3 Great X-Men Movies You Need To Watch Before Mutants Arrive In The MCU
As the mutants' MCU journey accelerates with Samara Weaving cast as Emma Frost, the Empire team picks the three best stops to revisit the series: X2, Days Of Future Past, and Logan.
We've known for a while that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is getting closer to mutants. With X-Men '97 an X-Men narrative is already underway under the MCU umbrella; on top of that came the news of Samara Weaving being cast for the role of telepath Emma Frost. So there's no better time to look back at the series that started the genre. But not all X-films were created equal — Empire's experts picked the three most worth rewatching.
X2 (2003) — Bryan Singer
The first X-Men is a good film in its own right, but the leap made by the second installment is undeniable. The action is bigger, the scale is wider, and the film delves much deeper into its characters: Wolverine unearths his past shrouded by the 'Weapon X' project, Jean Grey's telekinetic powers whisper of impending doom. From the opening infiltration of the White House (hello Nightcrawler!) to the attack on the X-Mansion, to the Lady Deathstrike showdown at Alkali Lake, it's a classic comic book movie through and through. On top of that, there's Brian Cox's William Stryker and the operatic chess game between Professor X and Magneto. Cinematic checkmate.
X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) — Bryan Singer
Long before the MCU started playing with multiverses, two generations of mutants came together in a massive time-travel story. Loosely adapted from Chris Claremont and John Byrne's two-part comic book arc, the film sends the adamantium-clawed Canadian back to 1973 to prevent Mystique from assassinating a senator — and robot apocalypse. From the brutal opening Sentinel fight to the slow-motion Quicksilver prison break, the series has everything a fan could want. As much as Logan's 1973 bewilderment ("someone gave you some really bad acid"), it doesn't shy away from clawing at the known intricate political landscapes of the X-Men.
Logan (2017) — James Mangold
Hugh Jackman technically returned with Deadpool & Wolverine, but James Mangold's melancholic masterpiece Logan still offers a perfect finale to one of cinema's most defining comic book characters: a Shane-esque Western farewell. X-Men for adults; it doesn't shy away from profanity, extreme violence, and intense emotion. Charles Xavier, whose Alzheimer's combines with his telepathic powers turning him into a weapon of mass destruction, Logan, who finally accepts that mortality has caught up with him, and Dafne Keen's savage performance as 'X-23' open up a new vein for the series even twenty years later. In a word: X-traordinary.
Source: Empire — "3 Great X-Men Movies You Should See Before The Mutants Arrive In The MCU".