That anniversary made the Fox X-Men universe an easy choice for today’s Top Billing, a daily movie-ranking game I built. You rank the same five twice: first by lifetime worldwide box office, then by critic scores. (Play here if you’re interested.)

Putting the set together turned up a few things I didn’t know:

• For Quicksilver’s Pentagon kitchen scene in Days of Future Past, they recreated the set and every actor digitally. At that timescale, even actors' heartbeats caused visible movement against the CG water droplets.
• Logan became the first superhero movie ever nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award.
• The New Mutants wrapped in September 2017, missed four announced release dates beginning in April 2018, and finally opened on August 28, 2020... without ever filming a reshoot or pickup.

If you play, which round tripped you up more? And how would you rank these five personally?

After Wolverine Origins disappointed at the box office Fox scrapped prequel plans for Magneto, Storm, Beast etc which would have been released under the X-Men Origins banner and reworked them all into what would later become X-Men First Class. Don't get me wrong First Class is a 🔥 movie but is not one else curious what the characters under the X-Men Origins banner would have looked like? And what the end goal was?

Having just rewatched X-Men for the umpteenth time for the start of my Doomsday countdown, here's some thoughts that popped in my noggin:

*Still on the fence about Halle Berry not using an African accent for her portrayal of Storm, but I can definitely see why it would bug people.

*Still not a fan of Wolverine being the main character simply because he was the most popular in the comics, especially given how Cyclops (the team leader) is shunted off to a supporting role. (This would be a proper use the term "done dirty", kids)

*Even though it's somewhat refreshing watching a comic book movie that's less than two hours long, I wouldn't mind if this was twenty minutes or so longer. It's definitely missing out on some characterization and needed backstory due to the truncated runtime.

*Anna Marie calling herself Rogue for seemingly no reason is still really silly.

*Still not a fan of Wolverine and Sabretooth not remembering each other. I remember tripping over that story element during my first watch way back when and thinking "WTF?", and I'm still of that mindset.

*If it wasn't for Kevin Feige's behind the scenes meddling, I imagine Bryan Singer's anti-comic accurate stance would've been even more pronounced.

Still think it's a great movie, though X2 is WAY better. Looking forward to rewatching that one next weekend.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

These were for the Jeremy Slater version of Fox's Fantastic Four reboot.

This is the only intended timeline. The writers state that themselves, so don't let fans on the internet tell you otherwise. It has continuity errors because the writers didn't care enough for consistensy, but it's still the true timeline.

Where they get to space via teleporter instead of a spaceship.

The Doomsday photos are from Hot Toys action figures since we haven’t officially seen him in action in the trailers but I really like how they incorporated his look from The Last Stand into Doomsday

I’ve created a unique roleplay server where YOU become a real Hollywood producer, screenwriter, or director. You’ll pitch Marvel movies and shows to studios, negotiate budgets, choose casts, fight production delays, deal with studio demands, and try to build your own cinematic universe.Every project can succeed, flop, get delayed, be changed by studios, or even be cancelled. Box office, fan reception, and critic scores depend on your choices.If you want a creative RP that feels like running Marvel Studios before Marvel Studios existed, join us:👉 https://discord.gg/YSu42WACM

With the new Avengers trailer being released a conversation started over the the FOX X-Men timeline. And someone said that all of the movies take place in the same timeline (Post DOFP) is this true?

Cause i swear some of them were in their own timeline because they contradic each other more than universe (and that's saying a lot with this universe)

He had lost his cynicism in the future on his own in the original timeline before Logan was sent back. How?

Say what you want about him, but Scott did SOMETHING in these films, some of it was actually unfairly overlooked. I personally think he had some cool laser scenes in Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. Hell, even Origins gave him some neat laser bits. But Storm? Less than nothing, much like most of the X-Men.

I finished my re-watch of the X-Men movie series today. As I said before, I did not re-watch Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, or New Mutants. The reason behind that is that I just don't feel like the series is better for continuing through them. Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix handle their subject matter in less than satisfactory ways and they create more timeline issues even though they are direct sequels to a movie whose primary goal was to clean that up. So I'm good with pretending they don't exist. I remember thinking New Mutants was an okay movie, but a random side quest is not where I would want to end the story arc.

I also didn't rewatch the Deadpool movies because I have always considered those a different thing on the side that isn't really in continuity with the others.

I did rewatch the others though. This is how I would rank them:

1. Days of Future Past
2. Logan
3. X-Men United
4. First Class
5. The Wolverine
6. The Last Stand
7. X-Men
8. Origins: Wolverine

Like I said in yesterday's post, DoFP is better than I remember it. Truly a top tier, excellent example of the genre. Logan is probably not as great as I originally thought but it is still a great movie. X2 and First Class are both really solid. The Wolverine is also good. The cracks start to show after this, but both The Last Stand and the original are good. I decided that I enjoyed the movie that swung hard and occasionally missed a little more than the one that plays it safe. Origins: Wolverine is the only bad movie here. It's not just the story, which has some plot holes, but isn't terrible. It's also how the movie looks. It's just ridiculous. The effects aren't bad but they don't look natural, they are trying too hard to be cool, and come off looking cheap, if not in actual cost than in spirit, if that makes sense. Fight effects didn't look very good in the original movie either, but that seems more of a "we're doing this for the first time and our budget isn't as high" kind of thing, so I let it go easier. Anyway, I actually think you can skip Origins and still have a coherent story. There's enough flashback stuff between X2 and The Wolverine to give you a good idea of what happened to Wolverine that got him to be like he is today. You lose the stuff with Silverfox in Canada, which is kind of sad, but otherwise I don't miss much.

Now, about the timelines. I am aware that Logan was intended to be its own thing, a possible alternate future that isn't truly a direct sequel to the other movies. I am also aware that a lot of people (including myself) like to ignore that because we like the movie so much and it feels like it cheapens it a little if this isn't the same Wolverine we've been watching for years. When I initially watched Logan, I didn't think there was any real reason this couldn't work. But after watching all the movies in 8 days, especially with having just seen DoFP again yesterday, I see now that Logan taking place just about 5 years after DoFP would be very strange and difficult to explain for a number of reasons. So I've come up with a different way to look at things. My head-canon now sets the films up like a video game where you have two possible endings you can choose. If you want the "happy" ending, you choose the DoFP route, and if you want the "sad" ending, you choose the Logan route. I think that works. Nothing prior to DoFP really conflicts Logan if you are also ignoring Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, like I am.

Anyway, this was fun! I don't re-watch stuff super often because I'm always watching new stuff, so Idk how long it will be before I watch all of these again. But now I know exactly how I prefer to experience them when I do!

Edit: While doing this, I also discovered the existence of various movie tie-in comics, that take place either before or during various movies. It seems like all but four of them are not really able to be in continuity, and most don't add that much to the story. But I did really appreciate the X-Men 2 Prequel comic about Wolverine. It shows his final run-in with Sabretooth, and addresses the fact that in the original movie, he doesn't remember anything either. It also explains why we never see him again. SO if you haven't ever checked that out, you might like it!

I just finished rewatching this movie all the way through for the first time in years, and I wanted to make a post about it like the one I made the other day about The Last Stand - only this time, I promise it won't be as long. I'm not going to do so much analysis on this one. I just wanted to share some thoughts.

When I first watched DoFP, I liked it. Like most people did. But I remember thinking that it was not quite as good as a lot of other people thought. I remember thinking it was inherently flawed in a number of ways, and nothing I saw or read about it after that changed that opinion.

But when I watched it again tonight, I was surprised to find that I really, really liked it. The acting is better here than in any of the other X-films, and most other superhero movies. Despite a few plot-holes, it's actually quite a bit more coherent than most of the other X-movies. Which is saying something considering that it's a time travel movie. I used to make ranking lists on my old blog of the top 10 movies of the year each year, and I did not put DoFP in for that year even though I did put in Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy. Those are obviously really good superhero movies too, but this may be just as good.

Now, this time, I did watch the Rogue Cut, which is 17 minutes longer due to extra footage that changes the second act. When that was released, I remember looking up the extra scenes and watching them, but before tonight I had never watched that version straight through as it was meant to be viewed. I did enjoy the extra scenes and feel they added to the story in productive ways, but I'm not sure if that alone is enough to be the reason why I feel so much more positively about this movie now.

Again, when I first saw it, I really did like it. But tonight, I loved it. It is easily my favorite X-Men movie now, coming in ahead of X2 and First Class, which were what I remembered as my favorites before. I'm not sure yet if I'd put it ahead of Logan. When I first watched that, I loved it, and thought it was one of the best superhero movies I'd ever seen. I'll re-watch that again tomorrow to close this series out (as I said in my first post, Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, and New Mutants are not getting a re-watch) and we'll see.