Hugh Jackman Wolverine’s 10 Best X-Men Movie Action Scenes, Ranked

Few famous superheroes in movies are as steeped in violence as Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, who has let loose in some incredible fight scenes over his nearly 25-year-long career. Across the Fox X-Men movies and beyond, Hugh Jackman has embodied the feral nature of the animalistic hero, making for one of the most iconic superhero casting choices ever. This prowess in the franchise’s many impressive action sequences have helped cement him as a vicious, yet righteous mutant who doesn’t hesitate to use his claws against those who deserve them.

For the most part, Wolverine spends a lot of his fights tearing through an endless supply of thugs in SWAT gear, meaning his films have to find creative ways to keep the fight entertaining or add a sense of stakes. As such a powerful opponent, Wolverine rarely feels like he’s in danger, but giving him a unique weakness or someone to protect always works wonders. In the rare instances a Fox movie universe X-Men villain is able to give him pause, it always makes for a thrilling duel.

10

Waking Up In 1973

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine with his claws drawn in X-Men Days of Future Past

Adapting the comic of the same name relatively faithfully, X-Men: Days of Future Past made on big change to the story in having Wolverine be the one to go back through time rather than Kitty Pryde. This pays off right away the second Wolverine wakes up wherever he was in 1973 — In bed next to a woman he has no business being with. It isn’t long before some criminals come barging into the room, ready to lay waste to the mutant without realizing what he truly is.

It’s a pretty one-sided slaughter as Wolverine shrugs off their bullets and sends them packing. However, small details like his post-time-travel grogginess or his surprise at having his original bone claws again give Wolverine enough to do to make the brief scrap entertaining. Slicing some car keys out of one of the thug’s pockets only to catch them in the air while muttering “Peaceful thoughts…” is an awesome beat to end a relatively inconsequential fight on.

9

Weapon X Gets Loose

X-Men: Apocalypse

Wolverine escaping from Weapon X in X-Men Apocalypse

By the time X-Men: Apocalypse takes place in the revised X-Men movie timeline, the torch has officially been passed to the new iteration of the core X-Men, with a new Cyclops, Nightcrawler, and Jean Grey now running the show. That doesn’t mean that the film can’t find the time to sneak in a cheeky Wolverine action sequence, as evidenced by Hugh Jackman’s brutal cameo in the film. Infiltrating the Weapon X facility and out of options, the kids unleash a dangerous-looking mutant from his cell in hopes of distracting the guards.

That gamble pays off big-time when Weapon X, still feral and bloodthirsty due to his status as a guinea pig, goes on a vicious killing spree throughout the facility. It’s so fun to watch the confused and terrified young X-Men use their future ally as an indiscriminate weapon against Stryker’s forces, showing off just how threatening a morals-off Wolverine can be. Getting to see Logan wearing nothing but the classic Weapon X headset and data monitoring nodes is a great treat as well. If only he had some worthier opponents to take his rage out on.

8

Wolverine vs Mystique

X-Men

Hugh Jackman's Wolverine fighting Rebecca Romijn's Mystique in X-Men 2000

Despite being Hugh Jackman’s very first appearance as Wolverine, 2000’s X-Men still contains one of his best solo duels against another mutant, Mystique. Wolverine’s keen sense of smell is the ultimate counter to Mystique’s disguises, and he ends up having to battle a doppelgänger of himself when it turns out Mystique can copy his claws to a degree. When that doesn’t work, the top Brotherhood of Mutants assassin gets creative, using her agility and the environment to her advantage.

It’s so fun watching Wolverine slice through whatever improvised weapons Mystique sends his way, enduring painful-looking backflips and roundhouse kicks in the process. It’s great to see Wolverine forced to use his more tactical side to get an edge over Mystique when brute strength fails him for once. It’s only the aged special effects that keep this fight from being even greater, certainly giving away the fact that it was filmed 25 years ago.

7

Wolverine vs Lady Deathstrike

X2: X-Men United

Hugh Jackman's Wolverine Stares at Lady Deathstrike in X-Men (2000)

X2: X-Men United has some of the best fight scenes of any superhero movie, let alone any Fox X-Men film. It figures that Wolverine is featured in many of these thrilling battles, with perhaps his single greatest duel with another mutant culminating in his fight with Lady Deathstrike. Armed with a similar healing factor and long, slender claws that extend from the tip of each finger rather than just three from the knuckles, Lady Deathstrike is Logan’s match in many ways.

Their tear-down brawl amid the ruins of the Weapon X facility is a brutal sight to behold, stabbing one another over and over again with furious vigor. The two seem evenly matched, with Wolverine taking the edge in brute strength but Lady Deathstrike being far more skilled. In the end, it takes a clever but gruesome use of an Adamantium injector to take Lady Deathstrike down once and for all. The fight may go on a bit long and get a bit sluggish at times, but it’s easily Logan’s most thrilling hand-to-hand battle with a single powerful opponent.

6

Wolverine Vs Shingen

The Wolverine

Hiroyuki Sanada as Shingen Yashida with swords in The Wolverine

The Wolverine might not be the greatest film in terms of its effect on Logan’s personal story, but it’s hard to deny that the fight scenes are top-notch, outside of the disappointing CGI robot Silver Samurai turns out to be. One of the best spectacles is Wolverine’s fight with Shingen, the son of the man who lured him to Japan to steal his healing factor. Moments after doing surgery on himself in order to restore his healing factor, Wolverine defends his new ally and latest love interest, Mariko, from her own father.

Shingen and Wolverine’s duel has all the gravitas of the best samurai duels in classic Kurosawa movies. From the paper panel walls being torn up with slashes to the gorgeous nighttime lighting forming striking silhouettes, this fight is emotionally charged and exciting, with Hiroyuki Sanada as Shingen fighting like a man easily 10 years younger. If only he were a bit more evenly matched to Wolverine, this dramatic match could be even better.

5

The Honda Odyssey Fight

Deadpool & Wolverine

Deadpool in the Honda Odyssey in Deadpool & Wolverine

Another Wolverine match-up that takes advantage of his healing factor are his battles with Deadpool in Deadpool & Wolverine. Bickering all the while, the two get on each other’s nerves enough to constantly be fighting, but their best physical altercation is easily the sequence in which they duke it out for hours while trapped in the confines of a Honda Odyssey. After Wolverine goes too far with his insults, Deadpool enters a rare moment of rage in which he can’t think of a witty retort, and goes for the throat instead.

Both mutants stab one another relentlessly in the small confines of the modest minivan, using every feature of the car as a weapon. It’s great seeing the two let off inordinate amounts of steam in a violent way only the two of them could survive, and the sexual undertones of Deadpool and Wolverine’s fight here only enhance the experience. It’s hard to find any fault with this brawl, but it’s only the gatekeeper to Hugh Jackman’s all-time best fights across his Wolverine career.

4

The Mansion Raid

X2: X-Men United

X2 X-Men United Mansion Attack

Wolverine might be a ferocious animal and a career killer, but his soft side opened up in his love for the X-Mansion’s kids in X2: X-Men United. Both elements of his character are combined in the thrilling raid on the X-Mansion, in which he violently protects his new students with all the rage he can muster. Tearing through a squadron of soldiers sent in to assault the mansion by Stryker, Wolverine finally proves he’s the best at what he does, but for a good cause this time.

Giving Wolverine a whole dormitory full of kids to protect is a great way to add some stakes to a fight with such an invincible hero, and seeing him occasionally get an assist from the frightened mutant children is very satisfying. But the way he carves through soldiers, puncturing body armor and slicing their guns in half, is the real workhorse of the scene. Despite how violent and relatively by-the-numbers the fight is, it’s a great showcase of just how far Logan has developed as part of a cohesive unit rather than a scrappy loner.

3

The Bullet Train Fight

The Wolverine

The Wolverine - Hugh Jackman in Bullet Train Scene

Another easy way to add some stakes to a Wolverine fight is to simply take away the thing that makes him so fearsome in the first place; his healing factor. This is exactly what happens in The Wolverine, which sees a vulnerable Logan have to fight off a horde of Yakuza killers while speeding along on the chassis of a bullet train. Taking full advantage of The Wolverine‘s Japanese setting, this battle is one of the few true nailbiters in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine catalog.

Both Wolverine and his opponents make full use of their terrifying environment here, using their blades to barely cling abroad while dodging pieces of the scenery rocketing past them. Every wound Wolverine sustains here actually matters, and one can practically see the gears turning in his head as he realizes he can’t brute force his way through a battle for once. Even if his opponents aren’t anything to write home about, this action scene is creative, tense, and exciting through and through.

2

Wolverine & Deadpool Vs The Deadpool Corps

Deadpool & Wolverine

Wolverine and Deadpool facing the Deadpool Corps in Deadpool & Wolverine

Not only one of the best fight scenes in Wolverine’s personal movie history, the final battle of Deadpool & Wolverine is one of the best superhero fights to come out of film in a long time. Facing down a horde of dangerous Deadpool variants hired by Cassandra Nova, Wolverine and the original Deadpool have to chop them up in order to keep her from annihilating the timeline. All the better that this is the only battle in which Hugh Jackman actually gets to wear the iconic yellow Wolverine mask from the comics.

In just a couple of extended tracking shots, Deadpool and Wolverine fight shoulder-to-shoulder, making mincemeat out of the Deadpool Corps and batting aside all manner of strange visitors from other universes. Madonna’s Like a Prayer raging in the background is excellently timed to the action, and it’s incredible to see the two mutants finally slice through a shared enemy rather than each other. If it weren’t for an awkward-looking CGI freezeframe at the end, this battle would easily be Wolverine’s best in cinema history.

1

The Final Forest Battle

Logan

Wolverine fighting in the forest in Logan

While Deadpool and Wolverine’s interdimensional scrap against a horde of wacky opponents may seem impossible to beat, the final send-off of the original timeline Wolverine in Logan still somehow manages to. In one final rampage, an aged, haggard Wolverine with his healing factor beginning to fail him enters the fray once more in the woods to protect a new group of vulnerable mutant children against another hateful militia. His newfound daughter Laura also backs him up, just as vicious in her own right.

Simply put, this fight combines all the best elements of Wolverine’s greatest action sequences. It has hordes of soldiers to chop down like the Weapon X fight, a single powerful mutant opponent in X-24 like the Lady Deathstrike fight, children to protect like the X-Mansion raid, and even the diminished healing factor of the Bullet Train fight. On top of all that, the battle is a bittersweet yet satisfying finale to this original Wolverine variant’s tale, ending on the single most powerful image in the entire Fox franchise.

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