You're mostly just saying "hey, it's not so bad!", which is a less than moving defense.

At any rate... DOFP and Apocalypse are trash.

I shit on DOFP at the time and I don’t recall being alone, so I don’t know where “retroactive” comes in.

Apocalypse doubled down on everything bad about DOFP.

But that’s not even why it’s a dumpster fire of a franchise.

First, they’ve overplayed their strength. They’ve continually focused WAY too much on Mag & Xavier. WAY too much. Yes, those obnoxious caps are necessary. It’s been the Logan, Erik & Chuck show since the beginning and they’ve done very little to make other characters’ matter. The only other character given as much significance as them?
Fucking Mystique.

Jean was basically just Logan’s love interest in the og trilogy. Ice Man? Don’t make me laugh. His “big moment” was a generic beam battle where he turned into a block of ice. Storm, the goddess, just looks up into the sky in a trance. Rogue was aight but they didn’t need Ms Marvel to make her *thee* Rogue we all know and love. DOFP was the absolute worst in this regard. Bishop was basically worthless in a movie that should have given him more- and more important- screen time than anyone else.

Sure, we’ve had some great fan service along the way. X2 gave us stellar performances of Beast and Nightcrawler. Quicksilver is easily one of the best heroes we’ve seen across the entire superhero movie landscape during the last five years. We got a Deadpool movie that turned out to be one of the best love letters to a comic book character that we’ve seen on film. Deadpool, Magneto, Xavier, and Logan were cast nearly without flaw and I only say “nearly” to be diplomatic.

First Class was an excellent reboot before they went all MORE COWBELL! On us.

For a franchise that came with a treasure trove of world-building ingredients of a seemingly “just add water” variety, they’ve dropped the ball and lowered the bar to “it makes money, so fuck it” levels that are currently surpassed only by Paramount’s live action animation adaptions. Plus they did head-scratching shit like cast the goofiest looking, Stifler-faced guy possible as Stryker. Yeah, I found it really fucking distracting because I kept waiting for him to say “what the fuck are you guys doing here?”

With such a deep roster and history it shouldn’t have been a thing to create separate films for other characters, hero and villain alike, turning X-Men films into collective culminations of smaller, more focused stories. The over-emphasis on Logan/Magneto/Charles/Mystique over the course of 6 films coupled with the treatment of most other characters as cameos as well as the painfully bland execution of villains WHO SHOULD BE GREAT has brought this whole thing down to a merely passing grade for mindless summer blockbusters. I don’t even want to speculate on who does what, where, when, why or how.

Meanwhile I’m suddenly salivating for Justice League to see how Diana functions as a leader and how Bruce is able to recruit Aquaman and Cyborg with his asshole persona.

I want to see how the Guaradians of The Galaxy have grown as individuals as well as a ragtag family of misfits. I want to see if Teen Groot is a snarky, arrogant asshole or an angsty, overly philosophical douchebag and I want to see how pulls that off saying three words. I want to see if Rocket has finally accepted himself, if Drax falls in love with Mantis despite finding her physically repulsive, and Adam Fucking Warlock. I want to see Howard the Duck again.

I can’t wait for Ragnorak because I NEED to see how Thor gets fucked up and how he & Hulk/Bruce interact and get the hell off that planet. I want to see Thor’s reaction to seeing Hulk again even though I’ve seen it ten times in the trailer already.

And on, and on, and on.

I feel absolutely none of that exuberance or intrigue with the X-Men because it’s become such a predictable, paint by numbers affair in a bad way. The issue isn’t that it’s formulaic, Hell, all these movies are formulaic. It’s that the formula just kind of sucks and they haven’t earned an ounce of excitement or affection for anyone at this stage. Scratch that; Quicksilver was a goddamned revelation and yes, the promise of something creative and hilarious involving him does something to elevate things. But after that? I can’t think of a single character I care about. I can’t think of a single thread of this saga that I can’t wait to see unfold. There’s no mystery to unravel and nobody to fall in love with.

It’s got nothing to do with timelines, though that doesn’t help.
It’s certainly not because they’re not Marvel- but the lack of well-constructed connectedness IS a glaring flaw.

It’s because they’ve rested on the strength of well-casted leads for far too long and not only haven’t developed anyone else, they’ve basically plucked the same notes with each of them without much variation. ***Logan is the exception there. That’s something that would have covered for an awful lot of lack in other departments.