I don’t know a thing about superheroes. I think I’ve seen three Marvel movies, and I can’t even tell you which ones. But somehow, I ended up on the receiving end of a very long Wolverine info dump from my film major friend as rice dribbled off my fork into my Chipotle burrito bowl. So when I heard the question, “Do you want to watch all the X-Men movies with me,” I found myself saying “yes.”

Allow me to regale you with the tales of watching 14 X-Men movies in one quarter.

Night one: The night that ended at sunrise.

• “X-Men” – Classic. You can tell that Magneto and Professor X are in love from the start.
• “X2” – Now that’s a queer allegory, if I’ve ever seen one.
• “X-Men: The Last Stand” – If I remembered what happened in this movie, I would give you a review of it, but I don’t, so I won’t.
• “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” – This would be a lovely story if any of it was still canon.
• “X-Men: First Class” – Top tier. I love found families. I hate Beast.

Night two: I’m starting to get confused.

• “The Wolverine” – Let me establish something right now: Wolverine is babygirl. That said, “The Wolverine” reminded me of everything I hate about comics, namely overly-sexualized women being vehicles for the male hero’s storyline. The only thing that would have made up for it was my sapphic rep via Yukio, but she disappeared after act one.
• “X-Men: Days of Futures Past” – As a self-contained story, this movie is solid. However, unless you’re “Back to the Future,” time travel will always be a confusing plot point. This movie puts us on a timeline where the only canon movie is “First Class,” and I never recovered from that canon shift.
• “X-Men: Apocalypse” – This Thanos-wannabe snatched up Magneto and put him in a sassy villain outfit so Professor X would give a damn about the lame apocalypse. In other words, weaponized homosexuality.

Night three: Whiplash.

• “Dark Phoenix” – This might be the worst movie of the entire franchise. Imagine being the titular character of a blockbuster movie and not having a single moment of agency in the entire 114-minute run time. Maybe it’s because Marvel can’t write women (please see: overly-sexualized women being vehicles for the male hero’s storyline), and Jean Grey is no exception.
• “Logan” – This might be the best movie of the entire franchise. If I can convince you to watch any movie from this list, watch “Logan” and prepare to sob. It does justice to what Wolverine is all about.
• “Deadpool” – This might be the funniest movie of the entire franchise. I had to wipe my leaking face in preparation for 108 minutes of punchline after punchline. Fantastic chaser after “Logan.”

Night four: From whiplash to underwhelming.

• “The New Mutants” – Two separate people told me to add this to my X-Men marathon list. To those two people: are you sadists? It gives the X-Men name a bad rep, but you can make a drinking game out of it! Take a sip every time Charlie Heaton slips out of his bad Kentucky accent or when Magik has a cliche line that even Anya Taylor-Joy can’t save.
• “Deadpool 2” – This is the favorite of my marathon buddy, but I found it derivative of the first “Deadpool.” Still, good cameos, great laughs. And my girl Yukio is back!

Night five: More confusion, but closure.

• “Deadpool & Wolverine” – I know this is making fun of confusing Marvel multiverses, but the film itself is a confusing Marvel multiverse. I didn’t care for Wolverine because he isn’t my Wolverine (but he’s still babygirl). We took an intermission to explain the plot of “Loki” so I could understand the plot. Again, time travel will always be a confusing plot point.

Did I enjoy watching 14 X-Men movies? Absolutely. I don’t understand superhero movies any more than I did before, but now I appreciate the wealth of Cherik fics on AO3 and hate on Beast when I see edits on TikTok.

If you choose to go on this adventure yourself, don’t do it alone, because the real X-Men were the friends we made along the way.

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