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.
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. triple x series
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. Watch xXx (2002) for the stunts, watch Return
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? Audiences didn't want a generic "wronged man clears
Vin Diesel stars as Xander Cage, an adrenaline junkie filming himself jumping off bridges and escaping the FBI. Recruited by Samuel L. Jackson’s NSA Agent Augustus Gibbons, Xander is sent to a Prague-based terrorist ring run by a Russian anarchist (Marton Csokas). Unlike 007, Xander doesn’t use invisible cars or laser watches; he uses a modified Corvette that shoots mortars, a dirt bike that deploys a parachute, and a grenade disguised as a dinner plate.