X-Men Movies in Order – How to Watch Chronologically or by Release Date

Few franchises have been as integral to the evolution of the superhero movie genre as X-Men, which helped usher in a new era of comic book movies alongside films like Blade and Spider-Man. The X-Men’s cultural prominence has only continued with shows like Disney+’s X-Men ’97, a revival of Fox’s 1990s cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series, as well as Ryan Reynolds‘ hugely successful Deadpool & Wolverine, which saw his merc-with-a-mouth finally teaming up with Hugh Jackman‘s Wolverine, for their long-awaited buddy movie.

With 2000’s X-Men, the comic book series was adapted as a story about humanity first and foremost, drawing parallels to the civil rights movement and the struggle of minorities everywhere. That combination of human drama and high-flying spectacle made X-Men wildly popular, spawning a franchise of films diverse in tone, cast, and, of course, time period. Indeed, the X-Men movies are not just fun, they’re complicated. Unraveling the X-Men timeline is a bit of a challenge due to the franchise’s malleability over the years – semi-reboots, prequels and spin-offs all kept the series fresh, but complicated its continuity. So if you’re looking to watch the X-Men movies but unsure which order to go in, we’ve put together a handy guide to your two best viewing options – chronological order of events within the films, or simply arranged by the order in which they were made. Both methods have their merits, but the chronological order offers up a bit of a unique twist on things, as the order in which events occur doesn’t always correspond to when each film was made. Here’s how to watch the X-Men movies in order.

X-Men Movies in Order of Release

X-Men – July 14, 2000

X2 – May 2, 2003

X-Men: The Last Stand – May 26, 2006

X-Men Origins: Wolverine – May 1, 2009

X-Men: First Class – June 3, 2011

The Wolverine – July 26, 2013

X-Men: Days of Future Past – May 23, 2014

Deadpool – February 12, 2016

X-Men: Apocalypse – May 27, 2016

Logan – March 3, 2017

Deadpool 2 – May 18, 2018

Dark Phoenix – June 7, 2019

The New Mutants – August 28, 2020

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – May 6, 2022

Deadpool & Wolverine – July 26, 2024

X-Men Movies in Chronological Order

‘X-Men: First Class’

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

This prequel is the earliest-set X-Men movie in the cinematic universe, with most of the action taking place in the year 1962. X-Men: First Class follows a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), who teams up with a young Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) to track down a former Nazi mutant scientist (Kevin Bacon). The film is set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and features other, younger versions of iconic mutants like Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) as the group teams up to stave off a nuclear war.

‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’

Directed by Bryan Singer

This is a tricky one. So, technically, most of the action in X-Men: Days of Future Past takes place in the year 1973, but it’s also a future-set movie that simultaneously takes place in the year 2023. Future Wolverine has his consciousness sent back to his 1973 self, so he can prevent Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) from using Mystique’s blood to create indestructible Sentinels in the future. As if that wasn’t confusing enough, by the end of the movie, the future Wolverine successfully changes the past, potentially erasing the entire 2023 timeline we just witnessed as well as all the events that happened in X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand. Moving forward from 1973, there is a new path forward for the mutants that may be slightly different from the one they previously traveled. As filmmaker Bryan Singer explained:

“Part of the philosophy we had at the end of Days of Future Past is that you can’t fully change the course or current of the river, but you can just divert it a little bit, and we diverted it a little bit… Any possibility could occur, but characters are still moving towards their immutable place.”

So you have two options when it comes to watching Days of Future Past — either watch it second for the 1973 setting, or watch it last as a finale that kind of undoes the entire timeline and concludes with a “New Future” where the adult Professor X and Jean Grey are still alive.

‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’

Directed by Gavin Hood

The first-ever X-Men spin-off movie was the much-maligned X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which ostensibly tells the origin story of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine/Logan. The story begins all the way back in 1845, when a young Logan’s (whose name was actually James Howlett) powers first manifest, and he joins his first team of mutants, including Wade Wilson, who would eventually become Weapon XI/Deadpool. This Wade Wilson is still played by Ryan Reynolds, but he is a separate iteration of the character from that we have come to know in the Deadpool films — this Wade Wilson is actually killed by Deadpool‘s version of Deadpool in a mid-credits scene for Deadpool 2… get it? While Logan’s iconic claws are shown to originally be made of his bone, in this film, his skeleton is reinforced with adamantium in order to make him even more powerful. X-Men Origins: Wolverine offers valuable insight into Logan’s backstory, but the film largely takes place in the year 1979 and reveals how Logan lost his memory.

‘X-Men: Apocalypse’

Directed by Bryan Singer

So this “prequel” most closely follows the events of X-Men: First Class and the 1970s stuff in Days of Future Past. X-Men: Apocalypse is set in the year 1983 and finds the young adult versions of the X-Men — including Alexandra Shipp‘s Storm and Sophie Turner‘s Jean Grey — battling the world-ending (and centuries-old) villain, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac). While it’s widely considered to be one of the weakest installments in the X-Men franchise, Isaac’s performance and Jean’s backstory make it a movie worth watching.

‘Dark Phoenix’

Directed by Simon Kinberg

The last film to feature the “young” X-Men cast is X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which takes place in the year 1992 and adapts the iconic Dark Phoenix comics storyline. By the end of the film, Jean Grey (again played by Sophie Turner) has transformed into a Phoenix, which somewhat muddles how this film connects to the next film (the first X-Men movie) chronologically.

‘X-Men’

Directed by Bryan Singer

So for X-Men to work, you kind of have to ignore the events at the end of Dark Phoenix – but otherwise, it fits quite well. The first X-Men movie to be made roughly takes place in the year 2000, as it was set in the present-day when it was released. After protecting Rogue (Anna Paquin), a young runaway mutant whose touch extracts another individual’s abilities, from Magneto’s (Ian McKellen) Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Jackman’s Wolverine encounters the good guys: Charles Xavier’s (Patrick Stewart) X-Men. The latter’s team members include adult versions of Cyclops (James Marsden), Storm (Halle Berry), and a non-Phoenix Jean Grey (Famke Janssen).

‘X2: X-Men United’

Directed by Bryan Singer

The first X-Men sequel, X2: X-Men United, takes place roughly three years after the events of X-Men, in the year 2003. Now a reluctant X-Men member, Wolverine must confront the mysteries of the traumatic past he’s forgotten after Colonel William Stryker (Succession‘s Brian Cox) attacks Xavier’s School and sends its residents, children, and adults, on the run. Stryker intends to destroy every mutant in existence, a calamitous threat that forces the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants to join forces. Often regarded as the best film of the original trilogy, X2 introduces Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), Pyro (Aaron Standford), and Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu); of whom the latter two will appear in Deadpool & Wolverine.

‘X-Men: The Last Stand’

Directed by Brett Ratner

The final sequel in the original franchise line, X-Men: The Last Stand, takes place in the year 2006. After sacrificing herself to save her loved ones at the end of X2, Jean Grey returns to life possessed by the Dark Phoenix Force, a suppressed part of her personality. The Phoenix wreaks havoc upon the X-Men, leading Magneto to take her in as his final weapon in his crusade against humanity until she is mercifully killed by a distraught Logan. Simultaneously, a human science group weaponizes a supposed “cure” that will remove a mutant’s gifts, exciting people like Rogue, and leaving others fearful of losing their abilities.

‘The Wolverine’

Directed by James Mangold

20th Century Fox tried again with something of a reboot for the Wolverine character, as The Wolverine serves as a sequel to both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand. It takes place in the year 2013 and finds Logan wrestling with the trauma of Jean Grey’s death in The Last Stand. In the first X-Men movie directed by James Mangold, Wolverine travels to Japan and reunites with his old friend Ichirō Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi). Wolverine runs for his life alongside Ichirō’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) after Ichirō’s power-hungry son, Shingen (Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada), targets them both.

‘Deadpool’

Directed by Tim Miller

The R-rated Marvel Comics adaptation of Deadpool is only tangentially connected to the X-Men timeline, but if you want to be a completionist, it takes place in the year it was released – 2016. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) makes a name for himself as a smart-ass vigilante after a serum gives him enhanced physical abilities, curing him of an aggressive cancer but leaving him permanently scarred.

‘The New Mutants’

Directed by Josh Boone

The New Mutants is a weird one. Director Josh Boone initially wanted the long-delayed Fox-Marvel movie to take place in the 1990s, but after the box office disappointment of X-Men: Apocalypse, he was asked to make it set in the present day. Now, Boone contends that the story “started being in the original X-Men timeline” but is now its own thing with tangential connections to the X-Men universe. So roughly, this movie takes place in 2017, but there are no major timeline ramifications for what happens within the story.

‘Deadpool 2’

Directed by David Leitch

The sequel Deadpool 2 actually features a very brief cameo from the young X-Men cast, despite taking place in the year 2018. The movie features some great additions, like Zazie Beetz as Domino and Josh Brolin as Cable, and showcases meta time-travel jokes when, as we mentioned before, Deadpool goes back in time to the events of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and kills Ryan Reynolds’ previous iteration of the Deadpool character.

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’

Directed by Sam Raimi

Another brief cameo, Patrick Stewart’s appearance as Charles Xavier/Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness gave fans hope that mutants were on their way to the MCU. This Xavier is not the version we’ve come to know in the X-Men films but is rather a member of the Illuminati alongside the likes of Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell) and The Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards (John Krasinski). This variant also has obvious callbacks to the 1992 animated Xavier with his floating wheelchair. While the Illuminati (including Xavier) is viciously killed by Wanda Maximoff/the Scarlett Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), it’s still exciting to see Professor X in the MCU in some capacity.

‘Logan’

Directed by James Mangold

A high-water mark for the franchise, the R-rated drama Logan was James Mangold’s second time behind the X-Men camera. The movie’s action mainly takes place furthest in the future in the year 2029, when mutants are no longer being born and Logan is taking care of an ailing Charles Xavier. It serves as a finale of sorts, featuring worthy canonical deaths of major characters and introducing Logan to a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen), who turns out to have a lot more in common with the titular mutant than previously thought.

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

Directed by Shawn Levy

Deadpool & Wolverine plays out like a love letter to the 20th Century Fox era of the X-Men movies, bringing back some familiar faces for some surprise cameos. It also introduces both Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman into the MCU. The movie begins sometime after the events of Logan, with Wade jumping through different universes in an attempt to find the right Wolverine to help him save his home universe. The Logan we saw die in Mangold’s 2017 movie is long dead, so instead, Wade teams up with the most pathetic Wolverine variant in the entire multiverse, who let his entire team die. The two (anti) heroes face off against each other as well as Emma Corrin‘s Cassandra Nova and the Time Variance Authority, in order to save everything that Wade Wilson holds so dear..