15 Years Ago, the X-Men Franchise Pulled Off an Impossible Change (And It Only Got Better)

FOX’s X-Men movies have gone through a lot of phases, with them now being folded into the MCU. For years, though, the X-Men films were the premier superhero movies, with FOX fleshing out a superhero cinematic universe decades before the MCU. The franchise made all kinds of developments and featured revolutionary filmmaking techniques. However, the most impressive thing that the X-Men movies did occurred 15 years ago.

2000’s X-Men was a triumph, as it successfully adapted several of Marvel’s most popular superheroes to the big screen in a time when most superhero movies were massive disappointments. Due to the success of the first film, 2003’s X2 was released only a few years later, with it arguably being the best film in the franchise. Unfortunately, 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand was a major step down in quality, putting the future of the series in jeopardy. However, FOX’s X-Men were far from over.

FOX’s X-Men Managed To Make A Reboot As Beloved As The Originals

After the failure of The Last Stand, FOX decided to ditch the original X-Men trilogy. However, the franchise was too big to abandon in its entirety, meaning that the studio needed to take a different approach. Thus, 2011’s X-Men: First Class was born.

First Class was a prequel to the original films, with it being set in the 1960s and focusing on Charles Xavier and Magneto’s fallout and the formation of the original X-Men team. The movie recast several characters from the original trilogy, with James McAvoy taking over as Xavier, Fassbender taking over as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence taking over as Mystique, and more.

First Class did the impossible. The film managed to reboot the X-Men franchise while winning over critics and fans of the original. Rather than acting as a true reboot, the series used its prequel setting as an excuse to leave the timeline, story, and character iterations of the original trilogy behind. The stories told in the prequel warranted a reboot, rather than it being a reboot for reboot’s sake, like The Amazing Spider-Man. What’s especially impressive is that McAvoy’s Xavier and Fassbender’s Magneto are just as beloved as Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen’s, both of whom are considered some of the best comic book castings of all time.

On top of that, First Class managed to be a financial success. The film made $353 million on a budget of $160 million, and while this isn’t a mind-blowing box office, it is good considering the state of the X-Men franchise at the time. First Class wasn’t a one-off, though. It also led to a series of sequels that outlasted even the original X-Men movies, with it being followed up by Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix.

In the era of multiverse stories, crossovers between different iterations of characters happen all the time in movies like The Flash and Spider-Verse: Across the Spider-Verse. However, the X-Men franchise was an early adopter of this, with Days of Future Past crossing over the prequels and the original films. This ended up being the most well-received of the prequel movies, which is just another impressive thing on top of the stack of already mentioned feats.

The X-Men Prequels Perfectly Avoided The Franchise’s Biggest Reboot Hurdle

When it came to rebooting FOX’s X-Men franchise, there were tons of hurdles. However, the biggest one was easily Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Jackman’s iteration of Logan is considered to be one of the best comic book movie characters of all time, and it would be near-impossible to recast the character. It is Jackman’s most iconic character, and he essentially took over the X-Men movies, acting as the protagonist of most of the team films and even getting his own solo trilogy.

Luckily, First Class found the perfect solution to this problem: keep Jackman as Wolverine. Since Wolverine doesn’t age, Jackman could simply continue portraying the character in the prequel movies. His cameo in First Class established this, and it is easily one of the film’s best moments. However, Days of Future Past is what proved how wise a choice this was, as Jackman was allowed to star in the film alongside the prequel characters.

The X-Men prequels are a masterclass in reviving a series, as they made X-Men bigger than it ever was after major disappointment in the form of The Last Stand, and later X-Men Origins: Wolverine. First Class passed each test with flying colors, and very few superhero movie reboots have been as successful as First Class.

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