With the X-Men soon to come to the MCU, there are plenty of people who would be much happier forgetting about most of the Fox years. While there are some definite highlights—X2 set a new benchmark for superhero movies in a pre-MCU era, and Logan is one of the best movies starring a Marvel character ever made— there are a lot of low lights, as the movies weren't always the most comics accurate in a lot of ways. However, for years, they were the only thing going as far as superhero movies were concerned.
The team got up to all kinds of things in these movies, not only fighting villains but often coming to blows with each other. The X-Men movies could get pretty dark in comparison to the Marvel movies that came later, and this was sometimes to their detriment.
10 Killing Cyclops Offscreen (The Last Stand)
Honestly, one can look at the entirety of third X-Men film The Last Stand as a dark moment for the franchise, as it would be the end of the movies being universally praised. However, one of the darker moments was the death of Cyclops. While it was never seen, he was killed by the woman he loved and it doesn't get much darker than that.
It's rare for a male character to be killed off as character development for a female one, and the movie version of Cyclops didn't get the same amount of spotlight he got in the comics, but it was still a rather dark moment for the movie, killing the team's field leader in a ignominious fashion so soon into the movie.
9 Wolverine Killing Jean Grey (The Last Stand)
The Dark Phoenix Saga has long been considered one of the greatest stories in comics, so fans were clamoring to see the big screen adaptation. The Last Stand would prove to be rather disappointing for a lot of reasons but one of them also ended up being one of the movie's darkest moments: Wolverine killing Jean Grey. While he ended up saving the day, he had to kill someone he loved to do it and it was pretty dark.
It was also a weird story choice in general, as one of the most powerful parts of the comic was Jean sacrificing herself to stop Dark Phoenix, choosing to be a hero again and end the violence herself. Having Wolverine do it was not only dark but it sort of ruined Jean's character and her arc in the story.
8 Making Xavier A Junkie (Days Of Future Past)
Professor Xavier was one of the characters who was served rather well by the Fox X-Men movies, being played by the incomparable Sir Patrick Stewart— and later by James McAvoy who stepped into some large shoes and did a good job. However, one of the weirdest and darkest character choices for Xavier came in X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
It was revealed that in the interim between movies, Beast had cured Xavier's paralysis at the cost of the professor's mutant powers and that Xavier was lounging around the mansion, getting drunk and shooting up the cure like a drug. While it was supposed to be a metaphor for addiction and give the character something to overcome, it just felt too dark and was kind of a failure in general.
7 Murdering Everyone In The Opening Scene (Days Of Future Past)
"Days Of Future Past" has long been considered one of the best X-Men stories of them all and seeing it on the big screen was a treat for fans. The movie did the story justice overall even though it made some changes, but it's hard to deny that the movie's opening was very dark. Featuring a Sentinel attack on the X-Men's hideout, it killed a whole mess of X-Men in just a few minutes in some rather brutal ways.
While it definitely fit the movie and the story that inspired it, it was an undeniably dark moment, one that let viewers know just how bad this future was.
6 Making Deadpool A Silent, Serious Killing Machine (Wolverine Origins)
Wolverine Origins is probably one of the biggest lowlights of Fox's X-Men movies and the whole thing could be considered a dark moment because of the damage it did to the franchise. However, if one moment had to be cherry picked out of the whole thing as the darkest part, it would be the transformation of Deadpool.
Taking the character from a funny killer with some of the best lines in the movie to the mouthless killing machine of the end was extremely dark and a grave misunderstanding of the character, taking away everything that made him Deadpool— the humor and fourth wall breaking— for the sake of him being a grimdark villain.
5 Killing Vanessa (Deadpool 2)
Deadpool is one of the greatest triumphs of the latter days of the Fox X-Men movies. One of the best parts of the movie was the sweet relationship between Wade and Vanessa. In fact, the argument can be made that Deadpool was the first superhero romantic comedy because of their love story, and fans were into it.
So, when Vanessa was killed off as the impetus for the plot of Deadpool 2, it was an extremely dark moment that really wasn't all that needed, especially since the movie would end up undoing that death later on. Killing female love interests for male character development is a tired trope that should've long been retired, feeling especially out of place in such an otherwise novel and interesting series.
4 The Suicide Montage (Deadpool 2)
After Vanessa's death, Deadpool would lose it and start killing himself, over and over. As one would figure, this was pretty much impossible for a character with a healing factor like his and the movie would just keep upping the ante with every subsequent attempt.
While the scene was played for laughs, suicide is no laughing matter and the gratuitousness of the scene took it out of comedic territory into the darker reaches of things pretty quickly. It was extremely effective at showing viewers where Deadpool's head was at but there were other, less dark ways it could have been done.
3 The Offscreen Deaths Of Banshee, Azazel, & Tempest (Days Of Future Past)
X-Men: First Class did a great job of breathing new life into the X-Men movie franchise, partly because it introduced mutants like Angel Salvadore (aka Tempest), Azazel, and Banshee to the X-Men film universe and fans were eager to see what the movies would do with them. X-Men: Days Of Future Past revealed their fates, and it wasn't pretty. Captured by Bolivar Trask, they were all experimented on and killed, used as fodder for the Sentinel program.
While their deaths were never shown on screen, it doesn't lessen the shock of their death or the terrible circumstances that viewers got a glimpse of from the files that Mystique found. The story warranted it but it felt a little much.
2 Wolverine Stabbing Rogue (X-Men)
The breakout character of X-Men, as most people expected, was Wolverine. Hugh Jackman nailed the feral mutant from the word go, elevating him to the next level and making sure that fans would never get enough of him, even in bad movies. However, there were some missteps with the character and one of them was him stabbing Rogue when she tried to wake him up.
While it was probably meant to show how dangerous he could be, it just felt too violent and dark. It honestly wasn't even really needed at all, as having him stab a teenage girl in the chest just ended up making him look bad more than anything else, and not bad in a "complicated but compelling anti-hero" kind of way.
1 The Introduction Of X-24 (Logan)
Logan is a very dark movie in general, a look at a man at the end of his life and his regrets about his past as he desperately reaches out for love and family. However, the darkest moment of the movie was when viewers were introduced to X-24. A clone of Wolverine in his prime, X-24 would kill the family Logan, Xavier, and Laura were staying with after killing Xavier in a tearjerker of a moment.
The sheer brutality of X-24 and what he did is what makes this the darkest moment in the movie and one that took it too far. It was pretty jarring for viewers as well, especially the way Xavier reacted to X-24 coming into the room, thinking he was Logan. The tonal juxtaposition from the stuff that preceded these scenes was massive, to say the least, and was a far cry from the largely PG-13-level violence that the X-Men movies (save for Deadpool) had typically trafficked in up to that point