That might sound like an insult, but I say it with a sense of awe and admiration. This is a franchise that began 19 years ago, in the year 2000. It predates the Marvel Cinematic Universe by 8 years. Hell, it even beats the Tobey Maguire “Spider-Man” by 2 years! Since 2002, we’ve had 3 live-action Spider-Man franchises, but there’s still only one X-Men franchise (albeit with two sets of main cast, playing the older and younger versions of the same characters). With its remarkable longevity, the X-Men franchise is our last tether back to a time before the modern age of mainstream superhero movies.
The first X-Men movie was released in the year 2000. I was only 14, so I can’t say much about the expectations that existed then, but I do remember how my dad reacted when he took me to see it: “That actually wasn’t bad.” (To be clear, it wasn’t his kind of movie. At least, that’s what he assumed beforehand.) My dad’s reaction was probably typical. While not a masterpiece, “X-Men” was one of those pleasantly surprising movies that are better than you would rightfully expect them to be. So much was working against the movie’s success: It was in a genre that wasn’t taken seriously, directed by someone with little experience (34-year-old Bryan Singer), and based on a comic book that had mainstream recognition, but not mainstream appeal.
Nevertheless, “X-Men” distinguished itself with competent execution and sophisticated themes about the marginalization of minorities and the clash of ideologies. (The casting of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen didn’t hurt either.) The opening sequence, set in a Nazi concentration camp, grounded the fantastical story in a way that general audiences could connect with, making “X-Men” a critical and commercial success.
Despite that, I wasn’t really enthusiastic about the franchise until the second installment, “X2.” It came out in 2003, when “The Matrix” (not “X-Men”) was the franchise everyone was talking about. As such, I went into it with modest expectations… but I was completely blown away. The movie still has legendary status in my mind today because of the impression it made on my 17-year-old self. It organically continued the story of the previous movie, but with better special effects and a trove of cool ideas. (One appeal of the X-Men movies has always been how the mutant powers are conceived, executed, and used in various scenarios.) The end of the movie left my mouth watering for what would come next.
Unfortunately, Bryan Singer (who also directed “X2”) was unavailable for the third film, “The Last Stand,” so Brett Ratner (of “Rush Hour” fame) took the reins. The results were not good, ostensibly sealing X-Men’s fate as one of many trilogies with a disappointing finale. Then, in 2009, the franchise reached the spin-off stage with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” It was painfully bad, suggesting that the 9-year-old X-Men franchise was descending into an embarrassing afterlife of money-grabbing spin-offs.
As if on cue, a prequel came out in 2011: “X-Men: First Class.” There was little reason for anyone to expect it to be good… but it actually was. With James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender playing younger versions of the Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen roles, along with the fun-and-flashy direction of Matthew Vaughn, “First Class” was well received, giving the 11-year-old X-Men franchise a new lease on life. Even the second Wolverine spinoff, released in 2013, was a notable improvement on the first one.
By 2014, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was only 5 years old, the 13-year-old X-Men franchise was having a second renaissance with its seventh film, “Days of Future Past.” This movie blew the minds of nerds everywhere (including me) by uniting the old cast with the new, as well as returning Bryan Singer to the director’s chair after 11 years. It told a daring story of time travel in which – spoiler alert – the timeline was changed so that the original trilogy never happened. (This twist was like a gift to everyone who hated the events of the much-despised third film, “The Last Stand.”)
The theme of fixing past mistakes continued in 2016, with “Deadpool.” While it wasn’t officially an X-Men movie, it was owned by the same studio, and it played with the idea of being in the same universe (but with its tongue far in-cheek). Moreover, it gave Ryan Reynolds a chance to finally do the character of Deadpool justice. He had played a barely-recognizable version of the character in the 2009 Wolverine movie, but everyone (including him) was unhappy with the results. That all changed with the 2016 “Deadpool” movie. It was a huge success, even after taking the risk of an R rating.
The same year, Bryan Singer returned to direct an X-Men movie for the fourth and final time with “X-Men: Apocalypse.” As much as I expected to like this installment, I wasn’t very fond of it. The whole movie felt like a good thing taken to excess. It was intense, but impersonal, with a grandiose villain and a parade of ambitious visual effects that felt too much like they came from a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. The wide reception was similar to my feelings, as it earned a 65% among audiences on Rotten Tomatoes (and frequent use of the adjective “bloated”). It wasn’t an awful movie, but it was “less good” than it should have been.
Over the last 3 years of the franchise, the best-received films have ironically been the spin-offs: “Deadpool” in 2016, “Logan” in 2017, and “Deadpool 2” in 2018. “Logan” was the third and final Wolverine spin-off, directed by James Mangold (who had also directed the previous Wolverine movie). Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart reprised their iconic roles for the last time, in a somber and violent story about Wolverine and Professor X in a dystopian future where everything they loved is lost. It had an R rating (which might have been impossible for an X-Men movie without “Deadpool” paving the way), and was well-received. To this day, I don’t know whether it’s meant to be the “real” future of these characters, or just a “what if?” kind of story. I’m happier believing the latter, but regardless, “Logan” was an admirably successful experiment for a 17-year-old franchise.
That finally brings us to “Dark Phoenix,” the first X-Men movie to feature none of the original cast (not even Wolverine!), and probably the last X-Men film from 20th Century Fox. To my knowledge, the end of the franchise hasn’t been officially announced… but now that Fox has been acquired by Disney, which also owns Marvel Studios, everyone expects the X-Men to finally get a hard reboot—not a soft reboot, like the prequel in 2011 or the timeline change in 2014, but a truly different universe.
“Dark Phoenix” enters the scene as the tenth X-Men movie (counting the Wolverine movies, but not counting the Deadpool movies). It is the fourth movie to feature the prequel cast, and the second attempt to adapt the Dark Phoenix storyline, which was originally teased at the end of “X2” (in 2003) and then botched by “The Last Stand” (in 2006). Sadly, the movie hasn’t been well received by critics… but I’m crazy about it. This is the movie that 17-year-old me thought he was going to get after “X2” in 2003.
Because I love “Dark Phoenix” (and the “Logan” and “Deadpool” films have been so good), I don’t view the X-Men as a franchise in decline. However, that seems to be the common attitude, so I’m prepared for this to be the end. And hey, if “Dark Phoenix” is the end of this X-Men franchise, I’m okay with that. It’s not meant to be an all-encompassing finale (a la “Endgame”), even though some people seem to be judging it as such. Rather, it’s the last mixed bag in a 19-year saga of mixed bags. It’s a relic from a time when we weren’t lucky enough to have the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its tenure deserves a measure of respect.
I love this franchise, and in order to love it, you have to accept it for what it is: a flawed-but-remarkable phenomenon that has pleasantly surprised us more times than we had any right to expect.
