20th Century Fox's X-Men film franchise has a complicated legacy, to say the very least. The series has been praised for its part in launching the modern era of superhero films, as well as harshly criticized for some of its weaker offerings.
While the franchise tends to receive more flak than it deserves, it's hard to deny that it wasn't the most consistent in terms of quality. It was home to truly excellent movies like X-Men, X2, X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Day of Future Past, but also egregiously bad ones like X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. At various different points in between those two extremes of quality lie films like The Wolverine, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, as well as the television series The Gifted. However, the thing all of the aforementioned projects have in common is that they reside in and around PG-13/TV-14 territory, meaning they were made with all audiences in mind. Interestingly enough though, when it comes to X-Men projects aimed exclusively at adults, Fox's track record is actually pretty spotless.
After much reluctance, Fox let the X-Men franchise go R-rated in 2016 with the release of its raunchy, fourth wall-shattering superhero comedy Deadpool, starring Ryan Reynolds. The Merc with a Mouth's first live-action film truly changed the game for superhero cinema. It wasn't the first R-rated comic book movie -- not by a long shot, in fact. But it was far and away the most successful up until that point. Between glowing reviews and a $782.6 million worldwide box office haul, Deadpool proved once and for all that R-rated superheroes could be just as critically and commercially viable as PG-13 ones.
Seemingly still riding the high of Deadpool, Fox put out director James Mangold's Logan in 2017. And if Deadpool was the barrier-breaker, Logan was the true masterpiece. The culmination of Hugh Jackman's 17-year tenure playing Wolverine, Logan is a beautifully written, shot and acted, not to mention appropriately gruesome film that more than did that legacy justice. It wasn't quite as commercially successful as Deadpool, but it made up for that and then some by being one of the most poignant and, quite frankly, one of the overall best comic book films ever made -- proving that the X-Men franchise was still capable of innovation nearly two decades on.
Wade Wilson came back with a vengeance in 2018 with Deadpool 2. Strangely, despite being a sweeping commercial success -- eventually becoming the highest-grossing movie in the entire X-Men franchise -- this sequel was actually somewhat divisive among fans and critics when it first came out. In retrospect, however, it was definitely a worthy follow-up to 2016's Deadpool. It didn't have quite the same charm as the first movie, but it was still a great time all around -- due in no small part to its continued affection for the source material, as well as how much braver it was with its namechecks and satirical commentary on superhero movies (including the rest of the X-Men franchise).
Finally, you can't talk about excellent adult-oriented X-Men projects without bringing up FX's surrealist TV-MA-rated series Legion. Deadpool and Logan challenged people's notions regarding what a superhero adaptation could be, but Legion burned those notions to the ground, providing an interpretation of Marvel's mutants that was unlike anything audiences had come to expect from superhero adaptations, tackling hard issues like mental illness, drugs and abuse along the way. The delightfully twisted vision of showrunner Noah Hawley was complimented with wonderful performances by the likes of Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, and Aubrey Plaza, among many others, resulting in a show you should absolutely sit down and watch if you haven't already.
So, while Fox's more traditional X-Men projects have a respectable, if slightly dubious track record, the company went four for four with its R/TV-MA outings (six for six if you count all three seasons of Legion individually), with said projects ranging from great to masterful. Is that to say that making something R-rated inherently makes it better, or that all future live-action X-Men projects should be made exclusively for adults? No, not at all. Adult ratings are great for telling stories you might not be able to tell otherwise, but simply slapping some brutal violence and harsh language into property that is usually family-friendly is by no means a guarantee of success.
The real reason Fox's adult-oriented X-Men projects were so good comes down to how much creative control their respective casts and crews were afforded. The Deadpool movies, Logan and Legion felt less like products of the company, and more like the work of individual creators. That's not to say every actor or filmmaker's vision is a surefire recipe for greatness either (we're all fallible after all), but in this case, it worked out rather well.
Mind you, an adult rating does tend to lend itself to creative freedom. It's clear Fox felt like it was taking a risk by injecting R-rated productions into a market that is generally dominated by PG-13 releases. Hindsight is 20/20 and we know those films were very successful, but at the time, Fox seemed to have its doubts these passion projects would set the box office on fire. Hence, why it gave them smaller budgets. At that point, why not just let the passion projects be passion projects and allow the cast and crew do things the way they want? Inherently violent and crass characters like Wolverine and Deadpool definitely benefit from not being bound to PG-13 land, but it's the sheer care and affection with which these projects were tackled that made them so worthwhile, with a fair bit of experimentation thrown into the mix as well.
Ryan Reynolds and his collaborators fought like hell to make a Deadpool movie happen, and clearly put their all into making the ones we eventually got as fun, self-aware and irreverent as possible. Hugh Jackman's swan song as Wolverine in Logan was as emotional for the audience as it was for the man himself, with Mangold and company crafting the perfect story for the occasion by taking inspiration from classic westerns, rather than conventional superhero films. With Legion, Noah Hawley all but threw out the rule book to craft a fascinating take on the X-Men universe all his own.
Honestly, this is why it's still worth getting excited about Josh Boone's X-Men spinoff film The New Mutants. The movie isn't rated R, though its horror elements definitely skew it towards and older audience. It also appears to be in a similar vein as Deadpool, Logan and Legion in that it feels like Boone's movie -- not 20th Century Studios' or Disney's.
Family-friendly superhero movies are important, but it's nice to have something just for the grown-ups now and again, just like it's nice for the kids to have certain projects made specifically for them as well. But while the rating itself can certainly make a huge difference, the part visionary creators and performers play cannot be overstated. If you need proof of that, look no further than some of the X-Men franchise's greatest successes.