The X-Men Trilogy: The Most Important Superhero Movies of the Past Decade

In 2000, the alignment of stars was just right. 20th Century Fox put faith in Bryan Singer to direct and David Hayter to write the first live action film adaption of the long running comic, X-Men. Stan Lee originally wrote the X-Men to represent the struggles that minorities were going through during the civil rights era in a way that children could understand by using superheroes as a metaphor. Since then, people have used mutants to also symbolize homosexuals as an oppressed minority, hated just for existing.

To comic book fans, it was an exciting possibility to finally see a superhero movie about a large group of superheroes rather than just a single hero. Another exciting prospect was the display of visual effects, such as Cyclops' optic blast, Wolverine's regenerative abilities, Storm's weather controlling and generating powers, and Magneto and Jean Grey moving objects with their minds. To the studio and non-comic book fans however, making X-Men was seen as an incredible risk; the last superhero movie made was the infamously horrible Batman & Robin. If X-Men was not a financial AND critical success, the entire superhero genre would probably never again be touched.

The first X-Men movie was a major box-office success the summer of 2000 and opened the path for many more superhero movies to made. Because of X-Men's success, Sony/Columbia finally had enough confidence to produce a Spider-Man movie, something that had been stuck in development hell since the early 90s. It was seen that not only could Spider-Man's powers all be accurately depicted on screen, but the movie could also be taken seriously and not be horribly campy like Batman & Robin. Warner Bros. on the other hand, was still not confident enough to produce the 5th Batman movie, its working title at the time Batman Triumphant. Despite no new Batman movie still, an X-Men 2 was already on the road to being made.

X2 (billed commercially as X-Men United since September 11th was still fresh in most people's minds) was released in 2003 with about equal reviews and financial success as its predecessor, but comic fans absolutely relished in an almost perfect display of a typical comic book plot being condensed to 2 1/2 hours AND getting positive reviews from most movie critics. The fan reaction from X2 coupled with Spider-Man's unbelievable success finally led to WB green-lighting a 5th Batman movie, at this point decided to be a reboot of the franchise to be called Batman Begins. WB also decided to green-light a new Superman movie after the franchise had been stuck in development hell since Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, hoping that WB and DC Comics could now compete with Marvel in both comic book sales and movie ticket sales. It was fairly obvious given the ending of X2 that a 3rd X-Men movie would be made. Unfortunately, there would be some setbacks on the way.

X-Men: The Last Stand was released in 2006 with a change in director and in screenplay writer. While X-Men and X2 were both directed by Bryan Singer and mostly written by David Hayter (also known as the voice of Solid Snake), X-Men: The Last Stand (also known as X3 and X-Men 3 for short) was directed by Brett Ratner, most famous for directing the Rush Hour movies, and written by Zak Penn, infamously known for re-writing Hayter's X2 script and writing Elektra. Although X3 was an overwhelming success to the point it actually out-grossed a previous movie in the trilogy, one of the few trilogy movies to succeed in that, it suffered from incredibly mixed reviews from both critics and fans. Because of the mixed reviews from fans and critics, Fox decided to not pursue making X-Men 4 and instead make a prequel to X-Men, detailing the origins of Wolverine.

Each of the X-Men movies are incredibly important in their own ways. The first marked the resurrection of the superhero genre, the second allowed superhero movies to be taken seriously, and the third showed other film studios that sequels should not be continued just because the franchise makes money. Even though X-Men Origins: Wolverine was made, it was only done because the studios and fans were far more interested in exploring Wolverine's back-story rather than continuing the story, especially if Zak Penn and Brett Ratner were to have their way.