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X-Men begins by introducing several of the movie’s lead characters along with their superhuman mutant powers. First is a young Eric Lensherr, later to become known as Magneto (Ian McKellen). As a young boy in war-torn Poland in 1944, Eric demonstrates his superpower of manipulating magnetic fields when he’s forcefully separated from his parents by Nazi soldiers. The movie jumps forward in time to the near future, where teenage Rogue (Anna Paquin) has run away from home after nearly killing a young boy. Rogue’s superpower enables her to suck out the life force of anyone she touches. If that person’s a mutant, she also inherits their superpowers. While on the run, Rogue meets Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a man whose superpowers enable him to heal any wounds within seconds.

Rogue and Wolverine are attacked by a mutant named Sabretooth (Tyler Mane) but are rescued by two X-Men – Storm (Halle Berry) and Cyclops (James Marsden). Storm and Cyclops take Rogue and Wolverine back to meet their leader, Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), a mutant with the ability to control the minds of others. Xavier runs a school for young mutants, teaching the students how to use their superpowers responsibly.

Normal humans are afraid of mutants and their superpowers. In Congress, Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) is attempting to pass a ‘Mutant Registration Act’. This would force mutants to reveal their identities and superpowers. Magneto fears the Act will take away the rights and freedom of mutants. He’s built a machine that can transform normal humans into mutants. Magneto believes that if the people responsible for the Mutant Registration Act are transformed into mutants, they’ll no longer support their own bill. But Magneto needs Rogue’s special abilities to power his machine. Together with Mystique (Rebecca Romijin) and Toad (Ray Park), Magneto kidnaps Rogue and takes her to Liberty Island. They strap her into the machine on top of the statue of Liberty. It’s now up to the X-Men to save Rogue and destroy Magneto’s machine.

Discrimination; superpowers

This movie contains a lot of violence. For example:

• Wolverine and another man have a fist fight in a mesh cage while people watch and cheer. Wolverine slams a man headfirst into the mesh. A short time later, the man’s unconscious body is dragged from the fighting pen. Wolverine fights a second man, who kicks him in the back and punches him in the head, knocking Wolverine to his knees. The man then kicks Wolverine several times in the stomach, the force of the kicks lifting him off the ground. Later the same man tries to stab Wolverine with a knife. He fails. Knife blades come out of Wolverine’s fists and cut the man’s neck.
• Wolverine drives a van with Rogue sitting in the passenger seat. The van hits a fallen tree, and Wolverine crashes through the windscreen. Wolverine picks himself up from the ground. There’s a bloody gash on his forehead and his bones make a cracking sound as he turns his head. A brutish-looking man (Sabretooth) attacks Wolverine, picking him up and hurling him through the air. He knocks down several trees as his body crashes into them. Sabretooth picks up a large log and hits Wolverine in the chest, which knocks Wolverine a hundred feet through the air to land on the bonnet of his van. Meanwhile, Rogue is trapped inside the van, which has caught on fire.
• Wolverine lies in bed asleep and seems to be having a nightmare. Rogue enters and stands next to the bed. Wolverine wakes up, sitting bolt upright. There’s the sound of blades coming out of his fists. Rogue gasps as three knife blades go through her back. The blades withdraw, leaving three small bloody wounds behind. Rogue touches Wolverine’s face and both their faces look old. Blue veins come up from Wolverine’s skin as Rogue sucks out his life energy. Her wounds close up and heal within seconds while Wolverine falls to the floor unconscious.
• Magneto uses his powers to lift dozens of guns into the air and point them at police. A bullet stops as it reaches a policeman’s forehead. The bullet slowly rotates and penetrates his skin, while the policeman screams in pain and fear before the bullet falls harmlessly to the ground.
• Toad falls from above and lands on top of a policeman, squashing him flat. There’s a split-second image of the squashed body beneath Toad’s feet, but no blood and gore is shown. In several other scenes, Toad uses his 20-foot tongue to catch victims and hurl them through the air.

Sexual references

X-Men contains a couple of very low-level sexual references. For example:

• Wolverine lies on an operating table with a bare chest. He says to the woman assisting him, ‘So you couldn’t wait to get my shirt off again’.
• Wolverine flirts with a woman. When the woman’s boyfriend walks in, Wolverine asks him if he’s going to ask Wolverine to stay away from his girl.

Alcohol, drugs and other substances

This movie shows some use of substances. For example:

• Wolverine smokes cigars on several occasions.
• Wolverine drinks spirits and beer.
• Rogue is struck in the back of the neck with a hypodermic syringe, which makes her fall unconscious immediately.

Nudity and sexual activity

This movie contains some nudity and sexual activity. For example:

• Women wear low-cut tops that show some cleavage.
• A teenage girl and boy lie on a bed kissing.
• A naked man walks out of the sea and up onto a beach. His nakedness is partly hidden because his body is grotesquely bloated and distorted.

Product placement

None of concern

Coarse language

This movie contains occasional low-level coarse language and mild name-calling.

Ideas to discuss with your children

X-Men is a science fiction action adventure targeted at adolescent boys. It’s very entertaining for its target audience, but is too violent and scary for younger children .

The main message from this movie is that segregating people who are different is evil and will lead to civil unrest and upheaval.

Values in this movie that you could reinforce with your children include the following:

• Self-sacrifice: on several occasions, Wolverine shows that he’s willing to sacrifice his life to protect and save Rogue’s life.
• Empathy: Wolverine shows empathy towards Rogue when he listens to, understands and responds to her distress.

You could talk about the way the movie’s presents discrimination and segregation and how that might relate to the treatment of minority groups today and in the past.

Other reviews you might be interested in

• X Men: The Last Stand
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• X-Men: First Class

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

• Parents Guide

Certification

• Sex & Nudity (6)
• Violence & Gore (14)
• Profanity (4)
• Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking (3)
• Frightening & Intense Scenes (1)
• Spoilers (8)

Sex & Nudity

• Mild 86 of 149 found this mild Severity? None 23 Mild 86 Moderate 29 Severe 11 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Logan wakes up with a woman in bed. When, he gets up, he is nude with his bare buttocks shown. Edit
• Male nudity, although genitals just hidden. Edit
• In a scene, a man insinuates that he want to have relations with Mystique, telling her "clothes off". Edit
• Women often in crop tops. Edit
• A large mural of 'Liberty Leading the People', a painting depicting a woman with a bare breast. It's an artistic representation, lacks detail, and only briefly shown. Edit
• A woman with blue scale like skin, Is seen in some scenes completely naked. Edit

Violence & Gore

• Moderate 45 of 66 found this moderate Severity? None 3 Mild 12 Moderate 45 Severe 6 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• Although battle scenes are intense and we see people killed in different dark ways the over all violence is more fantasy than realistic, never-the-less the violence contains a significant number of deaths, in brutal ways. Blood is shown however usually just flesh wounds and little to no gore. Edit
• In the future we see evidence of the great battles that have brought civilization to its knees. Skyscrapers are crumbling, rubble is strewn everywhere and corpses tumble out of a container into a burial pit. Edit
• Bodies are impaled by robots with arm-like appendages, burned, blasted and otherwise killed. Slow-motion moments involve a person being slowly consumed by a blast of energy as they are lowered into it by a robot and another person exploding into thousands of pieces as he is overwhelmed by energy. Edit
• Pictures reveal mutants who have been tortured, operated on and sewn back together in Mengele-like experiments conducted by a scientist. Edit
• A character is executed with a bullet to the forehead (wound visible, no blood). Edit
• Wolverine has his chest riddled with bullets (leaving holes that then seal back up and the bullets drop to the ground). In turn, he impales his attackers with bone (pre-adamantium Wolverine) claws. He also hammers several human guards with a frying pan. (This is common in the X-men films for this character). Edit
• A man is pinned to the wall by his throat with a characters foot, he survives. Edit
• Through a variety of mutant-vs.-human fights, men are battered about with everything from hard-knuckled fists to floating metal balls, bones breaking and faces getting pounded. Edit
• There are also mutant-on-mutant melees. One mutant tosses another around in one scene, and pummels and tries to drown a different mutant in another. Edit
• Magneto levitates a needle to sew up a cut on the back of his own head. Edit
• A character is shot in the neck, leaving a bloody entrance and exit wound but survives. Edit
• A character is stabbed with metallic claws (open wound with blood visible). Another character states that she's lost too much blood. Edit
• A character is stabbed with a piece of metallic debris (wound not visible) from a resulting explosion. The character is slowly bleeding out as he's teleported to safety. Edit
• A character stabbed with multiple re-bars is thrown into a river and starts to drown. Edit
• Moderate 49 of 79 found this moderate Severity? None 2 Mild 23 Moderate 49 Severe 5 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• The Rogue Cut has two "F" bombs, one spoken by Charles and the other by President Nixon. Edit
• 5 uses of "shit", 1 use of "ass", 2 uses of "asshole" Edit
• 1 F-bomb ("Fuck off") 1 use of screwing. Edit
• "Hell," damn," "asshole," "shit," and one use of "fuck" respectively. Edit

Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking

• Mild 48 of 68 found this mild Severity? None 11 Mild 48 Moderate 8 Severe 1 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• A man tells another he's on acid to explain his weird behaviour. Comedic. Edit
• One character is a drunkard and another drinks socially. Edit
• One character is seen smoking a cigar. Edit

Frightening & Intense Scenes

• Moderate 43 of 64 found this moderate Severity? None 5 Mild 9 Moderate 43 Severe 7 We were unable to submit your evaluation. Please try again later.
• The final scene is very emotional Edit

The Parents Guide items below may give away important plot points.

• In the Rogue Cut, Hank and Raven share an intimate scene. During conversation, she kisses him and they both fall to the floor while transforming. Hank kisses her aggressively until she stops him. Edit
• The action starts right from the beginning, as it is the most serious X-Men movie. A group of mutants fight robots called Sentinels. One mutant is smothered, another is smacked by a Sentinel against the ground. One mutant can transform into an Ice form and while in this form he is decapitated (no blood) and his head (in clear ice) is crushed by a Sentinel , A mutant is stabbed in the back, and another is blasted against a wall. Edit
• Magneto rips a large quantity of rebar out of a crumbled building and jams the metal bars in and through Wolverine, pinning him to the ground. Edit
• A character is shot in the leg. (We see the bleeding wound up close.) The victim jumps out a high window and tries to hobble away, but another character drags them back by attracting that metal bullet in their calf until it pops back out of the puncture. Edit
• The future ending is VERY dark and sad, as the team gets easily dispatched one by one. Storm is stabbed in the back and thrown off a cliff; the power-absorbing Bishop is blasted from three sides until he eventually blows up. Colossus gets ripped in half; a Sentinel pushes Warpath's face towards its fiery beam; three sentinels gang up on Sunspot, one impales his left arm, and another pushes him towards a third one that stabbs him in the back. Blink is stabbed by three Sentinels simultaneously. Iceman is burned alive by multiple Sentinels. Edit
• A crucial plot point of the film deals with a depressed character's drug-like dependency to a shapeshifting serum, which enables him to walk on the expense of his powers Since this drug is actually completely fictional in reality and exists only in the universe of this movie. Edit
• This movie is dark but not too much but when Wolverine was drowning it may be emotional or scary for kids. Edit
• Wolverine is shown getting punctured by medal rods and is thrown out into the ocean. We see some sentinels jumping out of nowhere and stabbing and killing mutants. Edit

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The origin story is crucial to all superhero epics, from the gods of ancient Greece right down to Superman's parents. Next in importance is an explanation of superpowers: what they are, how they work. That's reasonable when there is one superhero, like Superman or the Crow, but in "X-Men," with eight major characters and more in supporting roles, the movie gets top-heavy. At the halfway mark, it has just about finished introducing the characters.

That matches my experience of the "X-Men" comic books. The characters spend an inordinate amount of time accounting for themselves. Action spills across full pages as the heroes splatt and kerrruuunch each other, but the dialogue balloons are like little advertisements for themselves, as they describe their powers, limitations and motivations.

Since the Marvel Comics empire hopes "X-Men" is the first entry in a franchise, it's understandable that the setups would play an important role in the first film. If only there were more to the payoff. The events that end the movie are sort of anticlimactic, and the special effects, while energetic, are not as persuasive as they might be (at one point an airplane clearly looks like a model, bouncing as it lands on water).

"X-Men" is at least not a manic editing frenzy for atrophied attention spans. It's restrained and introspective for a superhero epic, and fans of the comic books may like that. Graphic novels (as they sometimes deserve to be called) take themselves as seriously as the ones without pictures, and you can tell that here when the opening scene shows Jews being forced into death camps in Poland in 1944. One could argue that the Holocaust is not appropriate subject matter for an action movie based on a comic book, but having talked to some "X-Men" fans I believe that in their minds the medium is as deep and portentous as, say, " Sophie's Choice ." The Holocaust scene introduces Magneto ( Ian McKellen ) as a child; his mental powers twist iron gates out of shape. The narrator informs us that "evolution takes thousands and thousands of years," which is putting it mildly, and that we live in an age of great evolutionary leaps forward. Some of the X-Men develop paranormal powers which cannot be accounted for by the strictly physical mutations which form the basis of Darwinian theory; I get restless when real science is evoked in the name of pseudoscience, but, hey, that's just me.

Magneto's opponent in "X-Men" is Xavier ( Patrick Stewart ), another mutant of the same generation. They aren't enemies so much as ideological opposites. Magneto, having seen the Holocaust, has a deep pessimism about human nature. Xavier, who runs a school for mutants in Westchester County, where it doubtless seems no stranger than the other private schools, hopes these new powers can be used for good. Bruce Davison plays the McCarthy-like senator who waves a list of "known mutants" during a congressional hearing and wants them all registered--no doubt for dire purposes. Magneto wants to counter by using a device which can convert world leaders to mutants. (The world leaders are conveniently meeting on an island near Ellis Island, so the Statue of Liberty can be a prop.) How a machine could create a desired mutation within a generation is not much explored by the movie, which also eludes the question of why you would want to invest your enemies with your powers. No matter; Xavier, who can read minds, leads his good mutants in a battle to foil Magneto, and that's the plot, or most of it.

"X-Men" is arguably heavy on mutants; they have a way of coming onstage, doing their tricks and disappearing. The leads are Wolverine ( Hugh Jackman ), whose fists sprout deadly blades; Cyclops ( James Marsden ), who wears a wraparound visor to control and aim his laserlike eyes; the prosaically named Dr. Jean Grey ( Famke Janssen ), who can move objects with her mind; Storm ( Halle Berry in a platinum wig), who can control the weather, and Rogue ( Anna Paquin ), a teenager who is new to this stuff. I can't help wondering how a guy whose knuckles turn into switchblades gets to be the top-ranking superhero. If Storm can control, say, a tropical storm, she's obviously the most powerful, even if her feats here are limited to local climate control.

Magneto's team is not as colorful as the good guys, and includes Mystique ( Rebecca Romijn-Stamos ), who in the Japanese anime tradition can change her shape (as her costume tries to keep up), and Toad ( Ray Park ), who has a tongue that can whip out to great distances. Why it is that Xavier's team has impressive skills, while Magneto's team has specialties that would prove invaluable to a stripper? I started out liking this movie, while waiting for something really interesting to happen. When nothing did, I still didn't dislike it; I assume the X-Men will further develop their personalities if there is a sequel, and maybe find time to get involved in a story. No doubt fans of the comics will understand subtle allusions and fine points of behavior; they should linger in the lobby after each screening to answer questions.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

X-Men (2000)

Rated PG-13 For Sci-Fi Action Violence

Patrick Stewart as Xavier

Halle Berry as Storm

Anna Paquin as Rogue

Famke Janssen as Jean Grey

James Marsden as Cyclops

Tyler Mane as Sabretooth

Ian McKellen as Magneto

Directed by

• Bryan Singer
• David Hayter

Based On A Story by

• Tom Desanto

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X-Men: First Class | 2011 | PG-13 | - 5.7.5

SEX/NUDITY 5 - A man giggles and appears to be fondling a woman (she's wearing a cleavage-exposing bra and underwear) that's straddling him, facing forward while sitting on his lap; when two other men walk into the room and interrupt him, we see that the woman wearing the bra and underwear was an illusion and she is actually sitting on a chair. ►  A young woman is seen in a man's bed and it is suggested she is interested in sex (we see her bare shoulders and it's implied that she is nude under the sheets); the man dismisses her saying he wants some sleep (it is implied that nothing sexual happens). ►  A young woman is seen wearing no clothing: her skin is tinted blue and the shape of her breasts is evident but obscured by scales. A woman observes two other women wearing bras and short skirts with visible cleavage, makes a remark to a man that she is going to "use" something and unzips her dress; we later see her in a bra and underwear. Throughout the movie we see a woman wearing very form-fitting outfits, including a short dress which is low-cut and exposes cleavage and a tight pants suit which is low-cut and exposes cleavage; also a bra and underwear. We see a brief flash of a woman's underwear as she is running and her dress lifts slightly in the front. ►  We see women wearing bras and short skirts while dancing on tables in a strip club and two men approach a woman about a "private dance;" we see them almost reclined on a bed, one of the men makes a joke ("We'll show you ours if you show us yours"), and the woman unsnaps her bra revealing her bare back and loose-hanging bra covering her cleavage as she sprouts butterfly wings and flies above the men. ►  Several women are seen being lead into a room, they are wearing various revealing outfits, including cleavage revealing bras, bare torso revealing bras and underwear, negligees, short skirts with cleavage-exposing bras and short, form-fitting dresses; it is implied the women will be performing erotic dances for men, who make cat calls, and we see some of the women taking men into a private room and pulling the curtains closed. ►  A man and a woman kiss. A young woman and a young man are about to kiss when a man interrupts them. A young woman wearing a robe (no nudity is visible) asks a man if he would date her, he agrees that he would but did not think of her in "that way" and we then see the young woman cuddle next to the man, laying her head on his shoulder. A young woman sits on the lap of a young man. ►  A man makes a joking pass at a woman and says that she will find out something "...in the morning" and a young woman interrupts them. A young woman makes a joke about the size of a man's genitals. A woman makes a remark that she would rather do exotic dancing for a living, she removes her jacket revealing her back-exposing dress and a young man whistles. A young man jokes that his outfit is "sexy."

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A man uses a mental power to slowly force a coin through another man's forehead: we see it entering his forehead and leaving the back of his head covered in blood, and we later see the man using mental powers to lift the man's corpse, levitating it above a group of people and dropping it to the ground (we see a trickle of blood coming from the wound on his forehead). ►  A man grabs a knife from another man's hand and uses it to stab the man's hand to a table while two other men watch and another man approaches with a gun drawn: the man holding the knife uses a mental power to force the gun from the other man's hand, point it at the man at the table and shoot it; he then uses his power to send the knife through the air, stabbing the man in the stomach twice (we hear the sound of slicing tissue but no blood is visible), in the hand once again, and shoots a man in the chest (no blood is seen). ►  A man appears and disappears and begins to stab men that attempt to shoot him: they miss and he drops many men to the ground, stabbing them as well as lifting them high into the air, dropping their bodies and throwing two men through a glass window (no blood is visible, but a group of young men and women watch in horror). ►  A man attempts to grab a woman, another man touches his mouth and a small ball of fire enters the man's mouth from his fingertips; we see the man's body morph into ash and then fire as a young man watches him die (we later hear that the man died). ►  A man holds a boy at gunpoint, then points his gun at a woman (the boy's mother), her arms held back by two other men, and the man shoots the woman, who falls to the ground (no blood is visible). ►  During a series of long fights, we see a young man flying through the air while being attacked by a man that disappears and reappears in mid-air, and a woman with butterfly wings spits fireballs at men standing on the deck of a boat and at a young man flying through the air, hitting his costume and causing him to almost drop a young man he is carrying; a man lifts other men into the air and then drops them onto the deck of a boat and into the water from a great distance, a man uses knives and swords to stab men and slice a man's throat (no blood is visible) and a man touches multiple men causing them to disappear instantly in a puff of smoke and fire. ►  A man fires a gun at a second man, who deflects the bullets and then lifts the gunman up by the neck and drops his limp body to the side as he is surrounded by guards with machine guns; the machine guns are fired at the man, the bullets hit him but we see no wounds, he then lifts his hand and using a mental power throws a ball of flame through the group of guards, ripping apart the building and balcony were they stand (we see the outline of two men falling into the ball of fire). ►  A man uses a mental power to pull barbed wire from a fence and wrap it around several men; the men are slammed to the ground and dragged (we later see a man approach them and they appear to be dying). ►  A woman fires a gun at a man, and the man uses mental powers to deflect the bullets, causing one of the bullets to hit a bystander that falls to the ground and it is implied the man is paralyzed from the gunshot. We hear gunshots and the sound of a man shouting, and then a thud of what is implied to be him hitting the ground. ►  A man experiences a flashback of a woman being shot and falling to the ground and flashes of the man as a young boy being held down on a gurney with medical instruments stuck to his head. ►  A man holds a gun to another man's forehead during a training session, the man begs for him to fire the gun since he will deflect the bullet and be unharmed, but the man drops the gun, saying he cannot shoot someone point-blank. ►  A man uses mental powers to suck up a tunnel of water and pull on an airplane until one of its wings snaps and a man standing on the wheel-well of the airplane almost falls from the sky; the airplane, driven by a beast-man and containing several passengers, begins to flip through the air, and we see the passengers sliding around and smashing into one another as it lands on a beach upside down (one passenger smacks her head on the roof of the airplane when she unsnaps her seatbelt and falls on her head and the pilot is seen with a cut on his face). ►  Boats fire missiles at an island where several people are standing, and a man uses mental powers to slow the missiles which hang in the air and then controlled by a man's mind turn to face the boats; the man is distracted when another man tackles him and some of the missiles explode harmlessly in the air while other missiles continue toward the boat until the man is interrupted again and the missiles detonate in mid-air (the boats and passengers are unharmed). A man uses a mental power to flip over two boats approaching a large cruise ship; we see the outline of men being thrown from the boats. A man uses mental powers to send an anchor flying through the air and crashing through the deck of a boat; the anchor narrowly misses a man and a woman and they escape unharmed. ►  A man picks up other men and carries them into the air, and then drops them to the ground from great heights; we see one of the men dropped in front of several young men and women and his body landing on the ground with a crunch. ►  A woman leaps toward two men, one of the men uses a mental power to throw the woman against a bed, then uses a mental power to twist the bed frame around her wrists and neck and she is about to choke when the man loosens his mental grip. A man summons wind power and uses it to pick up a man and slam him into a wall; he falls to the ground with a thud and is later seen unharmed. ►  A boy screams and uses a mental power to crumple the helmets on two soldier's heads; they scream in pain and grab at their heads until they fall to the ground. A man lifts a woman up using a mental power, she begins to choke and the man drops her unharmed moments later. ►  A man uses a mental power to throw two men to the ground, punching one of them, and then uses a mental power to pull the bullets from the guns of two guards, slam the two men together and knock them to the ground. ►  A man punches another man, who deflects the punch and using a finger flicks the man, sending him crashing against a wall; he then lifts him up and smashes him against another wall, pins him against the wall using a large metal bar (we see small bloody abrasions on his face), and the man is able to free himself just as the other man appears about to stab him. ►  A man throws a knife at a second man, and the knife is grabbed by a woman moments before it hits the man; the woman kicks the first man in the chest, knocking him off the side of a boat and into the water unharmed. ►  A man sticks himself with a syringe (no blood is visible and the syringe entering his flesh is slightly obscured) and he shouts in horror as his body transforms. A man screams in pain as a woman uses a mental power to bring him to his knees. A man winces in pain as he hears a high-pitched sound coming from a young man. ►  A man grabs a young man's arm and shoves him away angrily. A man taps a beast-man's arm, and the beast-man grabs the man by the neck, choking him until another man shouts at him to drop him; he is unharmed as he hits the ground with a thud. ►  A man uses a mental power to control another man's arms, making him hit himself in the face; he then shoves the man lightly on the chest and using mental powers forces the man's mouth open and closed repeatedly and pulls a filling from the man's mouth without touching him (the man winces in pain as the other man leaves, threatening his life). A man uses mental powers to pop a bullet out of a man's gunshot wound (no blood or wound is visible). ►  A boy uses a mental power to smash a glass window, lifts up a gurney and a variety of surgical equipment in a room and spins it around, smashing it to the ground and into the walls as a man watches. ►  A man pulls the pin from a grenade as he stands in front of two other men and a woman; he contains the explosion within his hands and then touches one of the men and we see a fireball knock the man backward and off a boat. Men approach the rubble of a building; we see smoke coming from the background as three young men and a young woman sit unharmed outside. Sailors on boats prepare to fire missiles as men instruct them: we first see them readying the missile to fire at each other's boats and then see them aimed at an island where several people are standing. ►  We see several men, women and children being lead into cages at gunpoint, guards shove a man and a woman away from a boy, he reaches out for the woman as she is shoved into the cage, and we see the metal of the cage bending; two guards hold the boy back, he screams and a third guard smashes the boy on the head with the butt of a gun (he falls to the ground and we later see the boy unharmed). A boy uses a mental power to collapse a metal filing cabinet as a man watches in shock. A man uses a mental power to send a coin flying through the air and into the forehead of the drawing of a man. ►  A man implies to a boy that he will be medically tortured, pointing to a room with a gurney and surgical equipment. A man tells another man, using telepathy, that he will drown and die if he does not surface in water; the man surfaces unharmed and shoves the man away using a mental power. ►  During a practice session, several young men and young women display their mutant powers: a young man whistles and the sound breaks glass, a young woman spits a fireball that lands on a statue's head, a young man uses a force to slice a statue in half, and a young man hits another man on the shoulders and back with a metal rod (the man is unharmed). A young man uses a force to have lasers cut and explode mannequins, and we later see the room the young man is standing in on fire (a man puts out the fire with a fire extinguisher). A young man and a man stand next to a mannequin and instruct another man to explode it using an unseen force, the mannequin catches on fire and the two men are unharmed. ►  Several men draw their guns as a man approaches the back of the truck where they are hiding; the man makes them disappear. A boy holds a baseball bat over his head, about to swing it and he drops it to his side when he sees a woman (she's his mother). ►  A young woman jokes that a young man is "out for her blood" when he asks to take a blood sample; we see him holding a syringe. A man shouts and clenches his jaw while wearing a helmet to transmit brain waves. We see a young man in a prison cell and a prison guard tells two men that the young man prefers being in solitary confinement. ►  A man tells another man that a brick of gold was "blood money," had been melted down from other people's possessions, as well as their teeth. A man tells another man that he is going to kill a man. A man warns another man that killing a person will not change his life. On multiple occasions we hear men discussing how a group of people will be "rounded up" and possibly killed. A man tells another man that he fears for their lives since a group of people will kill them. A man uses telepathy to read another man's mind and discovers that a man is planning to kill him and group of people. A boy tells a girl that she no longer has to steal food to survive. A man jokes to several other people that they must wear suits if they do not want to have their bones "brittled by G-force." ►  On multiple occasions we hear about an impending "World War 3" or nuclear war, which would occur if and when Russia and the USA would equip nuclear missiles; we see meetings of men discussing arming missiles, and a man instructs another man to arm missiles despite the man's declaration that it will cause a world war. On multiple occasions we see men, women and young men and women watching television and we hear reporters announcing that the arming of missiles will lead to military action. We see the headline of a newspaper reporting that missiles are aimed at a country. We see imagery of mushroom clouds and missiles being detonated. ►  A young man jumps out of a window and lands on the ground; he is later seen unharmed. A man shoves a young man off the top of a satellite; he begins to fall and then flies away unharmed. ►  A young woman spits toothpaste into a sink.

LANGUAGE 5 - At least 1 F-word, 4 sexual references, 2 anatomical terms, 8 mild obscenities, name-calling (adorable lab rat, stupid, pathetic, mutant, deformed, freak, Frankenstein's monster, ridiculous, old fart, crackpot, sparkling dames, mutant men, laughing stock, ruthless, naïve, arrogant, Neanderthal, a man jokes that he "did not know the circus was in town" in reference to a several young men and women), exclamations (bloody, son of a), 3 religious profanities, 10 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A man asks a woman if she was smoking "those funny cigarettes," and a man makes vague references to his drink being drugged when he believes he is hallucinating. Throughout the movie we see men and women drinking cocktails, beer and champagne, men discuss a man preferring champagne, and a man instructs a woman to put ice in his cocktail. Two men are seen smoking cigars on two different occasions.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Mental powers, mutations, discrimination, concentration camps, the Holocaust, Nazism, antisemitism, being excluded because you are different, revenge, hiding one's personal traits, mutations, genetic mutations, CIA, Bay of Pigs, KGB, dishonesty, rage, hatred, acceptance.

MESSAGE - Extraordinary powers combined with hatred can corrupt. People must band together for a greater cause.

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated , Special , Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.

REVIEWS See ratings & reviews at Critics.com

WEB LINKS Official Site    IMDb

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THE ASSIGNED NUMBERS Unlike the MPAA we do not assign one inscrutable rating based on age but 3 objective ratings for SEX/NUDITY , VIOLENCE/GORE & LANGUAGE on a scale of 0 to 10, from lowest to highest depending on quantity & context | more |

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X-men movies ranked by how appropriate they are for kids.

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Superhero movies are all the rage, and X-Men was a major factor in making that happen. But that's not to say the franchise has been utterly consistent to the letter, or even remotely so. In fact, some installments of the larger Mutant universe (pre-MCU, which will ostensibly happen sooner than later) are fine for those whose ages are in the single digits.

Others, however, are not. Typically, these are solo ventures that intentionally push the boundaries of what the core franchise has been allowed to do, but even the core X-Men films sometimes have their moments that might make parents sweat.

Deadpool 2 (2018)

The two Deadpool films are obviously the least child-friendly corner of the X-Men universe, which raises the legitimate question of how he'll fit into the MCU. Both films are a hard R, but the sequel makes the effort to go further than the original, e.g. having one of Deadpool's teammates parachute down straight into a wood chipper.

The good news is, Deadpool 2 has a PG-13 version called Once Upon A Deadpool . The bad news is that it's a weaker variation of the so-so original.

Deadpool (2016)

Deadpool was a substantial gamble for 20th Century Studios (then 20th Century Fox). The X-Men franchise had always been one of their cash cows, but it wasn't to the same extent of Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy. The subsequent reboots of both franchises petered out with a whimper.

So an R-rated solo venture for the Merc with the Mouth could have been a niche item, and the budget was kept low (which changed with Deadpool 2 ). However, the film subsequently soared at the box office, but it still has just about everything in it that parents are expecting when they suggest a different, more appropriate film.

Logan (2017)

Logan is and will remain one of the most well-crafted and compelling films in the X-Men universe, but it's also the most viscerally violent. There's also a (mutant) child almost consistently put in harm's way, and a particularly brutal slaying of not only Professor X but an innocent family, as well.

Logan is a poignant film about putting one's own life on the line for another, younger individual: The journey of a man from selfish to selfless. But even the movie's effective theme could prove to alienate younger viewers.

The Wolverine (2013)

There are two cuts of The Wolverine available for viewers, and neither one of them quite matches the intensity (or goriness) of Logan . Even still, whether it's the PG-13 or R-rated version, The Wolverine can be a heavy affair that only gets silly once the big robot samurai enters the picture in the third act.

Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's landmark 1982 run on the title character (called simply Wolverine ) was excellent source material for a feature film, but it also has Logan in a pretty dark place. He's grieving, angry, and has little issue showing it. The movie (and star Hugh Jackman) do a superb job of conveying this in the movie, making it a bit more adult than the standard X adventures.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014)

Of all the most recent core X-Men films, X-Men: Days of Future Past is certainly the grimmest. The two films that followed it also dealt with a world-ending threat, but in Days of Future Past annihilation feels not only possible but in progress.

The complex, Nixon-era politics that comprise the vast majority of the film's non-futuristic scenes could also prove outright boring to kids, even if they are arguably the best part of the film for adults. Furthermore, for those parents who don't want their kids to see Hugh Jackman's rear end, they might want to skip Days of Future Past .

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Not only one of The Batman star Zoë Kravitz' best films , X-Men: First Class is perhaps the best film of the franchise as a whole. However, there's still some stuff that may be taboo in the eyes of many parents. For instance, there's Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw murdering Magneto's mother in front of him, as well as several underwear scenes with January Jones.

The time period could also prove problematic with younger viewers, as there's an ever-looming threat of global war that fuels the majority of the plot.

X-Men Apocalypse (2016)

X-Men: Apocalypse is close to First Class when it comes to disturbing imagery, but it's of a sillier (more difficult to actually take seriously) variety.

Apocalypse merging a man with a wall is a disturbing visual, but the impact is dulled by poor CGI and the generally cartoonish titular villain. Even with Oscar Isaac under the makeup, Apocalypse isn't very intimidating, and the movie's only truly involving (and perhaps disturbing) scene doesn't even involve him: the death of Erik Lensherr/Magneto's wife and child by the hands of scared neighbors.

Dark Phoenix (2019)

Dark Phoenix has an incomplete feeling that makes it hard to keep up, as the film essentially wanders from one scene to the next without any rhyme or reason aside from offing Jennifer Lawrence's character off as early as possible into the runtime.

That scene is the film's most intense, but for the most part, Dark Phoenix is a very bland, very innocuous time at the movies. Jessica Chastain's villain is also an alien inhabiting the body of a now-slain woman, but like the majority of Mystique's wounds it's off-camera.

The New Mutants (2020)

The New Mutants (at least in terms of the cut that was released) is a movie that tries to be deep and scary, and it barely hits the mark on both accounts.

There's an R-rated cut of The New Mutants somewhere out there, but chances are high that audiences are unlikely to see it, so the theatrical cut is the only one available for rental or purchase, and there's nothing in it that's too disturbing.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Even with the death of major characters like the memeable Professor X and Cyclops, X-Men: The Last Stand has a light tone that goes for entertainment value over the narrative heft that could have made the first cinematic translation of the Dark Phoenix Saga a gut punch (and much better).

That more accurate translation would have also made the film far less appropriate for pre-teens, who should be fine watching The Last Stand and the other two installments of the original X-Men trilogy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is far from standing as one of Hugh Jackman's best films , and the same could be said of its standing as an X-Men film. The film is problematic from moment one, but it's also far too cartoonish to be inappropriate for most kids.

Overall, Origins is too silly for its violence to really sink in the way it does in X-Men: First Class or X-Men: Days of Future Past (not to mention Wolverine 's two far superior sequels). The movie is based on a comic book, and that's exactly how it plays. With that being said, the final appearance of Ryan Reynolds' (Scott Adkins') Deadpool might be a bit striking and disturbing.

While she's not exactly an X-Men character unlikely for the MCU , Lady Deathstrike (like Wolverine) is a character whose bread and butter is bloody brutality. She displays quite a bit of that (via a memorable performance from Kelly Hu) in X2: X-Men United , but the character's blunt and violent capabilities are hampered by the rating.

With that being said, X2 is less appropriate than the original film for two reasons: Its plot is guided by Wolverine's past torture and Stryker's initial attack on Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which is the film's best but most brutal sequence.

X-Men (2000)

With the exception of the film's WWII-set opening scene, X-Men isn't a film with a surplus of disturbing imagery. Ray Park's Toad has a fairly hideous appearance, but other than that and a senator who gets turned into some goo, the original X-Men is timid.

X-Men also has a nice entryway character in Rogue, the central protagonist in a film littered with main characters. In the comics, she's typically a villain turned X-Man , but the movie takes care to make her a relatable individual, particularly for teens and perhaps even pre-teens.

NEXT: 9 Memes That Perfectly Sum Up Wolverine As A Character

"Kickin’ It Mutant Style"

What You Need To Know:

(HH, BB, C, EE, AB, LL, VV, M) Humanist worldview with many moral & redemptive elements including forgiveness & self-sacrifice with a strong conflicting evolutionary focus & some demeaning comments made about “God fearing” people in specific and God in general; 10 obscenities; strong action violence with man threatened with gun, man threatens people with adamantium retractable claws, car crashes, man gets thrown out of vehicle, man accidently impales young girl with adamantium retractable claws, cage fighting, & lengthy scenes of violence between mutants; no sex, but young people kiss; no explicit nudity, but Mystique character is basically nude besides a coat of blue paint & some scales; no alcohol use; no smoking or drug use; and, villain displays hatred toward others.

More Detail:

X-MEN is the classic comic tale of the conflicts between two groups of genetically enhanced humans, a.k.a. mutants, and normal people.

The story begins in a 1944 Polish concentration camp, where a young Erik Lehnsherr, later Magneto, learns the implications of bigoted hatred, a hatred he later turns against the human race. Magneto (Ian McKellen) ultimately becomes the leader of a group of mutants who believe that mankind and mutantkind can never be at peace. On the other side of the spectrum, Professor Charles Xavier has banded together a group of mutants, the X-Men, who will use their powers to help mankind and unite the races. In the middle of this, humans have developed a strong distaste for and fear of mutants. Led by a popular politician named Senator Kelly, they are seeking to have all mutants registered by the government.

At the beginning of the tale, Professor Xavier notes that mutant powers become noticeable in puberty, and one example is quickly shown. A young Rogue (Anna Paquin) is seen kissing a young boy, who almost dies and is quickly rushed off to the emergency room. Rogue ends up running away from home because of her emerging powers: the ability to suck the power from people at bodily touch.

On the way, she runs into a young man who fights contenders at seedy bars for money to live on. His name is Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). The two leave together and, through some trials and tribulations, are found by the X-Men.

Through several close encounters with Magneto’s men, Wolverine believes that Magneto wants him for some reason, but learns all too late that the real source of Magneto’s interest is the young Rogue and her powers. It turns out Magneto wants to use intense amounts of radiation to force mutations in the bodies of human leaders meeting at a UN summit. Turning humans into mutants, Magneto surmises, will quell any anti-mutant talk.

His first test subject is none other than Senator Kelly, who is killed by the procedure. Undeterred, Magneto continues, hoping to use Rogues’ powers to amplify his own. This is the threat the X-Men must battle throughout the film.

X-Men is a well-made production that the comics fanatics will be hard pressed to fault. It captures as much of the series as it can in the brief time it shows: the good boy/bad boy conflict between Cyclops and Wolverine, the love triangle that has Rogue attracted to Wolverine and Wolverine attracted to Jean Grey, and Jean Gray romantically involved with Cyclops. The graphics and special effects are all top notch.

Interestingly enough, this movie was not the propaganda vehicle it could have been. With individuals like admitted homosexual Bryan Singer at the helm, this movie could have quickly turned into a “don’t persecute people because they’re different,” politically correct routine all too common today. Instead, the production was more realistic: some mutants are bad, and some are good; while some humans are bad, and some are good. The faith and love the mutants show in accepting the humans is as great and important as the humans’ acceptance of them. There are a lot of moral lessons to be learned here, including the unconditional forgiveness Professor X shows to his old friend Magneto, in the hopes that he will turn from his evil ways.

Despite these elements, X-MEN is strongly evolutionary, and, in that sense, contradictory. Professor X makes clear at the beginning that the X-Men are evolutionary enhanced individuals, and the point is reinforced again and again. However, under the “survival of the fittest” motif provided by evolutionary belief, there is no room for the kind of compassion shown by Xavier and his men. As Nietzsche believed, compassion, sacrifice and Christian virtue is a weakness that does not belong in a world built to benefit the strong.

Furthermore, the movie has a humanist worldview with many moral, redemptive elements but also with some foul language and some questionable comments made about “God fearing” people and God. Even so, X-MEN has many moral elements that can be culled from it with media wisdom and a little understanding.

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(Photo by 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved./courtesy Everett Collection)

All X-Men Movies Ranked

In the world of superhero movies post– Batman & Robin implosion, Spider-Man showed they could still be fun, Batman Begins demonstrated gravitas, and Blade got its cut with R-rated gruesomeness. Meanwhile, the X-Men proved the ensemble superhero movie could work: Just take off the yellow spandex, add some millennium-era leather, and retain the franchise’s outsider allegories. Oh, and capture some lightning-in-a-bottle casting with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. A bit tall to play Wolvy, but he had the chops (and literally, the muttonchops).

The relentless X2: X-Men United brought true action to the series, before hitting the skids with The Last Stand and the writer’s strike-afflicted X-Men Origins: Wolverine . Since then, the X-Men franchise has spread out in myriad ways, with highlights including adapting the time-splitting classic Days of Future Past , the Western-inflected Logan (nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar!), and introducing the meta Merc With A Mouth Deadpool into the mix.

Dark Phoenix (2019) 22%

The New Mutants (2020) 36%

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) 38%

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) 47%

Once Upon a Deadpool (2018) 56%

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) 57%

The Wolverine (2013) 71%

X-Men (2000) 82%

Deadpool 2 (2018) 84%

X2 (2003) 85%

Deadpool (2016) 85%

X-Men: First Class (2011) 86%

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) 90%

Logan (2017) 93%

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• DVD & Streaming
• Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

• July 14, 2000
• Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, James Marsden, Famke Janssen, Hugh Jackman, Anna Paquin

Home Release Date

• November 21, 2000
• Bryan Singer

Distributor

• 20th Century Fox

Movie Review

The Batman franchise has seen better days. Superman sizzled, then fizzled. It may be up to X-Men to resuscitate Hollywood’s love affair with comic book superheroes. Judging from the way this stylish entry wraps, it’s safe to say sequels are already in the works. So how is X-Men different?

Professor X (Stewart) runs an institute designed to train young mutants to handle their special “gifts” in a safe and benevolent manner. Telekinesis. Passing through walls. Creating fire … or ice. The oddities are endless—and strike fear into the hearts of an “intolerant” society that would rather label them as freaks than accept their uniqueness. Star pupils get to be X-Men, members of an elite crime-fighting team.

When nasty mutants threaten to wipe out Manhattan, the X-Men spring into action with the help of their new recruits, a steel-taloned maverick named Logan (aka Wolverine) and Rogue, a teenage girl cursed with a poisonous touch (the symbolic angst-ridden adolescent kept at arm’s length from her world, yet desperate to connect). Indeed, the mutants represent all social outcasts forced to determine who they are and how they’ll respond to prejudice. Perfect heroes for disenfranchised youth.

Discussion-worthy symbolism and noble exploits aside, X-Men also features a lot of violence (with unsettling combat between men and women). Stabbings. Beatings. Gunplay. Electrocutions. Long falls. While rarely fatal, those scenes are intense. Elsewhere, near-nudity and mild profanity are joined by PC plugs for tolerance and the notion that humans evolved from “a single-celled organism.” All things considered, there’s nothing X-plicit or X-tremely offensive here, but X-Men still misses the mark.

Bob Smithouser

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X-Men Reviews

It’s a tantalizing sample and a very solid time capsule for where the genre was at the turn of the millennium.

Full Review | Jul 22, 2024

There are potent motives behind every character, and the actionized plot resembles a morality play more than typical good vs. evil superhero fluff.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 15, 2023

I don't care what you think, still my favorite superhero films...

Full Review | Jul 23, 2021

Though not always discussed in the annals of great comic-book cinema, or even considered the height of its own franchise, X-Men is a seminal moment in superhero cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 14, 2021

Ultimately, the story serves as a parable for intolerance, xenophobia, and us-versus-them mentalities - themes that are perpetually relevant and potent.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 9, 2020

X-Men plays faithful to the comics while opening the doors to a larger universe to come.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 3, 2019

The film gains a lot from the grandiose theatrical casting of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the two main roles, but the rest of the film is far too patchy and hammy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 2, 2018

Indeed, even Hugh Jackman was not cast in this role for his neon-lit global fame among the youth... although he earns a place in the starry firmament of cinema with this well judged performance.

Full Review | Oct 30, 2018

What makes X-men an enjoyable film is the really fine work from many of the actors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 30, 2018

It's good, damn good.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Oct 30, 2018

What is most surprising and wonderful about director Bryan Singer's X-Men is how skillfully it avoids all of the myriad potholes placed in its path.

Full Review | Oct 11, 2018

Joss Whedon wrote two lines of dialogue, and one of them is very good!

Full Review | Aug 29, 2018

The X-Men comic books have spawned a cottage industry of mutant characters, and the movie helps make sense of these legions while offering the established fan base something new to cheer.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 15, 2015

Exciting mainly because anything can happen and does, the movie drags a bit as it approaches a climax set on top of the Statue of Liberty. But once there it revives.

Full Review | Jul 15, 2015

The best news is that you don't even have to know what a Marvel Comic is to enjoy X-Men.

This is a film that should satisfy fans of the hugely popular comic book and audiences who can't tell one uncanny X-Man from another. Mutants rule.

When the big battle between Magneto and Xavier's forces gets going, you have lightning bolts, steel claws, magnetic fields, explosive red rays and flyaway tongues. It's a variety show, and all the acts have rushed onstage at once.

The Marvel Comics characters are well realised, and Singer mixes the classic values of good storytelling with liberal amounts of digital magic. On the down side, this plays a little too much like the beginning of a franchise.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 15, 2015

In Singer's dark vision, action and special effects take a back seat to message. He uses X-Men to preach a sermon of tolerance; like most sermons, it isn't much fun to sit through. X misses the spot.

X-Men is a terrific piece of summer entertainment that's going to heat up the box office like a mutant's eye beams.

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X-men: first class.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 46 Reviews
• Kids Say 124 Reviews

Parents Say

Based on 46 parent reviews

Parent Reviews

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This title has:

• Too much violence
• Too much sex
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Not the best in the x-men series., bad choice for family viewing, some quite graphic scenes and one use of the f bomb. quite sexualised., great opportunity for meaningful family discussions.

• Great messages
• Great role models

Better than that awful 2006 adaptation.

Great movie, underrated but surprisingly sexual movie, intense, and still good, what to watch next.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Batman Begins

Hellboy (2004)

Comic Book Movies

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

All The X-Men Movies In Order And Where To Stream Them

By Eric Frederiksen on August 20, 2024 at 12:38PM PDT

GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

While we've definitely had some great superhero movies before the turn of the century--Superman, Batman, Batman Returns, Blade, and so on--X-Men marked the start of a new era for superhero movies that would include Spider-Man, the MCU, Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, and more. But it was really the X-Men that started the fire that Iron Man and The Dark Knight turned into a blazing inferno.

In the following list, you'll find every Marvel live-action movie that explicitly contains mutant characters so far--primarily the X-Men and Deadpool movies--including a gentle brush up against the MCU at the tail end.

At the end, we'll suggest a few timelines to help make sense of this 14-film collection, should you be daring enough to try straightening out a series that features two prominent, chaotic instances of time travel and a character who talks to the camera as much as he talks to the other characters in his movies.

If you're looking to deep dive into some other franchises, we have lots of other breakdowns of huge movie franchises. Make sure to check out our lists of all the James Bond movies ,all the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies , every Fast and Furious movie , and the entire Star Wars saga .

If you want to know more about the latest Marvel news, meanwhile, San Diego Comic-Con 2024 featured updates on the upcoming Fantastic Four , Thunderbolts , and Captain America movies. Oh, and there are two new Avengers movies coming, featuring a familiar face in a new mask .

• X-Men (2000)

Where to Watch: Disney+

The one that started it all, and gave Hugh Jackman the role of a lifetime in Wolverine, a character he would go on to play for almost two full decades. Who could've known the casting would be so perfect in that metatextual way back then? This movie also introduces Patrick Stewart's Professor Xavier and Ian McKellen's Magneto.

• X2: X-Men United (2003)

When Colonel William Styker forces Xavier and Magneto to reveal the locations of the world's other mutants, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants must team up to stop mutant genocide.

• X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Where to Watch: Disney+ , STARZ , DirecTV

When word of a mutant "cure" begins to circulate, the X-Men and Brotherhood once again come to blows as Magneto declares war on humanity. Wolverine's love for Jean Grey is tested when she is resurrected as the Phoenix to fight for the Brotherhood.

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Where to Watch: Disney+ , Max

This movie takes us back to the early days of everyone's favorite mutant, Wolverine, and explores his relationship with his brother, Victor Creed/Sabertooth, as well as his time with William Stryker's Team X. The timeline starts to get shaky here.

• X-Men: First Class (2011)

Jump back to the earliest days of the X-Men, when Professor Xavier began to assemble a team of mutants in hopes of showing the world that mutants are a protector, not a danger, for mundane humans.

• The Wolverine (2013)

Set after X-Men: The Last Stand, Wolverine travels to Japan, where he must protect an old friend's daughter from all manner of assassins.

• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Oh no, our precious timeline! This film features many cast members from both the original X-Men trilogy and X-Men: First Class, and is set in multiple timelines. Wolverine must travel back in time to stop the creation of the mutant-killing robotic weapons known as Sentinels.

• Deadpool (2016)

Wade Wilson, the chatty former special forces operative and current mercenary, is subjected to a body-scarring experiment that leaves him with a deadly illness, a powerful mutant healing factor, and his most important superpower: the ability to realize he's in a movie.

• X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

The first mutant, En Sabah Nur, awakens after thousands of years to see a world he believes is in need of cleansing. Mystique and the X-Men team up to save all of mankind from Apocalypse.

• Logan (2017)

The world of 2029 is a dark place for mutants; no new mutants have been born in over 20 years. Wolverine's healing abilities are failing, and Professor Xavier's dementia has caused lethal psychic seizures. Logan agrees to transport a young woman named Laura, across the border to a mutant refuge.

• Deadpool 2 (2018)

After the death of his girlfriend Vanessa, Deadpool meets a young mutant on the brink of a destructive change, and a mutant from the future who hopes to save his family by stopping the mutant's change by any means necessary. Deadpool forms the X-Force, which includes a dad named Peter who thought the idea sounded like fun.

• X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

Where to Watch: Disney+ , DirecTV

A mission in outer space subjects the psychic Jean Grey to an intense solar flare that awakens her Phoenix powers, and as she becomes increasingly unstable, alliances shift between the X-Men and Magneto's mutant factions.

The New Mutants (2020)

Five young mutants being held against their will in a secret facility have to fight to survive their own powers and dangerous hallucinations as they attempt to escape both the facility and the training they were to be given.

• Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Where to Watch: Theaters (and eventually Disney+)

Deadpool and a version of Wolverine from another timeline have to work together to stop the MCU's Time Variance Authority from destroying Deadpool's timeline. They cross a few multiversal boundaries and lots of personal ones, stab each other repeatedly, and meet forgotten heroes as they battle to save their own existence.

How To Watch The X-Men Movies In Timeline Order

The X-Men timeline is messy, thanks in big part to the X-Men series' penchant for time travel. It doesn't matter if you're reading the comics, watching the cartoons, or sitting down for a movie marathon--some mutant is going to muck things up with time travel. And so as we break down the timelines, some of these movies are going to appear more than once , as they matter to more than one timeline, while others only matter to a single one. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, meanwhile, takes place both before and during these timelines. And then there's the whole Deadpool problem. This character exists both inside and out of the X-Men timelines.

Even then, there are plot holes. We're often not that worried about some minor inconsistencies here and there, but there are weird things all over. Emma Frost is an adult in 1962 in X-Men: First Class, but then in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a character named Emma, who can turn her skin into ice/diamond, is there in 1979 as a teenager . Silver Samurai chops off Wolverine's adamantium claws at the end of The Wolverine, but Days of Future Past restores them without ever acknowledging the change. Wolverine is pulled from a river by known anti-mutant leader William Stryker in Days of Future Past, and the yellow flash in his eyes tells us that it's really a shape-shifted Mystique. In X-Men: Apocalypse, however, he's being held captive by the real William Stryker.

Our real recommendation is to just enjoy the ride and watch the movies in the order they were released. The writers behind these movies were working within the constraints of casting, budgets, studio executive choices, and the growing shadow of the MCU. They had to recast actors in ways that don't seem to make any sense--Bill Duke and Peter Dinklage both play Bolivar Trask, and the two could hardly be more different for any number of reasons. Trying to make them make sense just doesn't make sense.

Logan and The New Mutants, meanwhile, are in their own timelines--despite Logan prominently featuring two actors reprising their beloved roles. You could consider Logan a coda to multiple timelines.

With that said, here are a few additional timelines you could follow if the above release chronological order doesn't quite work for you:

Original X-Men Timeline

X-men first class timeline, deadpool timeline, wolverine timeline.

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X2: X-Men United Parent Guide

In this X-men sequel, another mutant uprising is about to begin --but this time it's a lot more difficult to tell who the "good" and "bad" guys really are.

Release date May 2, 2003

Why is X2: X-Men United rated PG-13? The MPAA rated X2: X-Men United PG-13 for sci-fi action/violence, some sexuality and brief language.

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

Another mutant uprising is about to begin, and this time it’s a lot more difficult to tell who the ?good? and ?bad? guys really are. And that alone makes this sequel a much better film than the first mutant movie.

This time the X-Men face a human challenge in the form of General William Stryker (Brian Cox). An ex-military man, he’s assigned the task of getting control over the mutant problem after a cloaked invader, capable of swishing from room to room with ease, overruns the White House. But Stryker’s dislike for the malformed populace runs far deeper than his assignment to keep things in check. He also has more than guns to use for artillery.

His far-reaching designs have all mutants concerned, including Erik Lehnsherr (Ian McKellen), better known as the rebellious “Magneto.” The only choice for this leader of all that isn’t good in the world of the odd and gifted is to form a reluctant pact with Xavier in the hopes of thwarting Stryker’s evil plans.

From a script point of view, it shouldn’t be a great surprise when the second installment of a three movie series is better than its predecessor. We are already familiar with most of the characters, the exceptions being Stryker, a “teleporter” mutant named “Nightcrawler” (Alan Cumming)—who is also a practicing Catholic, and a few additional “Junior X-Men.” This foreknowledge allows writers to spend more screen time developing the story, which, in this case, is paced superbly with some very cool “tricks.”

After promotional promises of “edgier and darker,” the sequel’s emphasis on plot rather than violent scenarios came as a pleasant surprise. Don’t take that to mean your six-year-old should be headed to the theater. There are still plenty of fierce confrontations, including an opportunity for Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to pull out his bladed knuckles.

Finally, you’ll also see more of Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos)… in more ways than one. Reprising her former role, the body-painted female’s extra time on screen includes using her torso as a convenient background during an extended close-up of her mentor, Magneto. She also provides two of the film’s brief sensual interludes.

X2: X-Men United presents a difficult choice for parents. Few movies aimed at teens provide this much action along with complex characters showing cooperation and determination. Yet this will need to be weighed against the movie’s noted violence, brief sexuality, and handful of profanities. Just like these new X-Men, parents will have to determine what’s good and bad for their families.

About author

Rod Gustafson

X2: x-men united parents' guide.

Mystique has the ability to change into anyone or anything. When asked why she doesn’t just look like a normal person, she says she doesn’t think she should need to. Yet when trying to attract the attention of another man, she is willing to change into whatever kind of woman he wants. Do you think these two actions are contradictory?

The most recent home video release of X2: X-Men United movie is November 25, 2003. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: X-Men Trilogy

Release Date: 21 March 2009

Fans of the X-Men franchises can now enjoy X-Men , X2: X-Men United and X3: The Last Stand on Blu-ray Disc. The movies are presented in widescreen, with audio tracks in 5.1 DTS Master Audio. Subtitles are available in Spanish, French, Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin and Brazilian Portuguese. The set includes digital copies of each of the films plus extensive bonus materials. A complete list of these extras can be found on our page for the X-Men Trilogy .

Related home video titles:

This movie is the sequel to X-Men . Patrick Stewart who plays Xavier is well known for his role as Captain Picard in the Star Trek movies . Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) plays a very different kind of character in the romantic sci-fi Kate and Leopold .

'X-Men: Days of Future Past's Plot Holes Are What Make It Great

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The Big Picture

• X-Men: Days of Future Past remains one of the most rewatchable X-Men movies.
• The film successfully embraced time travel, despite introducing plot holes.
• Confusing choices in the movie oddly make it the best, as it enables character development.

It's been ten years since X-Men: Days of Future Past debuted, and it hasn't lost an ounce of its original effectiveness. It remains one of the most rewatchable movies in the franchise, even more so now that Deadpool & Wolverine has us reminiscing about the entire 20th Century Fox era . The conundrum of the X-Men series was made even more puzzling when the prequel entries began, introducing younger versions of beloved characters and offering timelines and backstories that spurred more than a couple of contradictions. Why not embrace the chaos by adding time travel and overlapping the various casts and story arcs? That's exactly what Days of Future Past decided to do. Time brings clarity, and the decade since its release has given ample space to pick apart the plot and question a choice or two . That notwithstanding, it holds up impressively well. Days of Future Past primed itself for plot holes but managed to make none of them matter.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

'x-men: days of future past' came at a confusing time for x-men movies.

By the time Days of Future Past came around , the X-Men continuity had already been fairly difficult to track . X-Men: The Last Stand closed the original trilogy by de-powering (un-Mutant-ing?) Mystique ( Rebecca Romijn ) and killing off players like Professor Charles Xavier ( Patrick Stewart ), Scott / Cyclops ( James Marsden ), and Jean Grey ( Famke Janssen ), but an end-credits scene showed Charles waking up in a hospital room, even though we watched Jean disintegrate his body completely. That wasn't entirely an off-the-wall move (Charles transferred his consciousness into the body of his comatose twin brother, a concept from the comics that was foreshadowed earlier in the movie) but the presence of Moira MacTaggert ( Olivia Williams ) upon Charles' awakening was the first of many head-scratching Fox-canon tidbits to come.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the first go at an X-Men prequel, and the backstories of Logan / Wolverine ( Hugh Jackman ), Charles, and Scott that it attempted were so wholly incongruent that they were, thankfully, ignored thereafter. Then we get X-Men: First Class , the start of a new age of X-Men films, offering a soft reboot under the veil of prequels. It has its own Moira MacTaggert, though, played by Rose Byrne , establishing a relationship with Charles much deeper than the original trilogy would lead us to believe. Moreover, Raven / Mystique ( Jennifer Lawrence ) is set up as Charles' adoptive sister, becoming one of the foremost figureheads of the franchise. Two characters that hardly even acknowledge each other's existence in the original trilogy are set up to be so closely knit that becoming estranged mentally and emotionally ruins Charles.

The Time Travel in 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' Created Countless Plot Holes

The simplest type of plot hole is the basic mistake: continuity errors, contradictions, unresolved arcs, impossible occurrences, etc. The most egregious type, however, is the kind that makes you wonder, "Wait... why didn't they just [blank] instead of [blank]?" The illogical plot hole can make a character look dumb, a writer seem incompetent, and an audience feel utterly patronized. By opting for a plot centered on traveling to the past to alter the future, X-Men: Days of Future Past opened the door to a slew of plot hole problems .

If you can go back in time, why not kill so-and-so to prevent them from doing x, y, or z? Better yet, why not kill their parents so that they were never born in the first place? Avengers: Endgame dealt with this by explaining that any change made in the past creates a new branched timeline, rather than altering the present. Days of Future Past did the opposite, explicitly stating that changes in the past take hold and rewrite history. This should've bogged it down with more plot holes than any film can overcome, and yet, it works.

Fox’s Convoluted Series of X-Men Movies, Explained

As Wade Wilson says, “these timelines are so confusing."

In the distant future, Dr. Bolivar Trask's ( Peter Dinklage ) Sentinel program, a robot army for tracking down and killing Mutant and Mutant gene carriers, has caused a devastating, apocalyptic war . The few surviving Mutants devise a plan, which is that Kitty Pryde ( Elliot Page ) can send Logan's consciousness back in time to his younger self. When Mystique assassinated Trask in 1973, public perception of Mutants was tarnished, and the Sentinel program was fast-tracked. If Logan can extinguish the tension between the Mutants at odds with one another and get them to deter Mystique from her murderous path, they have a shot at stopping the brutal war before it ever starts.

'X-Men: Days of Future Past's Confusing Choices Are What Make It the Best

If you scrutinize too closely at any given moment, Days of Future Past is bound to bewilder you. If Mystique was such a widely-known, influential public figure (world-changing, even), how was none of this addressed in the original trilogy, in which Mystique is sidelined as a glorified henchman? Why even send Logan back to 1973, of all times? At that point, the younger Charles ( James McAvoy ) and Magneto ( Michael Fassbender ) could not have been more opposed to one another. The hurdles worsen, too. Charles was without his powers, Magneto was imprisoned behind virtually impenetrable security, and the development of the Sentinel program was already well underway.

Days of Future Past took every burden and worked them in their favor. Every potential plot hole is answered by arriving at shaky logical ground purely in service of the emotional life of these characters . You go to a year in which Charles is without his power, sunken into a depressive state so that he has room to grow. In the future, he and Magneto ( Ian McKellen ) are hard-fought allies. In 1973, there was a relationship to mend. The X-Men were largely disbanded , and Mystique was a rogue agent, off on her own and bent on retribution. A young, distraught Charles, completely dismayed with humanity and devoid of hope, gets to converse with his older self, seeking wisdom and guidance in the franchise's most poignant scene.

If the most logical choices were made alone, Days of Future Past may have been a fairly solid, ultimately forgettable action flick. Logic doesn't matter if we empathize with what comes of illogical decision-making. You don't simply travel to the past and remove key villainous players from the equation. With Mystique at the center, choosing to spare a life is the catalyst that could save the world. From that position, any plot hole is forgivable. They can rewrite the timeline however they please, through whatever illogical means they'd like. Then, when our disbelief is tactfully suspended, we can fully enjoy Quicksilver ( Evan Peters ) stealing the show in slow-motion, a peak dystopian Mutant battle, and Magneto at his beautifully theatrical best .

X-Men: Days of Future Past is available to watch on Disney+ in the U.S.

WATCH ON DISNEY+

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