Back in 2016 I did a "Rank 'Em" list of the "X-men" films, leaving off the three spinoff films that existed at that time. Well, now there are six: the three Wolverine films, the two Deadpool films, and "The New Mutants." With the FOX-produced "X-men" films essentially kaput at this point, though "Deadpool 3" is still inching forward, I thought it would be a good time to look back on these "X-men" adjacent films, as we close the book on this part of the franchise. I'm still sad we never got that Gambit movie.
From best to worst, here we go:
"Logan" - You could argue that this should really count as an "X-men" film, because it stars two of the franchise's major characters: Wolverine and Professor X. However, it's also one of the most wildly off-brand of the "X-men" universe films, and the prime example of FOX being willing to take creative risks that none of the other studios were willing to with their superhero properties. This is a film about endings and death, an elegiac neo-Western that finally let Wolverine be the star of an R-rated production in the best way possible.
"Deadpool" - A meta-heavy, low-budget, R-rated, anti-hero assassin superhero comedy that took ages to get off the ground, the story of how "Deadpool" got made is almost as interesting as the movie itself. There's no disputing, however, that Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool were made for each other. The subversive, irreverent, referential humor, and the anarchic nature of the character were a great way to inject some new life into the wider "X-men" franchise and finally push Reynolds into the A-list. However, the joke got stale pretty quickly...
"The New Mutants" - Frankly, this is not an especially good film, and is getting a lot of extra points for its willingness to take some big risks and for some good casting. It does a decent job of setting up its new group of teen mutants, and prepping them for more adventures down the road. I like its haunted house premise and the way it uses bits of the established franchise mythology. The trouble is, it's a teen horror film that isn't scary, and the limited budget and inexperienced filmmakers are very apparent. I appreciate that it's doing something different, but that only goes so far.
"Deadpool 2" - I won't say that I didn't get some good laughs out of "Deadpool 2," but it's doing so much of the same thing that the first film did, just with a bigger budget. It's way too complicated, bringing in Josh Brolin's Cable, Zazie Beetz's Domino, the kid from "Hunt for the Wilderpeople," and even X-force briefly. The underdog angle and raging insecurity/trauma of Deadpool himself get totally lost, replaced with a weirdly generic pro-family theme. All the scruffiness and rough-edges of the first movie are gone, and the result is awfully bland. I've also seen the "Once Upon a Deadpool" version, and got nothing out of it - cute idea, but meh execution.
"The Wolverine" - The best thing I can say about "The Wolverine" is that it got director James Mangold into the franchise and set up "Logan." Otherwise, the story of Wolverine's adventures in Japan is pretty underwhelming stuff. I could tell what they were going for - a more serious, more dramatic character spotlight that the more mainstream "X-men" films couldn't accommodate. Logan deals with the death of Jean Grey in "The Last Stand" here, and gets to play modern day samurai for a while. However, the love story with Tao Okamoto is so boring, and the Orientalism gets really off-putting. It's better than the first "Wolverine" movie, but that's a low bar. Speaking of which...
"X-men Origins: Wolverine" - It's been a while since I've seen this one, and have no urge to revisit it. The fanboys have taken particular umbrage to this film over the years because it screws around too much with the established mythology around the characters, and is especially awful to Deadpool. I disliked it because it was just very forgettable and parts of it were poorly made. It amuses me to no end that the film's reputation is so bad, both"X-men: Days of Future Past" and "Deadpool 2" took pains to retroactively erase it from the film series' continuity.
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