Wolverine Movies in Order: Every Film by Release and Story

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), directed by Brett Ratner, gives Wolverine the hardest choice of the original trilogy, because he is the only X-Man whose healing lets him get close to the returned jean gray and he has to kill her to stop her rampage. The plot starts with a pharmaceutical company announcing a treatment that can remove a mutant's powers, and Magneto raising a Brotherhood to fight it. Jean, believed dead, comes back with the dark Phoenix side of her mind in control, and Cyclops and Professor X do not survive the fallout.

The film runs 104 minutes and had a $210 million budget, the largest of the seven Wolverine films, and it earned $460 million worldwide. Kelsey Grammer plays beast x men, Vinnie Jones plays Juggernaut and Elliot Page plays Kitty Pryde, which makes it the most crowded of the team films. It played Out of Competition at Cannes in 2006, and John Powell wrote the score.

There is a post credit scene in which Dr. Moira MacTaggert visits a comatose patient who greets her in Professor Xavier's voice. The Last Stand is also the film The Wolverine picks up from, as Logan is haunted by visions of Jean in 2013's story.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), directed by Gavin Hood, is the first solo Wolverine movie, and it covers a century of Logan's life, from the 1840s, when the boy James Howlett first grows his bone claws, to a quiet life as a logger in Canada. Liev Schreiber plays his half brother Victor Creed, Danny Huston plays Major William Stryker, and Lynn Collins plays Kayla Silverfox. Ryan Reynolds appears as Wade Wilson, and Taylor Kitsch plays Remy LeBeau, known as Gambit.

The film runs 107 minutes, cost $150 million and earned $373 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. Harry Gregson-Williams composed the score. It premiered in Tempe, Arizona, on April 27, 2009, with Jackman and Reynolds attending. An unfinished workprint leaked online on March 31, 2009, about a month before release, and Fox said the FBI and the MPAA were investigating.

The story ends with Stryker shooting Logan with adamantium bullets and Logan losing his memory, which sets up the amnesiac of X-Men (2000). There are two post credit scenes: a mid credits scene where military police arrest Stryker, and a theatrical scene with Logan at a bar in Japan telling a waitress he is drinking to remember. A home media version adds a third, in which a hand crawls out of the rubble. Fans of Wade Wilson can also see Deadpool 2016 for the character's own film.

The Wolverine (2013), directed by James Mangold, sends Logan to Japan, where he is drawn into the family of Ichiro Yashida, an officer he saved from the Nagasaki bomb in 1945. In the present day, Yukio (Rila Fukushima) brings a hermit Logan to Tokyo, where the dying Yashida offers to take Logan's healing power so that Logan can finally age and die, and Logan refuses. At the funeral, Yakuza gunmen try to seize Yashida's granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), and Logan finds that his wounds no longer heal as fast as they should.

Hiroyuki Sanada plays Shingen, Svetlana Khodchenkova plays the poisoner Viper, and Famke Janssen returns as Jean Grey in Logan's visions. The film runs 126 minutes, cost $120 million and earned $415 million worldwide. Marco Beltrami wrote the score, and he returned for Logan. Filming took place in Sydney, Japan and Montreal, and the Kyoto State Guest House was designed for the production.

A mid credits scene, set two years later, shows Magneto meeting Logan at an airport to warn him of a new threat to mutants. Professor X, believed dead, then appears and says he is working with Magneto, which leads directly into Days of Future Past.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), directed by Bryan Singer, puts Wolverine at the hinge between the original cast and the First Class cast, because his consciousness is sent back to 1973 to stop the event that started the Sentinel program. In 2023 the giant Sentinel robots have almost wiped out mutantkind, and Kitty Pryde (Elliot Page) has found a way to send a mind back to warn the group. Logan wakes in his younger body and has to find a broken young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy).

The older Xavier and Magneto (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen) share the story with McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, with Jennifer Lawrence as mystique x men and Peter Dinklage as Dr. Bolivar Trask. Evan Peters plays quicksilver, who helps break Magneto out of a Pentagon cell. The film runs 132 minutes, cost $200 million and earned $746 million worldwide, the most of any Wolverine film. It opened to about $91 million and topped Godzilla over Memorial Day weekend 2014, according to the Washington Examiner.

John Ottman scored it. A post credit scene set in ancient Egypt shows En Sabah Nur being worshipped while he raises stones to build pyramids, which leads into Apocalypse. The ending resets the bleak 2023 timeline into a hopeful one, so Logan wakes among friends who were dead in the old future.

Logan (2017), directed by James Mangold, is the third solo film and the last Wolverine movie in the Fox series, set in 2029 when no new mutants have been born for years. Logan is worn down and ill, drives a limo near the Mexican border while his healing power fades, and secretly cares for an elderly Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) with the help of Caliban (Stephen Merchant). A nurse named Gabriela asks him to take a young girl, Laura (Dafne Keen), to a place called Eden near the Canadian border. Boyd Holbrook plays Pierce, who hunts the girl for the company Transigen.

The film is rated R in the US, and it runs 137 minutes. It cost $97 million, the second smallest budget of the seven behind only X-Men (2000), and earned $619 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. It screened Out of Competition at the Berlinale on February 17, 2017, and Marco Beltrami wrote the score. Production used Big Easy Studios in New Orleans for a 73 day shoot, according to the American Society of Cinematographers.

The story brings in a savage clone, X-24, a night with a farming family called the Munsons, and a final stand at the border. Logan dies in Laura's arms, the children bury him, and Laura turns the cross on his grave into an X. That ending closes Jackman's run, so this is the film to save for last.

In my opinion, first time viewers should watch the Wolverine movies in release order, while people who already know the saga will get more from the chronological list. Release order lets each reveal land when the filmmakers intended: you meet Logan with no memory in X-Men (2000), you chase the mystery in X2, and then Origins fills in the history as a look back. It could be argued that watching Origins first spoils that mystery, and that is the main reason I would not start there, even though it is the first story chronologically.

As for ranking them by how well they serve Wolverine himself, this is my order, from best to weakest. Logan comes first, because it finally lets the character age and lose, and the night with the Munson family and the final border fight give Jackman and Dafne Keen their best scenes. X2 is second for its Alberta search and the Alkali Lake finale. The Wolverine is third, with a grounded Japan story that makes his loss of healing a real risk, even if the Silver Samurai finale is less convincing than the Yakuza attack at the funeral. X-Men (2000) is fourth because it sets the template, and Days of Future Past is fifth, since the 1973 plot belongs more to Xavier, Magneto and Mystique than to him. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is sixth, as a century of history in 107 minutes leaves the Victor Creed rivalry thin. The Last Stand is seventh, because Wolverine's decision about Jean Grey is strong but the crowd of new characters squeezes it, and I say that with respect for what the film attempts.

Paradoxically, the biggest earner, Days of Future Past at $746 million, ranks below four smaller films here, which shows that box office and Wolverine focus are different measures. For the wider saga, see x men movies ranked. Whichever route you choose, treat Logan as its own story and save it for last, since it works best once you have seen the earlier films. If you only have time for a short run, I would pick X2, The Wolverine and Logan.