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All 3 Original 'X-Men' Movies, Ranked
The X-Men Trilogy changed superhero filmmaking forever. From the original film to X2: X-Men United to X-Men: The Last Stand, which movie is the best?
Superhero cinema was forever changed by the X-Men franchise, which offered the genre a path towards popularity after a series of major failures. Superhero movies were treated with much more animosity in the aftermath of Batman & Robin, a notorious failure that treated the source material like a joke. While Blade became a breakout hit in 1998, it was aimed at an older, R-Rated audience, and didn’t serve as a four-quadrant blockbuster. While both the X-Men comics and animated series had been popular in the 1990s, it was the success of the first film from Bryan Singer that turned the franchise into an international sensation. By capturing the diversity of Stan Lee’s characters and fitting them within a stylized, post-The Matrix action story, the X-Men films created a mold in which future superhero films could succeed. Without X-Men, it is unlikely that achievements like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy would exist.
