Friday, June 7, 2019

Don't get too X-cited...

So the reviews for X-Men: Dark Phoenix are coming in...and they are not good!
It looks like the X-Men universe, at least the Fox version of it, is going out with a whimper rather than a bang, as Dark Phoenix may not be the finale this franchise needed or deserved (that would be Logan, by the way).
I haven't seen it yet, but I still will, despite these stinky reviews (I've actually found that getting bad reviews for movies I'm going to see anyway can be a good thing, as I go in with super-low expectations and then just enjoy anything in them that's half-decent – that's how I had fun with Suicide Squad)!
A franchise will fall

But I was always going to watch this – before the MCU (the Marvel Cinematic Universe) took over the RAU (the Real Actual Universe), I actually loved the XMU (ummm...X-Men Universe...). I even didn't mind X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men The Last Stand (and I'm fairly certain I had no (significant) brain injuries at the time). 
It probably helped that Hugh Jackman played such an excellent Wolverine, and Wolverine was my favourite comics character when "growing up" (along with the Punisher, Ghost Rider and Spider-man)**.  
Dark Phoenix opened today, but the main reason I'm not going to jump straight in and see it this weekend is that I now simply MUST watch, listen to, play and read stuff IN ORDER (e.g., refer to my #CountdownToAvengersEndgame that I just won't shut up about).  
I actually started watching them (etc...) in order*** after I bought the Logan blu-ray last year, but I got stymied when I couldn't load the X-Men game on to my very old PC.
I'm not sure if the above sentence will make any sense to anyone under the age of 30...
Anyhoo, I finally restarted watching them again last week, skipping X-Men: The Official Game and getting into the good old The Last Stand (which may turn out to be the better telling of the Dark Phoenix saga?!? WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?!?), and hope to finish next week.
If you also would like to get into the #CountdownToDarkPhoenix (that's definitely not a thing), just be aware that the timeline of the X-Men movies is CrAzY and CoNfuSiNg, sometimes intentionally but mostly unintentionally. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, just don't think about it too hard (the makers of the movies sure haven't...)
Anyhoo, here's my take on a viewing order, including the movies and various other things, ignore it as much as you like/can!:

X-MEN X-PLAINED
Note that in the below viewing order, the movies are in bold, everything else is in italics (e.g., comics and TV shows), the ones with an asterisk have basically been ‘erased’ as a result of the time travel in Days of Future Past (although similar events might have then happened again…), and most of the links are to Amazon/Amazon Prime. 

X-Men First Class – The High Hand (prequel digital comic)
X-Men: First Class (in the 60s) 
The Bent Bullet: JFK and the Mutant Conspiracy (a short video on Youtube, I think as part of the marketing for Days of Future Past (DoFP))
X-Men Origins: Wolverine* (in the 70s and 80s. Note – there's an accompanying game which is not exactly canon, but pretty fun...) 
X-Men Prequel: Magneto comic
X-Men Prequel: Rogue comic
X-Men Prequel: Wolverine comic
X-Men* (in the 2000s)
X-Men 2 Prequel: Wolverine comic* (incidentally, this confirms that the Sabretooth from the first X-Men movie is Victor Creed (who has also been experimented on by the Government and ALSO then got amnesia!)) 
X-Men 2 Prequel: Nightcrawler comic* (fantastic prequel comic (finally!) – leads directly into X2, and includes a wonderful story about Kurt and his circus, and also includes Stryker and Deathstrike). 
X2: X-Men United
X-Men: The Official Game
X-Men: The Last Stand* (this happens in 2006, according to http://www.25moments.com/ (see below))
The Wolverine* – I'll be watching the Unleashed Extended Edition.
The Gifted TV series* (I reckon this fits well in the 'old' timeline, especially since it includes a young Blink just developing her powers, who shows up in DoFP below, too…)
At this point, it's good to check out http://www.25moments.com/, which runs through 25 moments involving mutants in history from 1962 to 2018, including most of the above events, as well as some that are revealed in DoFP below...  
X-Men: Days of Future Past (starts in the future, then mostly in the 70s, but the end is back in the present time, having rebooted the franchise thanks to time travel) – I'll be watching the Rogue Cut...
X-Men: Apocalypse (in the 80s) 
X-Men: Dark Phoenix (in the 90s) 
Legion TV series (if it's going to go anywhere...)
Logan (set in the year 2029, possibly not in the same timeline but whatevs). I'm also tempted to watch Children of Men beforehand (it’s in the UK in the year 2027, and with very similar themes). I was initially going to watch this after Days of Future Past (after Wolverine wakes up back in the present time), but based on the reviews for Dark Phoenix, I think it might be best to save it for almost last...

Logan is hard yakka, so I think it's then good to get some FUN TIMES (although chronologically these probably technically go after Dark Phoenix)!: 

Deadpool 
Deadpool 2 (and/or Once Upon a Deadpool!) 

And that's that! Once you've watched them you can then free up space in your brain and just forget them all, as Disney is no doubt going to completely reboot them all when incorporating the X-Men into the MCU in a few years!

X-Celsior!


** Growing up is obviously relative. Incidentally, it was thanks to my love of Wolverine that I ended up collecting the 17,000 comics he appeared in every month in the early 90s, until I (and apparently many others) had to stop collecting completely when I couldn't afford the equivalent of the entire GDP of a small African nation to support my comics habit... 

*** I fully acknowledge that there's no such thing as a true chronological "order" to watch the X-Men movies in, just have fun with it!

1 comment:

  1. So I saw Dark Phoenix yesterday and...it's fine! Fine, like....Black Panther Fine...
    But then I watched Deadpool today and can totally confirm that the viewing order should go:
    X-Men: Dark Phoenix
    Deadpool (because, as it turns out, Dark Phoenix is also hard yakka...)
    Deadpool 2 (and/or Once Upon a Deadpool!)
    Logan
    Also, I think now that it's best that the Legion TV series gets wiped out by DoFP and that we all ignore any and all of Charles Xavier's attempts to get jiggy, so I'm moving the Legion TV series to pre-X-Men (although I may have to revisit that after Season 3 of Legion comes out later this month!)

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