Every Superhero Movie Franchise Ranked Worst To Best

5. The Fox X-Men Film Series (2000-2020)

Films: X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse, Logan, Deadpool 2 and Dark Phoenix

Marvel’s merry band of mutants got the cinematic treatment in 2000 through the efforts of director Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg. They treated the source material with a reverence that was not seen in superhero films since the days of Donner and Burton and this led to the legitimization of superheroes in the film industry.

The franchise tackled heady themes such as discrimination, choice and identity and also provided the requisite blockbuster thrills as well. It was expertly cast; with respected names such as Hugh Jackman, Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen bringing life to fan favourite characters and giving them a new spin that mostly respected the comics.

However, this didn’t extend to various elements of the franchises as it less than successfully adapted storylines such as Dark Phoenix and the Cure and mishandled characters such as the Juggernaut, Jean Grey and Deadpool (the first time round). It is a shame that the franchise ended on such a lacklustre note with 2019’s Dark Phoenix but it provided the genre with classics such as X-Men: First Class and Logan-the franchise’s logical endpoint in this writer’s opinion.