Before the MCU assembledThe Avengersin 2012, anotherMarvel Comicssuperteam had already gathered on the silver screen.
Everything about the movie is incoherent the tone, the bizarrely twisted plot, the title.
It’s a Wolverine movie without Wolverine, which is to say, not really a movie at all.
Hugh Jackman in ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’.James Fisher/20th Century Fox
Also, god loveJames McAvoy, he gives one last great performance as Professor Charles Xavier in this wreckage.
11.X-Men: The Last Stand(2006)
Take one of the best story arcs inX-Menhistory.
Then combine it with a completely different story arc from a completely different corner ofX-Menhistory.
Jessica Chastain and Sophie Turner in ‘Dark Phoenix’.Twentieth Century Fox
Then kill off a central character with zero fanfare.
Then venture to awkwardly launch a next-generation X-Team inside the concluding saga of the first X-Team.
Then hand it to your director and hope he can make it work.
Famke Janssen in ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’.20th Century Fox/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
Oh, and your director isBrett Ratner.
Can I offer a modest defense of this immodestly garish piece of trash?
Three out of four characters don’t do anything except stand around looking cheesy-glorious in costumes that look Broadway-ready.
Oscar Isaac in ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’.20th Century Fox
He’s a dead man walking, haunted by visions of old lives and lovers.
Like every entry in theX-Menfranchise, it feels like several oppositional movies in one.
AndBryan Singerarguably doesn’t get enough credit for defining a certain brand of black-leather realism five years pre-Batman Begins.
Hugh Jackman in ‘The Wolverine’.Ben Rothstein
Honestly, it’s probably both.
In Deadpool terms, it primed us to unhinge our jaws and take it all in.
I have complicated feelings in general about this R-rated farce, which blends over-the-top bloodbathery with hit-or-miss gags.
Ryan Reynolds in ‘Deadpool 2’.Twentieth Century Studios
Also, any film that briefly makes an action hero out ofAlan Cummingearns immediate grade inflation.
The plot depends on absurd contrivances Shadowcat (Elliot Page) has time-travel powers?
and the massive size of the ensemble means that a lot of characters get short shrift.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in ‘X-Men’.Everett Collection
Or wait, is he mentoring thepreviousgeneration?
The already fragile internal chronology of the franchise shatters to pieces.
Sentinels!Peter Dinklage!
Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’.Marvel
Nixon (Mark Camacho)!
Ryan Reynolds and Stefan Kapičić in ‘Deadpool’.Twentieth Century Fox
(From left to right) Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, James Marsden, Shawn Ashmore, Famke Janssen, Halle Berry, and Hugh Jackman of ‘X2: X-Men United’.Kerry Hayes/Fox
Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy in ‘X-Men: First Class’.Everett Collection
Dafne Keen and Hugh Jackman in ‘Logan’.Ben Rothstein
Evan Peters (center) with (right, from left to right) Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, and James McAvoy in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’.Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox
