Summary
TheX-Menmoviesfeatures some pretty gratuitous violence for a largely PG-13 series, withsome surprisingly gory deaths scattered throughout its 20-year run.Created in the wake of 2000’sX-Men, a one of the earliest examples of a successful superhero team-up movie,Fox’sX-Menuniversehas come a long way. Compared to similar franchises, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the world of Fox’s mutants is decidedly darker and grittier, with a great deal of disturbing death sequences.
Much of this blood and gore can be attributed to the gruesome powers of the franchise’s flagship character, Wolverine, whose claws and powers of rapid regeneration necessitate greater levels of violence to convey. Even though the majority of the films are PG-13, with onlyLoganand theDeadpoolfilms being rated R,Fox has gotten away with some appallingly brutal kills in the comic book franchise.While the series draws to a close withthe premiere ofDeadpool & Wolverine,its brutality deserves a spot in the superhero movie hall of fame.
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Deadpool & Wolverine is in many ways a love-letter to Fox’s superhero movies, but it also draws notably from the MCU’s most recent developments.
10Stryker Is Chained To A Wall And Drowned
X2: X-Men United
Sergeant William Stryker was undoubtedly one of the most despicablemovie X-Men villainsever put on screen. So deep ran his hatred for mutants that he turned his own son into a sort of living weapon, harvesting his DNA to force the submission of other mutants. After all the atrocities he committed, it’s hard to feel bad when Stryker is left for dead by Wolverine, with even the promises of restoring Logan’s memory not being enough to allow him to live.
After being chained to a wall by Magneto, Stryker is left for dead by Wolverine, not outright killing him but also refusing to help him. He meets his end for good when Jean Grey accidentally collapses a nearby dam, causinghim to slowly drown to death while being unable to move.This cruel and callous way to go out was somewhat diminished by the fact that this wouldn’t be the last time the series saw Stryker, with a younger version being re-introduced in the prequel timeline.
9Lady Deathstrike Is Injected With Liquid Adamantium
Though Lady Deathstrike is an easily forgotten character among the myriad of mutants introduced throughout the franchise, she suffers by far one of the most disturbing fates of any of them inX2: X-Men United.The mutant assassin Yuriko Oyama serves as William Stryker’s personal bodyguard, which soon puts her into conflict with none other than Wolverine. Curiously,she seems to have very similar abilities to Logan, including razor-sharp claws on the tip of every finger and a ferocious healing factor that negated physical injury.
Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike’s tear-down fight is one of the most violent of any PG-13 movie
Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike’s tear-down fight is one of the most violent of any PG-13 movie, the two stabbing each other over and over again to no avail over the remains of the Weapon X program. Faced with an opponent as durable as he is,Wolverine delivers the killing blow by injecting Lady Deathstrike with liquid adamantium, which painfully flows through her body before solidifying, killing her once and for all. This appalling death might be inflicted on a villain, but it is hard to watch, nonetheless.
8Magneto Kills Sebastian Shaw With A Nazi Coin
X-Men: First Class
The newtimeline established byX-Men: First Classintroduced audiences to younger versions of both Professor X and Magneto, with the former being more idealistic before his descent into human hatred. A big part of his schism with Charles is their different beliefs as towhat to do with Sebastian Shaw, the film’s villain and former Nazi tormentor of Erik and his family.Charles abhors the use of violence even against such evil people, but Magneto coldly enacts his other plans for Shaw in the film’s climax.
Stunned by Professor X’s telepathic powers, Shaw is helplessly trapped in a confined space with his former experimental subject. Cutting himself off from Charles' telepathy with his iconic helmet, Magneto reminds Shaw of his old trials as a child using his mutant powers, in which he was forced to move a Nazi coin. In a cruel ironic execution,Magneto slowly pushes the same coin through Shaw’s head,which must’ve been a terrifying and painful way to go for the former Nazi war criminal.
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X-Men’s timeline has long been a wild and confusing mess with several different iterations and retcons throughout, resulting in big discrepancies.
7Senator Kelly Melts Away
X-Men
The originalX-Menfilm had a decidedly more comic book-y plot compared to later iterations, but the classic superhero romp managed to fit in some existentially terrifying death scenes alongside its cheesiness. At the center of the film isSenator Robert Kelly, a profoundly anti-mutant politician who gains the ire of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants.Once again, Magneto and Professor X disagree on how to handle anti-mutant sentiment, and Magneto gets his hands on Senator Kelly.
Using a specialized machine that grants mutant powers, Magneto turns Kelly into that which he hates the most; a common mutant. However, the machine’s effects are unpredictable, and Senator Kelly’s new mutant powers suddenly manifest in a violent and haunting manner.Kelly ends up turning into a puddle of water, melting away when his body is unable to handle the strain of a sudden mutation, making for a truly disturbing visual amid the otherwise campy first X-Men film.
6Professor X Is Telepathically Torn To Pieces
X-Men: The Last Stand
Infamous for its poor quality among its peers in the original X-Men trilogy,X-Men: The Last Standfinally killed off many heroic figures. This was all in large thanks to the film’s adaptation of the famousDark Phoenixstoryline, in whichJean Grey’s powers go out of control under the influence of a latent alternate consciousness within Jean’s psyche.Being the only telepath possibly strong enough to stand up to the Phoenix’s power, Professor X wearily locks psychic horns with Jean.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t turn out well for the X-Men’s founder and leader, who is literally disintegrated by the Phoenix’s fierce telekinetic powers. Disassembled literally molecule-by-molecule has to be a painful way to go, and bringsProfessor X’s terrible decisionto isolate the Phoenix persona in the first place when Jean was still a child full circle. It’s worth noting that Professor X isn’t the only one to be killed in this manner, thoughhis death is by far the most tragic.
5Iceman Is Decapitated By Sentinels
X-Men: Days of Future Past
X-Men: Days of Future Pastchanged the game of the X-Men continuity with its bleak depiction of the future, in which multiple fan-favorite X-Men are killed by an advanced model of Sentinel. Among the dead are Colossus, Sunspot, Warpath, and Blink, who all suffer wince-inducing dismemberments at the hands of the Sentinels. Butby far the most gruesome death is that of Bobby Drake, a.k.a. Iceman.Despite being widely understood as one of the X-Men’s strongest members, even Iceman isn’t tough enough to withstand the sentinels.
Iceman ends up being grabbed by one of the hulking automatons, having his head slowly pulled clean off his shoulders while simultaneously being scorched by a Sentinel imitating Sunspot’s fire powers.By using Iceman’s crystalline ice form, Fox was able to get away with an shocking amount of “gore”, the Sentinel stepping on and shattering Iceman’s severed head after killing him. Even if his death was free of blood and guts, there’s no denying it must’ve been tremendously painful.
4Zeitgeist Falls Into A Woodchipper
Deadpool 2
One of the funniest jokes inDeadpool 2was the various horrendous deaths of the short-lived members of the X-Force. Deadpool assembles his team of (mostly) superpowered heroes with high hopes, only for most of them to gently tumble intodeadlyFinal Destination-style accidentsshortly after deploying on their first mission. While the scene is played for laughs,it must be admitted that the various deaths of Deadpool’s X-Force are among the most brutal in the entire series.
The deaths of Bedlam, Shatterstar, and Vanisher are certainly not pleasant ways to go, being hit by a bus, chopped up by helicopter blades, and fried on an electrical cable, in that order. ButZeitgeist gets a particularly stomach-churning death, gently gliding straight into a woodchipperto be slowly ground to a fine red mist bit-by-bit. As if that weren’t bad enough, in his throes of pain, he accidentally uses his power and vomits acid on Peter, melting his arm off and causing his death as well.
3Dr. Reyes Is Eaten Alive
The New Mutants
The filmTheNew Mutantsoccupies a strange space in Fox’s cinematic X-Men universe. Not only is it tonally quite unique, billing itself as a rare superhero horror story, but its characters are largely removed from the events of all other films, making the narrative stand alone in a lonely, strange story. Regardless, being essentially a horror film featuring mutants, it’s no wonder thatThe New Mutantsfeatures one of the most gruesome deaths in the whole franchise.
The film takes a hard left turn when Dani Moonstar, a.k.a. Mirage, ends up accidentally manifesting a giant demonic bear that wreaks havoc on the Dr. Reyes' mysterious hospital.It’s Reyes herself that meets one of the film’s most grisly fates in the jaws of the demonic bear, being eaten alive by the raging beast.Quite a strange way to die even by X-Men standards, being swallowed whole by a giant creature is still an undeniably brutal death.
2Donald Pierce Is Tortured By Mutant Kids
Logan
Despite the character’s inherently gory power set,Loganwas the first genuinely R-rated filmto feature the legendary mutant hero. The film certainly didn’t hold back with the violence in its action scenes, with both time-honored X-Men and insidious villains meeting their fates in increasingly brutal ways. As far as the latter goes, overarching antagonist Donald Pierce, yet another powerful man exploiting mutants in the series,ends up getting essentially tortured to death by the very mutant children he sought to execute.
Cornered in the woods by Laura and her fellow escapees, Donald Pierce meets his maker when a whopping18 mutant children combine their powers to give him the most painful death possible.Pierce is first telekinetically forced to the ground before being strangled by plant life, frozen in ice, and then finally electrocuted, making his death a truly tortuous experience. Pierce may have gotten what was coming to him, but there’s still a certain sense of unease in watching all the mutant children gleefully participate in the murder.
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The X-Men franchise is notable for its incredibly intricate prop and costume details that reference the franchise’s history and characters.
1Logan Is Impaled On A Tree Branch And Poisoned
Of course, it wasn’t just the villains who met their disturbing fates in 2017’sLogan.The film begins with most of the X-Men being tragically killed, but even Professor X dies in a truly upsetting manner as the movie progresses, being stabbed to death by who he thinks is Wolverine, but in reality is his clone, X-24. That being said,it’s Logan himself that finally dies in a particularly brutal and painful way after centuries of being alive, putting an end to his tale in the Fox universe once and for all.
While tragic and painful, this death was Wolverine’s perfect swansong in theX-Menmovie universe.
Fighting off the lingering effects of adamantium poisoning the entire movie, Logan is in far from ideal fighting shape, with his years in the Weapon X program finally catching up to him, diminishing his healing factor. This explains how he isn’t able to come back from such grievous injuries, being ultimatelyimpaled through the chest on a tree branch by X-24 before eventually succumbingto the poisonous mineral coursing through his veins. While tragic and painful, this death was Wolverine’s perfect swansong in theX-Menmovie universe.
The X-Men franchise, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, centers on mutants with extraordinary abilities. Led by the powerful telepath Professor Charles Xavier, they battle discrimination and villainous mutants threatening humanity. The series explores themes of diversity and acceptance through a blend of action, drama, and complex characters, spanning comics, animated series, and blockbuster films.
