tends to get a little monotonous, and the comedic dynamic between Deadpool and his blind roommate is one heavily relied-upon gag that simply doesn’t land. Nevertheless, the movie works more often than it doesn’t, and the violent and humorously antiheroic nature of Wilson provides a delightful change of pace for the X-Men universe.

5.) X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men Days of Future Past
Image via 20th Century Fox

In many ways, X-Men: Days of Future Past is the ultimate X-Men movie. It marked director Bryan Singer’s return to the series after departing following X2, and it finally melded together the old and new cast into one massive, All Star ensemble. And for the most part, Days of Future Past really works. The future-set sequences are wonderfully dynamic, and showcase various new mutant powers with the added bonus of killing characters over and over again thanks to the introduction of time travel. And the scorched earth setting is a terrifically unique touch that brings new shades to X-Men lore, giving fans a glimpse into a more sci-fi-leaning X-Men movie.

But the bulk of the film takes place in the 70s, and that’s where it shines thanks once again to tremendous performances from Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, and Nicholas Hoult. McAvoy in particular gets the chance to stretch here as we’re introduced to a barely recognizable Charles Xavier, one riddled with guilt, shame, and exhaustion. Throwing Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine into the mix was a stroke of genius, and he serves as a perfect go-between for the young and new cast. And then there’s Evan Peters’ Quicksilver, who steals the entire film with one jaw-dropping sequence and proves that judgment based on marketing materials can sometimes be way, way off base.

The film does start to drag a bit towards the end and Peter Dinklage is wasted as Bolivar Trask, and it’s not as visually arresting as its predecessor First Class. But for the most part Days of Future Past is a compelling and entertaining watch, with the slightly lengthier but more cohesive Rogue Cut actually turning out to be a smidge better than the theatrical version.

4.) The Wolverine

Hugh Jackman in The Wolverine
Image via 20th Century Fox

The scale of The Wolverine is one of the smallest of the X-Men universe films, and yet the stakes of the movie feel so much bigger than the majority of the films in this particular franchise. By zeroing in on one character and anchoring the entire film with the emotional existential crisis of Hugh Jackman’s titular mutant, The Wolverine illuminated new shades of the most prolific character in the X-Men universe, and it did so with refreshing grace and sensitivity. Wolverine’s past hangs heavy over all of his actions in this particular film, even though he’s surrounded by strangers. And that only makes his actions and motivations that much more empathetic, as Jackman turns in his (second) best X-Men performance to date as a lonely, wounded, and world weary Wolverine.

Director James Mangold takes advantage of the Japanese setting fully, never hinging the film on tropes or stereotypes but instead finding new ways to flesh out the film’s “stranger in a strange land” themes. The Wolverine is one of the most visually impressive and dynamic X-Men films to date, and the bullet train sequence alone stands as one of the franchise’s best action sequence so far. Intimacy is key with this particular film, and it informs everything from the fight scenes to the villain choices. And while the film disappointingly devolves into a more traditional superhero movie in its third act, the majority of its runtime is devoted to revealing new shades of Jackman’s iconic character through dialogue and character interactions, with Rila Fukushima’s fellow mutant Yukio in particular providing a fantastic companion to The Wolverine.

Brief but key appearances by Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey haunt the film and its hero, and indeed upon release The Wolverine in many ways felt like a culmination for the franchise given that Jackman’s character was our first introduction to the world of the X-Men. In a less ambitious filmmaker’s hands one can imagine the rote and opportunistic version of the Japan-set The Wolverine, which makes Mangold’s iteration of the film all the more impressive.

And yet, this is a strange instance of a follow-up film somewhat diminishing the merits of its predecessor, as you get the feeling watching Logan that you're seeing all the things Jackman and Mangold wanted to do with The Wolverine, but weren't allowed to attempt. This film's issues become a bit more glaring in hindsight, but still, The Wolverine laid the ground that made Logan possible, and it still remains top-tier X-Men material.

3.) X2

X-Men 2 Cast
Image via 20th Century Fox

Upon release, X2 was heralded as a superior sequel and potentially genre-defining superhero film. And indeed, the film is really, really good, still holding up as incredibly solid all these years later. There’s a little sluggishness to the middle of the film, and its 133-minute runtime is surely felt as movie drones on, but it builds to a terrifically bittersweet finale, with director Bryan Singer teeing up the Dark Phoenix saga and also wrapping up the film’s political themes quite nicely.

The filmmaking team proves adept at juggling even more mutants this time around without the film ever feeling overcrowded, and indeed Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey in particular get the most TLC, while Halle Berry actually gets a story arc this time around as she’s closely tied with Alan Cumming’s impressive turn as Nightcrawler. Jackman is the backbone of this franchise, and as Wolverine anchored the first X-Men, it’s only fitting that he continues to drive the story in X2. But what’s impressive about the sequel is that the film manages to continue this thread while also fleshing out the supporting characters around him, with Brian Cox’s William Stryker serving as the franchise’s best non-mutant villain ever.

In terms of action, X2 doubles down from the get-go with the tremendous Nightcrawler White House sequence. It’s a terrifically thrilling set piece that’s then followed up by another visually arresting scene in the form of the museum sequence, which may not be an “action set piece” per se but is wonderfully engaging nonetheless. And the film also continues to flesh out the social parallels between the X-Men franchise and the real world, with Bobby’s “coming out” scene remaining a pinnacle scene of the series.

As darker and even more grounded spins on the superhero genre followed, building on the ground that X-Men broke, X2 still remains a fun and engaging watch by any measure and certainly one of the more thematically ambitious films of the X-Men franchise.

2.) Logan

Hugh Jackman in Logan
Image via 20th Century Fox

Knowing they had come close to Wolverine perfection with The Wolverine, filmmaker James Mangold and Hugh Jackman doubled down with their follow-up effort Logan. The result is certainly one of the most daring installments of the franchise, as Logan is not even really a superhero movie. It’s a brutally violent, introspective dramatic Western. With this send-off for Jackman’s performance as Wolverine, Mangold and Jackman focused on the best aspects of The Wolverine (the intimacy and character focus) and jettisoned the worst (the CG and explosion-filled third act), resulting in the most emotional X-Men movie ever made.

Jackman, fittingly enough, turns in his best performance as the character yet in Logan, and he’s really leaving nothing in the tank by the film’s end. The basic conceit finds Logan rejecting any and all significant human contact, and if Charles’ well-being didn’t depend on him, it’s not hard to imagine Logan having turned that adamantium bullet on himself long before. He’s faced with fatherhood, with legacy and is dared to turn his back once more. But he relents, reluctantly, and agrees to shepherd the young X-23 to a safe haven that may or may not exist.

Mangold hits upon a number of touchstones here, from Paper Moon to Shane, and while the simplicity of the story can give way to predictability, the performances and raw aesthetic keep this thing interesting. This is a down and dirty picture—a film in every sense of the word, as Mangold eschews anything that would remotely resemble a contemporary blockbuster. It mostly works, and Logan is certainly the most adult X-Men movie in the franchise (it was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar!)—albeit one that’s not going to be easy to revisit given its unrelenting emotional intensity.

But this is as close to “getting it right” as Jackman could have imagined, which is especially satisfying given how botched Wolverine’s first solo effort was. The mixed bag that precedes Logan franchise-wise is a bit of a hindrance, but Jackman and Mangold do their best to ignore the missteps and focus on telling a full, complete, satisfying, and most importantly honest concluding story arc for Wolverine. This is a character who’s done a lot of good throughout his long life, but he’s also caused a lot of harm. Watching him struggle to find some semblance of peace is not always easy,

1.) X-Men: First Class

X-Men First Class Cast
Image via 20th Century Fox

And yet my personal #1 is still X-Men: First Class. By the time X-Men Origins: Wolverine rolled around, the particulars of the X-Men franchise were so muddled that it was not only tough to keep track of who’s done what, but it was hard to care. So going back to the beginning via a prequel seemed like a solid enough idea in order to offer new shading to some of these iconic characters, but the masterstroke came in setting Matthew Vaughn to direct and co-write the picture with Jane Goldman. The result, X-Men: First Class, is a delightful and surprisingly emotional 60s romp that offers audiences a chance to be reintroduced to these iconic characters with new—and spectacular—interpretations. It’s impossible to overstate just how lucky this franchise turned out to be when rising stars Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult soon after became some of the most in-demand performers working today.

Seriously, 50% of the brilliance of X-Men: First Class comes down to casting, and Vaughn knocked it out of the park. Fassbender not only brings a sly imposing quality to the character of Erik Lensherr, but he also opens wholly new emotional keys to the character, turning in a downright tremendous performance as Erik’s revenge arc forms the emotional center of the movie. But McAvoy is no slouch either, and his suave take on the young Charles Xavier is a downright delight, while Lawrence brings a marvelous complexity to the character of Mystique that makes the character a vital part of the X-Men franchise and not simply Magneto’s henchwoman. Hoult gets a somewhat smaller focus here, but his take on the self-conscious Dr. Hank McCoy is impressive nonetheless.

Vaughn has a blast capturing the entire film with nods to classic 60s cinema, though he’s careful never to devolve into parody or kitsch. He brings a smooth playfulness to the franchise while maintaining an overall air of sophistication, which is no easy task. It injects the series with a revitalized vigor. The formation of the team and origins of these central characters are joyful to behold, but beneath it all there’s an air of despair and tragedy, foreshadowing the schism to come. Vaughn uses the large ensemble cast to acknowledge the varying ways people handle being different, and it concludes in an appropriately operatic finale that’s simultaneously triumphant and heartbreaking. It’s this confident handle of tone, phenomenal performances, and wildly entertaining story that make X-Men: First Class the best X-Men movie thus far.

[Note: This feature was initially published at a prior date but has been updated with the inclusion of Dark Phoenix.]