List of x-men movies in chronological order

How do you watch the X-Men movies in order? That’s a complicated question, with no easy answer. Fox produced over a dozen action movies based on Marvel’s mutants, and in that time, soft-rebooted the series once using time travel, adapted the Dark Phoenix Saga twice and made no less than three Wolverine spin-offs.

Between the frenetic timeline, ever-shifting cast, and the broad spectrum of quality (to put it mildly), coherence is not a strong suit of Fox’s X-Men-related output. That’s not to say Hugh Jackman’s rock hard abs are the only thread connecting these fantasy movies, and if you can tolerate a little inconsistency, there’s a couple of ways to watch the big-screen adventures of your favourite X-Men characters that will give you something resembling a full story.

The first solution to watching the X-Men movies in order is simply going through them chronologically. It’s the path of least resistance for organising a movie marathon, and so long as everyone accepts that one day Sophie Turner wakes up as Famke Janssen and doesn’t ask any more questions, it’s a fine slate of mutant action. The second involves diverging timelines, which takes a bit of work to keep straight, but the result is something that has a bit more thematic substance to it.

What is the correct way watch the X-Men movies in order?

  • X-Men: First Class (1962)
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine (1979)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse (1983)
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix (1992)
  • X-Men (2000)
  • X-Men 2/X2: X-Men United
  • X-Men: The Last Stand
  • The Wolverine
  • Deadpool
  • Deadpool 2
  • The New Mutants
  • X-Men: Days Of Future Past (starts and ends in 2023)
  • Logan (2029)

List of x-men movies in chronological order

HOW TO WATCH THE X-MEN MOVIES IN Chronological ORDER

Watching the X-Men movies in chronological order is the easiest way to get through the franchise. One entry aside, each X-Men movie mostly depicts specific events happening over a short period.

This means that starting from X-Men: First Class, you can form an orderly line of films that stretches from the early sixties, right up to the near future. Due to shifts in quality and personnel, some of the transitions are less than smooth, but on the whole, it lines up, at least on paper.

After the one-two gutterballs of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, in 2006 and 2009, respectively, Fox made the wise decision to shift gears and start fresh with an origin story. The result was X-Men: First Class, depicting the foundation of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Children and sowing the seeds for Professor X and Magneto’s long, embattled rivalry.

From there, in 1963, we move to 1979 for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a mostly self-contained dive into Wolvie’s checkered past that includes an appearance by fan-favourite Gambit, and Ryan Reynolds’ introduction as Wade Wilson.

It’s a marvelous world: The complete MCU timeline

A few years later, it’s 1983 and time for X-Men: Apocalypse, where the core group of mutated teens, including Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summers, Kurt ‘Nightcrawler’ Wagner, Ororo ‘Storm’ Munroe, and Jean Grey face En Sabah Nur, the world’s first mutant, played by Oscar Isaac.

Then, we jump to the nineties for Dark Phoenix, Fox’s last X-Men movie, for a truncated adaption of the Dark Phoenix Saga, that places Sophie Turner’s Jean front-and-center.

Friendly neighbourhood: Spider-Man movies ranked

After this, the original X-Men trilogy kicks off, with 2000’s X-Men, featuring Halle Berry as Storm (Halle Berry), Prof. Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen), and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman).

We stick with them through X2: X-Men United, and X-Men: The Last Stand, with a redux of the Dark Phoenix story, before getting Jackman’s second headline appearance, his jaunt over to Japan for 2013’s The Wolverine.

The series takes a detour at this point, shifting over to Ryan Reynolds and Wade ‘Deadpool’ Wilson for the anarchic Deadpool films. Both they and The New Mutants seem to take place around the time they were made, and watching them here won’t upset the continuity any.

More Deadpool-isms: Best comedy movies

X-Men: Days of Future Past, bookended by scenes in 2023, is next, combining the disparate casts as Wolverine fights to save the future. He succeeds, of course, but not necessarily for himself, as after that is James Mangold’s Logan, set in 2029.

One of the more beloved X-related films, Logan brings the overarching story that began in X-Men: First Class to a bittersweet, yet optimistic conclusion, Jackman and Stewart bowing out for the next generation to take over.

Watching order:

  • X-Men: First Class (1962)
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine (1979)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse (1983)
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix (1992)
  • X-Men (2000)
  • X-Men 2/X2: X-Men United
  • X-Men: The Last Stand
  • The Wolverine
  • Deadpool
  • Deadpool 2
  • The New Mutants
  • X-Men: Days Of Future Past (starts and ends in 2023)
  • Logan (2029)

List of x-men movies in chronological order

How to WATCH THE X-MEN MOVIES WITH The Split Timeline

The X-Men movies involve alternate timelines, and you’ll need to split the films up to get the full story. Most of X-Men: Days of Future Past takes place in 1973, and everything after that is part of the alterations Logan puts in place. 

X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix are both products of this other timeline, as are the Deadpool films, and The New Mutants. Therefore, if you want to experience Fox’s X-movies in their proper, messy glory, you need to separate them.

On one side is the 2000 timeline, staying with the cast of Fox’s original trilogy up through the noughties, into the Sentinel-ridden dystopia of Days of Future Past. On the other is the Apocalypse timeline, flowing through the seventies, eighties, and nineties in fulsome fashion.

Peter ‘Quicksilver’ Maximoff (Evan Peters), Raven ‘Mystique’ Darkholme (Jennifer Lawrence), Hank ‘Beast’ McCoy (Nicolas Hoult), and more contend against the invention of the Sentinels, Magneto, and mutant civil war. Oh, and the second run at Dark Phoenix, because one disastrous go wasn’t enough.

List of x-men movies in chronological order

All of which flows into Deadpool and The New Mutants, the other, more positive side of Future Past, and then Logan, for that sullen crescendo. Confusing as it is, watching them this way does grant the movies a little more resonance and clarity.

Get weirder: The best science fiction movies

Watching two different approaches fall apart serves as a keen allegory for the way properties can end up being mistreated by movie studios because production strays away from why people were attracted to these stories and characters in the first place.

Likewise, Wolverine’s arc as a mutant born among violence who never manages to outrun the bloodshed makes for compelling and teary-eyed watching by the end.

Watching order:

  • X-Men: First Class (both)

2000 timeline:

  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • X-Men
  • X-Men 2/X2: X-Men United
  • X-Men: The Last Stand
  • The Wolverine
  • X-Men: Days Of Future Past (opening)

Apocalypse timeline:

  • X-Men: Days of Future Past (1973 portion)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse
  • Dark Phoenix
  • Deadpool
  • Deadpool 2
  • New Mutants
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past (new future ending)
  • Logan

There they are, the best ways to watch the X-Men movies in order. It’s all a bit of a shambles, really, but these films have their merits. Check out our guides on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre timeline, and how to watch the Lord of the Rings movies in order for more cinematic escapades.

X-Men is one of the most high-profile film franchises ever made, but even a die-hard fan is likely to find the plot lines a little confusing.

From the original X-Men films in the early 00s to the more recent prequels starring James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, the hit Marvel series is so full of twists and turns it’s hard to keep up – and we haven’t even mentioned the Wolverine and Deadpool spin-offs yet.

Dark Phoenix, which starred Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, was billed as the final film focusing on the main characters in the X-Men franchise when it arrived last year, and supposedly acts as the final piece in this mutant puzzle – before the New Mutants eventually arrives, at least.

If it wasn’t hard enough to follow already, there are a couple of different timelines by which to follow the X-Men films, thanks to X-Men: Days of Future Past going back in time to 1973 and changing the course of history – which is where things get confusing.

There’s also the option to watch the films in chronological order, which is probably easiest for the casual X-Men viewer.

However you do it, you may want to do your homework before you head to the cinema. This is our guide to catching up with X Men in order.

20th Century Fox

The most logical way to watch the X-Men films is in chronological order, based on the years the fictional stories took place in.

  • X-Men: First Class (set in 1962, released in 2011)
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past (set in 1973, released in 2014)
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine (set in 1981, released in 2009)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse (set in 1983, released in 2016)
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix (set in 1992, released in 2019)
  • X-Men (set in 2000, released in 2000)
  • X2: X-Men United (set in 2003, released in 2003)
  • X-Men: The Last Stand (set in 2006, released in 2006)
  • The Wolverine (set in 2013, released in 2013)
  • Deadpool (set in 2016, released in 2016)​
  • Deadpool 2 (2018, released in 2018)
  • The New Mutants (2026, released in 2020)
  • Logan (2029, released in 2017)

20th Century Fox

If you’re feeling brave and want to include Days of Future Past in your movie marathon, opt for one of two alternate timelines. In the first, Mystique fails to kill military scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) after the X-Men discover he has been experimenting on mutants. Decades on, an army of robot Sentinels risk the extinction of mutant-kind. As a result, some of the films mentioned above do not appear in the list below. Based on that timeline, you can watch the films in the following order:

  • X-Men: First Class
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • X-Men
  • X2: X-Men United
  • X-Men: The Last Stand
  • The Wolverine

AP

In this timeline, the Wolverine stops Mystique from killing Trask, in turn saving mutants from extinction. Mystique becomes a public hero after saving President Nixon from Magneto. As with Timeline A, not all of the X-Men films feature in this timeline as a result. For this, watch in the following order:

  • X-Men: Days of Future Past (future sequence)
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past (past sequence)
  • X-Men: Apocalypse
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix ​
  • Deadpool ​
  • Deadpool 2
  • Logan