My favorite moments from every X-Men film

I just watched X-Men: Apocalypse, and it bummed me out. I had intended to see it on the big screen, but since I didn’t manage to get to the theater at a Quicksilver’s pace, I missed its unusually brief box office run. This led me to taking it at my first last resort for the small screen: a thirty-thousand-foot-high private viewing room where, if you ask nice, you can get the whole can of ginger ale.

This didn’t work out for me. The headphone jack at my seat was so worn out, it somehow only provided the John Ottman-composed score and let me guess at all the dialogue, which I imagined was moody and had a lot of on-the-nose exposition. I later confirmed this with a rented stream on my home theater. Better resolution and sound, sure, but I was fresh outta ginger ale.

Anyway, between the two rentals, I have now paid as much to see this limp flick on the small screen as I would have to see it just as flaccid on the big screen. As you can imagine, it’s not my favorite in the franchise, though definitely not my least favorite. Overall, I find the series much lumpier than the consistently entertaining Marvel Cinematic Universe films (the ones with all the other Marvel characters (except for the five with Spider-Man (But it does include one with him and the future ones with him as well (It’s a long story (Don’t even get me started on the Fantastic Four))))). But each X-film does deliver at least one effective and memorable scene. These are my favorite for each.

X-Men: Apocalypse
Boom doesn’t go the dynamite

The latest in the franchise and the fourth prequel film debuts at least six X-Men who’ve already appeared in the series as their older selves. This trick is getting old, especially as we saw precious few new onscreen mutants. One we did see, of course, was the title villain, the immortal Apocalypse. His bombastic tirades and hyperpowered dominance grew tiresome quickly, but in an early show of his awesome power, he seems to be a villain worthy of existential dread.

By highjacking Professor X’s telepathic ability, he causes the launch of every nuclear warhead on Earth. It raises the stakes and the tension since, outside of the bankable characters, basically everyone is expendable. If I didn’t know that this preceded four other films in the series that—spoiler alert—do not take place in a post-nuclear apocalypse, I might have believed some major destruction was possible. Instead, I watched in awe as Stan Lee clutched his wife and saw every missile float harmlessly into space. As Oskar Issac bellows “You can fire your arrows from the Tower of Babel, but you can never kill a god!”, he terrorizes the world with a glorious act of mutually assured pacifism. Magneto’s fall from grace might also have been my choice, but it’s a bit heavy handed, and Michael Fassbender has had better Magneto moments.

X-Men
Jackman becomes a franchise cornerstone with two words

The first film in the series kicked off the superhero movie renaissance that we are now seeing the high water mark of. It has its weak spots, but it’s a perfectly fun entry, and it set the tone for many of the comic book adaptations to follow. One way it legitimized the presence of supers in the real world was to emphasize the humanity of these fantastic heroes.

In an early scene, Rogue observes Wolverine deploy his trademark claws. She asks if it hurts, and quietly but with the pain of a deeply felt backstory, Hugh Jackman perfectly delivers the line, “Every time.” It’s one of the many great small moments in the series that make the big ones easier to swallow.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Starting strong. Limping on from there.

The first of the X-prequels and the first to focus on a single character failed to leave much of an impression on fans or critics. One successful moment, however, was the opening title sequence. We see ageless mutants Wolverine and Sabretooth fighting in every major armed conflict since the 19th century. Watching them claw and fang their way through familiar battle scenes grounds their own personal conflict in the events of history, especially as Sabretooth loses his soul during the quagmire of Vietnam. Afterwards, the movie mostly sucks.

X-Men: First Class
Magneto’s magic coin trick

The second X-prequel gets back to the ensemble and succeeds at both entertaining and justifying its existence as it gives real weight to the central struggle of the series between Professor X and Magneto. This plays out most powerfully and painfully as we watch Magneto, finally unencumbered by his friend’s mind control abilities, give in to his darker urges while also exploiting those abilities.

While Professor X pleads for him to stop, Magneto brutally presses a coin through the skull of villain Sebastian Shaw, himself paralyzed by Xavier’s mind control. James McAvoy visibly falls apart as he watches his friend lose his moral center through an action he had an unwitting hand in. After this moment, we can accept that these two will always have a difficult relationship.

The Wolverine
Oh hey, an X-Man

I really enjoyed this entry, which plays as much like a solid martial arts film as a superhero flick. It has a ton of great action set-pieces, but my favorite moment wasn’t necessarily a great scene but the surprise, post-credit sequence did provide some unexpected reassurance.

When I saw it, I realized that this was the first time any other X-Men had appeared in the film. The Wolverine did what Origins: Wolverine couldn’t. It managed to execute a worthy solo X-film, which meant the franchise had enough legs to walk out of Westchester without stumbling. The introductions of Magneto and Xavier are effective, though a bit cheap to employ them just to tease the sequel.

X2
BAMF

This was the comic book movie that made me want to read comic books again. It was so rich and dark and tense and exhilarating. The scene where Mastermind influences Professor X to begin a genocide of all the world’s mutants seemed like it might genuinely succeed, raising the stakes until I was completely invested in this superpowered opera. It could have been my favorite moment along with so many (Magneto’s prison break, Wolverine’s defense of a recently “outed” Iceman) if not for a perfect action sequence at the film’s opening.

Nightcrawler’s burst teleportation was made to be adapted to film. We watch a mind controlled Kurt Wagner infiltrate the White House, and the viewer experiences the rush of chasing after someone with this ability. The camera struggles to keep up. At every turn, we catch just a glimpse of blue *BAMF* smoke before his pointed tail slips out of reach again. This all builds into a climax in the Oval Office where the fear-mongering of Senator Kelly and his kind has become reality. A powered mutant has betrayed the trust of the public and used his abilities to assassinate the leader of the free world. In the first five minutes, the film provides one of the best translations of a comic action sequence and ramped up the drama to maximum pressure.

X-Men: The Last Stand
The walk to the parking lot

It was a bittersweet feeling, but once the credits rolled and everyone filed out of the auditorium, I had an overwhelming sense of power knowing that, despite the time and money I just wasted, I never had to watch this shitty movie again. The control I felt in that moment made me as powerful as any X-Man, up to and including Dazzler.

X-Men: Days of Future Past
The hyper wedgie

The third X-prequel saw the return of director Bryan Singer who made an entry I found surprisingly forgettable. It seemed like this one had everything going for it: old & young X-Men, time travel, sentinels, Peter Dinklage. But a week after watching it, the only thing I could remember about it was an unexpected appearance by Quicksilver.

Future Past came out a year before Avengers: Age of Ultron, a film that would also feature Quicksilver among its roster of characters. He and his sister, The Scarlet Witch, exist in an IP grey area that allowed them to be depicted as both Avengers and X-Men onscreen, but with some aspects of the characters split between films. For example, The Avengers version is allowed to keep his original character name while the X-Men version maintains his identity as Magneto’s son. The biggest difference comes in how their power is depicted. Avengers Quiksilver is always seen streaking around the screen in a light trail. He seems fast but not mind blowingly fast. He even dies by sacrificing himself to a hail of gunfire. It’s satisfying for his character arc but seems implausible for someone who should be able to outrun those bullets. That’s where X-Men Quicksilver shines.

In my favorite moment of Future Past or any X-Men film, a group of mutant fugitives find themselves confronting armed guards in a kitchen. Magneto sends hot pots and sharp knives flying, the guards fire their guns at the X-Men, Professor X freaks out and then everything freezes. For a moment, it seems Charles may have pulled his familiar telepathic freeze on everyone, but the objects are also frozen, and by the time we realize why, Quicksilver is putting his headphones on to listen to Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” and save the day.

In a scene that both summarizes and transcends the entire franchise, Quicksilver runs about the room at hypersonic speed, intervening in the fracas with juvenile pranks, costume appropriation, soup tasting and eventually saving his allies by changing the path of the bullets that are inches from their heads. It’s funny, fantastic and surprising, which is why we fell in love with comics in the first place.

Bonus: Deadpool

I laughed when Deadpool took his mask off, and he had a Hugh Jackman mask on.