The COMPLETE X-Men Recap Before Dark Phoenix ¦ CRAM IT

Dark Phoenix is landing in theaters everywhere, probably, I guess, followed by New Mutants, eventually. But since this is maybe definitely the end of the Fox X-Men timeline, we're going to cram the entire X-Men series as quickly as possible. But just the core movies, no spinoffs, no Logan's, no Deadpool's, and definitely no X-Men Origins Wolverine. I'm not re-watching it, and you can't make me. As 2000's X-Men opens, the world has become aware of mutants, individuals with incredible superpowers due to genetic mutations they've had from birth. The US government is considering a new law that would force them to register and identify themselves publicly. Most mutants think this is a terrible idea, including the powerful psychic Charles Xavier and his old friend Eric Lencher, whose abilities allow him to move and control metals with his mind. We also meet runaway teen mutant Marie, aka Rogue, who soaks up the life force of anyone she touches directly. In the case of mutants, she borrows their abilities. While on the road in beautiful scenic Canada, Rogue meets up with another mutant drifter. He's ex-military, and his mutation allows him to quickly heal from any injury. He was also the subject of some largely unexplained military experiments that wiped his memory clean and also provided him with an adamantium skeleton and claws. Rogue and Logan are attacked by a mutant named Sabretooth and saved by two other mutants codenamed Storm and Cyclops. Those two work for Charles Xavier, who runs a school and refuge in upstate New York for young mutants that show promise. The school's side hustle is housing a mutant super team called the X-Men. Storm has the power to control the weather and deliver atrocious one-liners. Cyclops shoots a powerful energy beam from his eyes, and his girlfriend, Jean Grey, is both psychic and telekinetic. Logan has chemistry with Jean, which causes some tension with Cyclops, whose real name is Scott Summers. Charles's friend Eric, who also calls himself Magneto, has an evil plan that involves kidnapping Rogue, transferring all of his powers to her, and then using her to power a machine that will turn world leaders into mutants during a UN summit, but you don't really need to worry about that. Just know that Magneto also has a shape-shifting mutant that helps him who's named Mystique, who can disguise herself as anyone, and that Magneto's plan fails but nonetheless gives Rogue her trademark streak of white hair. X-Men ends with Logan, aka Wolverine, taking off to investigate his past, Mystique posing as a U.S. Senator to kill the Anti-Mutant Registration Act before it passes, and Magneto jailed in a plastic prison, vowing to escape and get you next time, The war is still coming, Charles, and I intend it. X-2, the one with more X-Men, introduces a new villain who's actually an old villain, military scientist William Stryker. He's the guy that many years before turned an unassuming Canadian with a silly haircut into the killing machine with a fabulous singing voice that we call Wolverine. You're an animal then, you're an animal now. He's also the guy that invented the jail they keep Magneto in, but with Mystique's help, the old guy escapes anyway. Never trust a beautiful woman, especially one who's interested in you. Who did he just wisecrack to? That guy's dead. Meanwhile, Jean finds that her powers are increasing, but they're also becoming harder to control. In the mutant world, this is known as foreshadowing. Also, she definitively chooses Scott over Logan, so end of love triangle. Or is it? Okay, back to Stryker. Using his mutant son Jason's ability to mentally control other mutants, Stryker forces a teleporter named Nightcrawler to pull off a daring attack on the White House. He also organizes a nighttime raid on Xavier's school, driving the X-Men underground. Oh hey look, Colossus! Momentarily. Stryker's big plan involves Cerebro, the complex machine Xavier uses to psychically track mutants all around the globe. Stryker's built an exact replica of Cerebro, and using Jason's mind control powers convinces the professor to locate and kill every mutant on Earth. It's time to bring it to an end. Magneto shows up just in time to save the day, but wouldn't you know that tricky trickster just reverses the instructions and tells Xavier to start killing all the humans? He is totally the Loki of this franchise. Can't trust him. Storm and Nightcrawler stop the professor just in time, Wolverine and Magneto kind of tag team, killing Stryker, and Magneto escapes along with Mystique and a former Xavier student, the flame chucking Pyro. While trying to free Scott from Jason's psychic grasp, Jean's out of control powers accidentally blow a hole in a nearby dam. Just as it's about to flood the entire valley, Jean sacrifices herself to save the others. Oh and just to make sure we definitely get that they're doing Dark Phoenix next, right before she gets hit by the water, flames appear around her body. Also we see the outline of a fiery phoenix under the lake. These are not subtle films. The president almost declares outright war on mutants, but the X-Men prove that mutants are totally safe by breaking into the White House. Good morning, Mr. President. And exposing the Stryker affair. How did you get this? Well, let's just say I know a little girl who can walk through walls. Yeah, then Wolverine just outright threatens our nation's chief executive. We'll be watching. Wait, I thought these were the friendly mutants. They totally pose a threat. 2006's X-Men The Last Stand was the first attempt to adapt the iconic Dark Phoenix saga written by the director of the new Dark Phoenix. Cool. As the film opens, Scott's hearing Jean's voice in his head, so he ventures back to Alkali Lake and finds that Jean is still alive, but somehow changed. She's lost control of her psychic abilities entirely and has become a real danger to herself and others. By the time Logan and Storm arrives, Scott is dead and Jean is unconscious with no memory of what happened. Meanwhile, a pharmaceutical company named Worthington Industries has developed a cure for mutation. Their affliction is nothing more than a disease. Magneto naturally sees this as a threat. Make no mistake, my brothers, they will force their cure upon us. And uses it as a pretense to recruit a mutant army, the Brotherhood. This gives the movie a chance to introduce a whole bunch of mutants that they have no way to actually use. Oh, also Juggernauts there. Magneto recruits Juggernaut, though unfortunately during the prison break, Mystique is shot by a needle containing the cure, stripping her of her powers. I'm sorry, my dear. You're not one of us anymore. Both Magneto and Professor Xavier visit Jean at her childhood home to convince her to come with them. You've always held her back. For your own good, Jean. But when the discussion gets heated, Jean starts to lose control and eventually she uses her powers to completely vaporize the Professor. It certainly seems like he's dead. He may be gone, but his teachings live on through us. But a post-credit scene reveals that at the last moment, he transferred his consciousness to a comatose body being observed by his friend, Dr. Moira McTaggart. Hello, Moira. Yeah, okay. Anyway, Jean ends up going with Magneto. They have their weapons. We have ours. Whose plan involves moving the Golden Gate Bridge so that he can storm Worthington's lab on Alcatraz Island and destroy the cure for good. Several X-Men, including mutant diplomat and Frasier Beast, also travel to Alcatraz to help defend the lab. Juggernaut says his famous line. I'm the Juggernaut, bitch! Iceman defeats Pyro in a Song of Ice and Fire trial by combat. Jean slash Phoenix vaporizes a whole bunch of people with her mind. And Magneto gets stabbed with cure-soaked needles, removing his mutant power. Ultimately, Logan manages to get close enough to Jean to stab her with his claws, ending the fight. Jean dies and that's that. The end of the original X-Men franchise. And time to... Wait, he can still move the metal chest pieces? So he's not cured? Well, what the hell is this movie about? When a premiere franchise hits the wall, there are only two real options, prequel or reboot. 2011's X-Men First Class is kind of both, as it takes us back into X-Men history while also introducing an all-new cast. We open in 1944. In Westchester County, New York, the wealthy young psychic Charles Xavier discovers a midnight intruder in his kitchen. It looks like his mom, but it's actually another mutant, the shape-shifting Raven, who will later become Mystique. Charles and Raven become fast friends. Meanwhile in a concentration camp, Nazi scientist Sebastian Shaw discovers powerful young mutant Eric Lencher, who will later become Magneto. Shaw finds that the key to unlocking young Eric's ability to control metal is to bring out his rage and fear. So he kills the boy's mother in front of That's a very Nazi thing to do. Flash forward to the very groovy year of 1962. It's a mutation. It's a very groovy mutation. Charles is now a PhD student studying archaeology. I'm just kidding. It's mutation. He studies mutation. So, how does it feel to be a professor? Xavier is recruited by CIA agent Moira McTaggart, she becomes a doctor later, I guess, to help the US government understand the whole mutant situation. So we're to be the CIA's new mutant division, yes? They find an ally in Oliver Platt, who doesn't get a name in the movie, so we'll just call him Oliver Platt. Once at Oliver Platt's facility, they meet another mutant who works for him, the brilliant scientific genius and big ugly foot-haver Hank McCoy. One of McCoy's greatest inventions is a prototype of Cerebro that Charles begins using to locate and recruit other mutants. I call it Cerebro. Among the mutants Charles locates are Angel, but not that Angel, who can fly and spit fiery acid balls, Banshee, who can create sonic waves with his throat, Darwin, who can adapt to any environment or condition, and Alex slash Havoc, who can fire off destructive energy rings. In addition to Cerebro, we also get the origin of the X-Jet, the X-Mansion, Hank's serum that transforms him into Beast, Magneto's helmet, and probably some other stuff too. We should think of code names. Okay, that's probably enough callbacks. You should be Professor X and you should be Magneto. Yep, we get it. It's a prequel. Next thing you know, I'll be going bald. All right, you need to stop. At the same time, grown-up Eric is on a tireless quest for revenge, hunting down Nazis and searching the globe for Sebastian Shaw in what should have been his own spinoff movie. It turns out Shaw is himself a mutant whose energy-absorbing power prevents him from aging. He now runs a covert mutant organization called the Hellfire Club, which is basically the Brotherhood, but groovier. There's not a fortress that could keep us out. That's Emma Frost, a powerful psychic who can also transform her entire body into solid diamonds. She's partnered up with Shaw. Shaw and his group have a plan to spark a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, hoping that in the aftermath, mutants will rule the world unopposed. That sounds sufficiently comic-booky. To fight back, Eric, Charles, and the new recruits will all have to work together. Shaw has his army. We need ours. Eric forms a bond with Raven, encouraging her to stop hiding her true face from the world. You want society to accept you, but you can't even accept yourself. But also gets locked in the first of many, many, many, many chess games and disagreements with his new pal Charles. They'll fear us, and that fear will turn to hatred. Not if we stop a war. Ultimately, Eric stops Shaw's plan by plucking his submarine out of the ocean to expose his involvement as a puppet master and de-escalate the conflict. Then Magneto pushes a Nazi coin that Shaw gave him as a kid through his skull. That's gonna leave a mark. Sadly, just when all seems resolved, both the American and Soviet ships fire missiles at the mutants, fearing that which they don't understand. When will we learn? Humanity, right folks? Eric, now in full-on Magneto mode, sends the missiles back to the ships that fired them, threatening thousands of lives. Charles tackles him, and Moira shoots at him to stop the attack, but as he's deflecting the bullets, Eric accidentally sends one right into Charles' spine, paralyzing him from the waist down. Because prequel. After the battle, Raven shocks her friends by teaming up with Eric and the remnants of the Hellfire Club. Charles erases Moira's memories of what happened, so she can't rat out the new mutant school he's opening in his childhood home. But not before she imparts one last piece of information. You're X-Men. Yes, I like the sound of that. Okay, seriously, please, just stop it. Days of Future Past unites the cast of the two X-Men eras and opens in the year 2023. Avatar 8 is hitting theaters nationwide, and a protracted war has wiped out nearly all mutants and any humans willing to help them. Those that remain are in hiding, hunted by robots known as Sentinels, which can adapt to counteract any mutant's power set. Not Ice Man! From a hideout in China, the surviving X-Men formulate a bold plan. They're going to use mutant kiddie pride's powers to send Logan's mind back in time to a pivotal moment in 1973. That was the year that Mystique assassinated the inventor of Sentinels, military scientist Bolivar Trask. Mystique was captured, and a study of her DNA sparked massive innovations in Sentinel technology. Plus, the shooting turned everyday Americans against mutants for good. So Logan quantum leaps back into his old 1973 body, when he still had bone claws. His mission is to find the 73 versions of Professor X and Magneto, and get their help in finding Mystique before she kills Trask. Unfortunately, Charles has become an alcoholic recluse. He uses the same serum that unleashed Hank's beast powers to restore feeling in his legs, but it shuts down his psychic ability. Oh, and Magneto is being kept in a concrete cell underneath the Pentagon for assassinating JFK. But he's totally innocent, you guys. Charles, Hank, and Logan free Eric with the help of a young, super-fast mutant named Peter Maximoff, the Quicksilver not played by kick-ass, in the one scene from this movie you probably don't need to be reminded about. It's also sort of implied that, like in the comics, Magneto is his dad. They told me you control metal. My mom once knew a guy who could do that. Xavier sobers up, stops using Hank's serum, and regains his powers. He dusts off Cerebro, and uses it to track down his old pal Raven. But she won't listen to him. I need you to come home. I know what I need to do. He also uses Logan's mind as a conduit to speak with his older self. So basically a pretty weird day for everyone involved. Humanity does this to us. Not if we show them a better path. Magneto takes control of the Sentinel Army himself using railroad tracks. You know, that old trick. He then steals a baseball stadium and uses it to cordon off the White House. He sends out a live TV message calling for a war between mutants and humans. You're right to fear us. We are the ones who will inherit this earth. And plans to kill President Nixon, Bolivar Trask, and everyone else hiding out in the White House bunker. Mystique, who's also there planning to kill Trask, stops Magneto just in time. Charles talks her out of the assassination, a key decision which succeeds in changing the future. So remember how we summarized those first three X-Men movies? Yeah, forget all that stuff. Logan wakes up in a totally new future where Jean is alive and well and still dating Scott. Professor X is going to fill Logan in on everything that happened since 1973. So you're probably going to want to brew a pot of coffee because that could take a while. But let's back up a bit to 3600 BC. That's when a very powerful but very old mutant named N'Sabanur ruled ancient Egypt with an iron fist. He attempted to move his consciousness into a different body, but the ritual was interrupted and the pyramid he was in was destroyed in the process, burying N'Sabanur beneath the rubble. Then for thousands of years, nothing happened. I mean, at least nothing that matters for the X-Men. Okay, jump to 1983 AD. Raven is still underground helping out mutants however she can, and she's become something of a legend in the mutant world. She's my hero. I want to be like her. For example, Raven saves young Nightcrawler from having to be a cage fighter in East Berlin because no one wants to be a cage fighter in East Berlin. Remember Havok, Alex Summers from X-Men First Class? Well, his younger brother Scott is in high school when one day all of a sudden he develops a major case of the laser eyes. So of course, Alex brings him to Xavier School, which is where he meets another newbie, the powerful psychic Jean Grey. Sorry to break it to you, but you're not the biggest freak in the school. Xavier's encouraging Jean to unleash her powers, because sure, why not? What could go wrong? But she's hesitant. Some dark power inside and it's growing. I have the strangest feeling of deja vu. Meanwhile, international criminal Eric Lensher has started a new life with a new identity as a Polish factory worker named Henrik. He's even got a wife and a daughter Nina, which is a bad sign because we can't have a contented and happy Magneto. Naturally, when he saves a fellow factory worker using his mutant powers, his secret is revealed. The police come for him and both his wife and daughter are killed with a single arrow. That is not easy to do. Magneto takes it well. And wouldn't you know this happens just as a weird cult at... You know what? I'm just gonna sit back and let CIA agent Moira McTaggart do the heavy lifting for a minute. These guys believe that the first mutant was born tens of thousands of years ago and they believe he will rise again. He had the ability to transfer his consciousness from body to body. Some of these may have been the bodies of mutants, enabling him to take their powers, amassing various abilities over the years. And wherever this being was, he always had four protectors he would imbue with powers. Thanks, Moira. On the street, the revived Insabonor meets a mutant named Storm who uses her weather controlling powers to steal from the local marketplace and he saves her life. She becomes his first disciple. Then he recruits Angel, the guy who was cage fighting Nightcrawler, Olivia Munn as Psylocke, and Magneto, who's in a dark place following the death of his family, completes the quartet. You don't know your own strength, but I do. Raven hears the news about Eric's family and returns to Xavier's school, hoping they can team up to track him down. Charles tries to use Cerebro, but this actually allows their enemy Insabon... You know what? Apocalypse. I'm just gonna call him Apocalypse anyway. Apocalypse is connected to Charles through Cerebro and gains access to all the minds in the world and releases every nuclear weapon into space, just like Superman 4. To stop him from doing any more damage, Havoc destroys Cerebro, which in turn blows up the entire X-Mansion. Peter Maximoff, looking for his father Magneto, arrives just in time to save everyone and it's another delightful Quicksilver scene, everybody. God, these are so much fun. Anyway, Havoc is dead. Apocalypse and Magneto manage to sneak in quickly and kidnap Xavier. Basically, he has a portal gun. Just picture a portal gun. Or the Space Stone. A younger version of William Stryker, remember him from X2? The guy who made Wolverine? He and his team round up all the mutants outside the mansion and take them to Alkali Lake, his Canadian secret evil laboratory. That is, except Gene Nightcrawler and Scott, who stow away in secret and rescue their friends. They get a little help from cameo guest star Wolverine, who's being held at the facility under the name Weapon X. That is, until Gene sets him free. That's the last we've seen of that guy. Anyway, so Apocalypse's big plan is to... Apocalypse. Specifically, he wants Magneto to pull all the metal out of the ground, cleansing the Earth of everyone but the most powerful mutants. Meanwhile, he'll transfer into Xavier's body to gain his power and enter everyone on Earth's mind. Clean and easy. Quicksilver and Raven appeal to Eric's better nature... You have more family than you know. ...while everyone else fights off Apocalypse and his various minions. Storm eventually switches sides and, you know, good for her, she got there. Plus, Eric finally comes around when he has to prevent Apocalypse from killing Mystique. Charles tries to fight off Apocalypse in a dreamscape brain battle, but he's losing badly until Gene steps in and helps him out. Unleash your power! This unleashes the dark power inside her known as the Baba Yaga. No, wait, no, that's the boogeyman, that's John Wick. This is the Phoenix. With Apocalypse destroyed, Psylocke slinks off looking guilty, like when you come home and your dog ripped apart the throw pillow. Magneto and Gene use their powers to rebuild the school. Charles, who always had a crush on Moira, gives her the memories from first class that he deleted back because he was starting to feel like Moby. No, seriously, we used to date. It was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Magneto takes off again, but not before he and Charles redo a memorable bit from the very first X-Men movie. I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to that school looking for trouble. And Mystique trains a lineup of new recruits to fight Sentinels in the very first Danger Room. Finally, there's a post-credit scene setting up Nathaniel Essex for a sequel that will definitely never happen. So there you have it. And if I'm being honest, it's probably more than you need to know before seeing X-Men Dark Phoenix 2 back in action. Any questions? Yeah, like a thousand. I mean, really, this movie spent most of their time setting up Raven's character, and if you've seen the trailers for Dark Phoenix, that might not have been time well spent. However, hopefully your time on this Kramit was well spent as we saved you the hours you would need to rewatch all of the X-Men movies. Hours that you can now spend revisiting The Wolverine. Wow. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.