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Ranking the X-Men Movies
Posted by Labels: First Class, Last Stand, Origins: Wolverine, The Wolverine, X-Men, X-Men (Film), X2New movie coming out, so the obvious question asked amongst the faithful becomes rank the past movies. The problem of course with the question is you are asking about personal taste without providing guidance as to the criteria.
What if you include box office, or meta critics or ...
So here is my personal list.
In my opinion X-Men when it was released in 2000 changed how Superhero movies are made, told, shown, pick you word. The consequential changes in the budgets, the style, and vision has affected virtually all big budget superhero movies since that point. It is important to remember the previous big-budget Superhero movie was Batman & Robin which attempted to kill off Superhero movies as a viable Genre. With that in mind this is why I give X-Men the top spot.
X-Men: X-Men United aka X2, X-Men 2 or whatever you want to call it IS a better movie than the Original but it did less to change how movies were made which why the original gets moved up a notch. X2 has a solid single primary story arc and virtually every other supporting character has there own individual story arc. It's a great story filling all the parts. There are leaps and bounds in special effects, the sets are outstanding. Bryan Singer expands upon the universe and like only he can gives great, no outstanding, fight scenes.
The Wolverine is the best individual story of the series, it takes a familiar story from the comics and adds in new modern twists. The movie obliviously lacks some of the secondary story lines of the supporting characters over say X2, and did little to introduce us to potential long term characters, in simple terms the movie is too much of stand alone, with today's linked Marvel Universe that's not good enough. Budgetary constraints, unfinished CGI and other minor problems become very apparent as you watch the movie. Some of the 3-D scenes don't translate to 2-D very well and the fight scenes lacked ummm a finishing touch, you know the superhero pizzazz that Bryan Singer would have used. The immersion unfortunately fails in several scenes do to the little things that stand out. As much as I liked this movie it is too bad it didn't do better in terms of ticket sales in the theater.
X-Men: Last Stand is not a very good movie, but it does to this day have the highest box office take of any of the six movies. At 1 hour and 27 minutes the movie is a good 20 minutes and maybe as much as 120 minutes too short for the storylines attempting to be told in the film by Ratner and his team. The effects aren't too bad, the score is outstanding and the cinematography is probably the best of the movies, just can't overcome the problems in the script. On a side note the Dark Phoenix storyline is one of my favorite story lines out of the comics that I show a little Bias in favor of it over X-Men: First Class.
X-Men: First Class is a movie the younger you the more you seem to like the movie, it us old fogies that have problems with it. There are just too many silly story line issues in the film, and not the changes from the Comics but inconsistencies in the film. Too many liberties are taken with History and you don't disbelieve something the immersion fails. I want to add that if you as an audience hold story line against X-Men: Last Stand you have to hold that against X-Men: First Class as well. First Class is stuck in movie hell, it's either 15 to 25 minutes too long or 15 to 25 minutes too short. The story they told should have been either condensed or added to to fill it out.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a failure on soo many levels it a shame you have to include it in the discussion. I will say X-Men Origins did have the bestest Trailer, too bad the movie doesn't even come close.
1) X-Men
2) X-Men: X-Men United (X2)
3) The Wolverine
4) X-Men: Last Stand (X3)
5) X-Men: First Class
6) X-Men Origins: Wolverine
2) X-Men: X-Men United (X2)
3) The Wolverine
4) X-Men: Last Stand (X3)
5) X-Men: First Class
6) X-Men Origins: Wolverine
So now the question becomes how did I get to that point.
In my opinion X-Men when it was released in 2000 changed how Superhero movies are made, told, shown, pick you word. The consequential changes in the budgets, the style, and vision has affected virtually all big budget superhero movies since that point. It is important to remember the previous big-budget Superhero movie was Batman & Robin which attempted to kill off Superhero movies as a viable Genre. With that in mind this is why I give X-Men the top spot.
X-Men: X-Men United aka X2, X-Men 2 or whatever you want to call it IS a better movie than the Original but it did less to change how movies were made which why the original gets moved up a notch. X2 has a solid single primary story arc and virtually every other supporting character has there own individual story arc. It's a great story filling all the parts. There are leaps and bounds in special effects, the sets are outstanding. Bryan Singer expands upon the universe and like only he can gives great, no outstanding, fight scenes.
The Wolverine is the best individual story of the series, it takes a familiar story from the comics and adds in new modern twists. The movie obliviously lacks some of the secondary story lines of the supporting characters over say X2, and did little to introduce us to potential long term characters, in simple terms the movie is too much of stand alone, with today's linked Marvel Universe that's not good enough. Budgetary constraints, unfinished CGI and other minor problems become very apparent as you watch the movie. Some of the 3-D scenes don't translate to 2-D very well and the fight scenes lacked ummm a finishing touch, you know the superhero pizzazz that Bryan Singer would have used. The immersion unfortunately fails in several scenes do to the little things that stand out. As much as I liked this movie it is too bad it didn't do better in terms of ticket sales in the theater.
X-Men: Last Stand is not a very good movie, but it does to this day have the highest box office take of any of the six movies. At 1 hour and 27 minutes the movie is a good 20 minutes and maybe as much as 120 minutes too short for the storylines attempting to be told in the film by Ratner and his team. The effects aren't too bad, the score is outstanding and the cinematography is probably the best of the movies, just can't overcome the problems in the script. On a side note the Dark Phoenix storyline is one of my favorite story lines out of the comics that I show a little Bias in favor of it over X-Men: First Class.
X-Men: First Class is a movie the younger you the more you seem to like the movie, it us old fogies that have problems with it. There are just too many silly story line issues in the film, and not the changes from the Comics but inconsistencies in the film. Too many liberties are taken with History and you don't disbelieve something the immersion fails. I want to add that if you as an audience hold story line against X-Men: Last Stand you have to hold that against X-Men: First Class as well. First Class is stuck in movie hell, it's either 15 to 25 minutes too long or 15 to 25 minutes too short. The story they told should have been either condensed or added to to fill it out.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a failure on soo many levels it a shame you have to include it in the discussion. I will say X-Men Origins did have the bestest Trailer, too bad the movie doesn't even come close.
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