X-Men is one of the most high-profile film franchises ever made, but even a die-hard fan is likely to find the plot lines a little confusing.
From the original X-Men films in the early Noughties to the more recent prequels starring James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, the hit Marvel series is so full of twists and turns it’s hard to keep up – and we haven’t even mentioned the Wolverine and Deadpool spin-offs yet.
Dark Phoenix, which starred Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, was billed as the final film focusing on the main characters in the X-Men franchise when it arrived in 2019, and was supposed to act as the final piece in this mutant puzzle – before 2020’s The New Mutants arrived, at least.
If it wasn’t hard enough to follow already, there are a couple of different timelines by which to follow the X-Men films, thanks to X-Men: Days of Future Past going back in time to 1973 and changing the course of history – which is where things get confusing.
There’s also the option to watch the films in chronological order, which is probably easiest for the casual X-Men viewer.
However you do it, you may want to do your homework before you head to the cinema. This is our guide to catching up with X Men in order.
X-Men movies in chronological order of release
The most logical way to watch the X-Men films is in chronological order, based on the years the fictional stories took place in.
- X-Men: First Class (set in 1962, released in 2011)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (set in 1973, released in 2014)
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (set in 1981, released in 2009)
- X-Men: Apocalypse (set in 1983, released in 2016)
- X-Men: Dark Phoenix (set in 1992, released in 2019)
- X-Men (set in 2000, released in 2000)
- X2: X-Men United (set in 2003, released in 2003)
- X-Men: The Last Stand (set in 2006, released in 2006)
- The Wolverine (set in 2013, released in 2013)
- Deadpool (set in 2016, released in 2016)â
- Deadpool 2 (2018, released in 2018)
- The New Mutants (2026, released in 2020)
- Logan (2029, released in 2017)
Timeline A
If you’re feeling brave and want to include Days of Future Past in your movie marathon, opt for one of two alternate timelines. In the first, Mystique fails to kill military scientist Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) after the X-Men discover he has been experimenting on mutants. Decades on, an army of robot Sentinels risk the extinction of mutant-kind. As a result, some of the films mentioned above do not appear in the list below. Based on that timeline, you can watch the films in the following order:
- X-Men: First Class
- X-Men: Days of Future Past
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- X-Men
- X2: X-Men United
- X-Men: The Last Stand
- The Wolverine
Timeline B
In this timeline, the Wolverine stops Mystique from killing Trask, in turn saving mutants from extinction. Mystique becomes a public hero after saving President Nixon from Magneto. As with Timeline A, not all of the X-Men films feature in this timeline as a result. For this, watch in the following order:
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (future sequence)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (past sequence)
- X-Men: Apocalypse
- X-Men: Dark Phoenix â
- Deadpool â
- Deadpool 2
- Logan
