A to Z Challenge 2020 - Films That Begin With “X”

Here we’re changing it up again, talking about the X-Men movies, in chronological order:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
I have no idea why this one gets such a bad wrap, except probably that superhero films had taken a giant leap forward the previous year with The Dark Knight and Iron Man, and it seemed like Origins was looking backward to a recent past (The Last Stand) that had soured. But the results are solid and they star Hugh Jackman, still one of the indisputable stars of the genre, alongside Liev Schreiber, taking over and commanding the role of Sabretooth. The only real complaint here is Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, but in the grand scheme it ended up achieving what had at that point been impossible. Well, that and playing into superhero fatigue with a wicked satire...

X-Men: First Class (2011)
I personally think linking Magneto with the Holocaust is needlessly melodramatic at best, and seeing it play out twice in the series didn’t make it work any better. But here we are with the second, but at least it gets us Michael Fassbender in the role. He’s this iteration’s MVP.

X-Men: Days of the Future Past (2014)
This is the one that plays both ends of the series, although it’s really an excuse to give Jackman another spotlight. Hey, no complaints here. Also the first appearance of Evan Peters’ Quicksilver.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
For me, the all-around most satisfying of the prequels, with Fassbender and James McAvoy turning in their best work, and at least the second best appearance of Quicksilver.

Dark Phoenix (2019)
It’s a little surprising that fans didn’t embrace the concept of the sliding scale in the prequels. The sliding scale was a staple in comics for decades, the idea that everything, especially in Marvel comics, that previously happened still happened even decades later, despite certain cultural touchstones from different eras making it somewhat problematic. So you have characters stretching back to the early ‘60s (and of course in Magneto’s case as a boy in WWII) looking, well, just as if they only aged a decade in thirty years. Anyway, these prequels got progressively less interest from fans who had concluded that the only superhero movies they cared about were part of the MCU, and came up with ridiculous justifications like, “Jennifer Lawrence looks bored.” Well, folks, that’s literally every Jennifer Lawrence performance, and she’s still more engaged-looking than the average Kristen Stewart. Anyway...

X-Men (2000)
And, paradoxically, where we began! Without Jackman, who was actually the last-minute replacement for the guy originally cast as Wolverine, this whole series would have looked and been drastically different. Startling to think how crucial the character is in this first movie alone...!

X2 (2003)
This is the one commonly considered the best of the originals, and by default best of them, period. But, I don’t know...It always bothered me that the first two, let alone the third one, were so eager to dispense with Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, with these first two even accomplishing it in more or less exactly the same manner, his own device (Cerebro) being used against him. Other than that, and Nightcrawler, X2 is really best and can only be appreciated as a de facto Wolverine spotlight. And...yeah.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
In contrast, this one’s got just about a million parts and yet somehow seems to have something definitive and worthwhile to say about all of them. If it weren’t for the last film in this sequence, this would still be my pick for the best of them, easily.

The Wolverine (2013)
The good thing about everyone complaining about Origins is that it got a couple of neat results. This was the first of them, a movie that was the first half of “making things right,” by allowing Wolverine to grieve the events of The Last Stand.

Deadpool (2016)
Here’s Ryan Reynolds getting to become a bona fide movie star!

Deadpool 2/Once Upon a Deadpool (2018)
Yes, I count both versions, and I prefer both to the first one.

Logan (2017)
The upside to continually demanding something better from Wolverine’s solo adventures is that it culminated in the best of them all, that completely transcended the series and pretty much the genre in general, a top shelf superhero movie the way, say, High Noon is for westerns. Jackman still insists this is the last time he played Wolverine. It’s a helluva way to go.