The Perfect Order to Watch All the 'X-Men' Movies

Last year, I published an article called, "The Perfect Order to Watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Movies," where I wrote about the Spaghetti Order, an MCU watch order that connects each Marvel film together with their after-credits scenes.

This article blew up. It's currently at over 650,000 reads, and if you read that article and you're currently reading this one, I want to say thank you so much for your support, and I'm now gonna pay you back with a brand new order.

Recently, I got into watching the X-Men films. For the most part, I enjoyed them, and I realized that there was no good watch order for these movies.

I watched them in release order, and I decided to create another watch order for these X-Men films. I thought it would be difficult because of all the timelines, but it was actually pretty easy.

Introducing the Cannoli Order!

While the Spaghetti Order primarily connected the films through after-credits scenes, we are gonna forget about the X-Men after-credits scenes because when you have timelines as confusing as these, the stories are what matters.

Essentially, we have two timelines that contradict each other. The Cannoli Order allows you to watch one timeline and then the other. So here it is:

• X-Men: First Class (2011)
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
• X-Men (2000)
• X2 (2003)
• X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
• The Wolverine (2013)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
• X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
• Dark Phoenix (2019)
• Deadpool (2016)
• Logan (2017)
• Deadpool 2 (2018)

Copy and paste that into a note on your computer or take a screenshot or whatever you have to do. I'm now going to explain the reasoning for this order with SPOILERS FOR (almost) ALL X-MEN MOVIES.

We begin with X-Men: First Class, the film that takes place first chronologically in the timeline in 1962. This is the perfect film to start with because A) it's good and B) we get to see how Charles and Erik meet for the first time.

The film sets the stage for what is yet to come, also introducing us to Raven and giving us a Wolverine cameo, which teases a standalone film for Wolverine, giving us X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

This film takes place in 1979, and it gave us a young Cyclops stuck in a cage and a horrible incarnation of Wade Wilson/Deadpool.

It gives us a Wolverine origin story and at the end, Xavier brings Cyclops and a bunch of other mutants to his school, and he can walk because he's using the serum that allows him to. We then chronologically have X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand.

At the end of The Last Stand, Wolverine is forced to kill Jean Grey, and in The Wolverine, he is shown to still be haunted by his actions and he needs to get over it.

We then have X-Men: Days of Future Past, a movie that begins in 2023. In the film, Logan goes back in time to 1973 and meddles with the events that take place, and this is where people say the timelines get confusing. But from my perspective, everything works out BECAUSE of this film.

The meddling of events in Days of Future Past created an alternate timeline where the rest of the films can now take place. Everything that happened after 1973 is changed.

Now, how did Mystique not killing Trask set off these incredible changes? It's best not to think too logically about all this. For the sake of maintaining your sanity, let's just say that the whole world was changed as a result of Logan's time traveling.

The horrible incarnation of Deadpool? He's dead. No longer exists. Cyclops getting kidnapped as a teenager? Never happened. Because of the time traveling, every movie that takes place after 1973 in the original timeline was modified in some way.

Cyclops gets a new arrival into Xavier's school in X-Men: Apocalypse, which takes place in 1983, and it also erases the existence of the opening scene of The Last Stand when Xavier and Erik go to Jean's house. Doesn't make sense in this alternate timeline, so it never happened.

After 1983, we chronologically have Dark Phoenix, which takes place in 1992. Luckily, no one important dies in this movie (besides Mystique), which is why they're all alive in 2023 (Days of Future Past ending), and it is implied that Jean Grey survived in the very last shot of Dark Phoenix.

That is why she was eventually able to make it back to the school by 2023.

We then have Deadpool. As we said, the Weapon XI Deadpool no longer exists, and that's why the new timeline has given us this comic book-accurate version of Deadpool.

Now, it doesn't make sense for Wade Wilson to be an adult in 1979 and pretty much the same age in 2016, but the fact that Deadpool is aware of all this allows it to make more sense, since he asks all the questions you ask.

After Deadpool, we have Logan and then Deadpool 2. Now, why do we have Deadpool, then Logan, then Deadpool 2?

Because I watched Deadpool 2 before Logan and Deadpool spoiled the end of Logan for me. That's why the orders that suggest watching Deadpool 2 and then Logan is completely wrong, because Wolverine's death must be a surprise, and the first scene of Deadpool 2 is Deadpool talking about his death.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is the Cannoli Order. If you stop spending time mulling over the inconsistencies of Moira McTaggert and Bolivar Trask and how they have completely different incarnations, and instead, just look at it all broadly, it will all be a lot easier.

If you have any questions or you want to let me know if you tried this order, please tweet me @TheJonathanSim and share this post with your friends. Thank you so much for reading.