Watch xXx (2002) for the stunts, watch Return of Xander Cage (2017) for the chaotic ensemble, and watch State of the Union (2005) only if you are a completionist. Xander Cage might be an agent of chaos, but as franchises go, he is our agent of chaos.
In the early 2000s, the spy genre was a crowded battlefield. Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond was refining suave sophistication, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne was introducing gritty realism, and Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt was climbing skyscrapers. Into this fray, in 2002, came a character who couldn’t tie a bow tie, didn’t speak French, and whose idea of infiltration was driving a classic GTO through a European window. triple x series
While not a terrible action film (Willem Dafoe makes a great villain), it fails as an xXx movie. Audiences didn't want a generic "wronged man clears his name" plot. They wanted the ridiculous, flag-waving, nuclear-bomb-surfing insanity of the original. The film bombed, grossing just $71 million against a $60 million budget. The franchise went dormant for over a decade. The Nostalgic Comeback (2017): xXx: Return of Xander Cage After a 12-year hiatus, the franchise did something unprecedented: it retconned the sequel. Return of Xander Cage opens by revealing that Xander faked his death (explaining his absence), completely ignoring Ice Cube’s tenure. Watch xXx (2002) for the stunts, watch Return
The xXx series isn't just a guilty pleasure. It is a monument to a very specific kind of cinematic joy—the joy of watching a hero solve every problem by pressing the accelerator. Audiences didn't want a generic "wronged man clears
Nearly two decades later, the xXx franchise remains one of the most fascinating anomalies in action cinema: a series that is simultaneously a relic of the early 2000s "extreme sports" craze and a prophetic blueprint for the modern, meme-fueled, globalized blockbuster. Directed by Rob Cohen (who had just directed Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious ), the first xXx operates on a simple, brilliant premise: What if James Bond was a punk rock stuntman?