20 Most Important Blockbusters That Changed Cinema Forever

2. X-Men

By the time the Marvel Cinematic Universe bows out X-Men will be as old as Superman was when Bryan Singer's superhero team hit theatres. In that twenty-two year period there were four Supermans, four Batmans and a couple of duds. Since X-Men it's been hard to move for all the spandex.

Before Singer's mutants the genre just wasn't taken seriously. Batman and Superman had worked mainly off the back of their existing popularity and both stumbled terribly as franchises after a successful start, while Blade (at that point Marvel's only hit) was so different from the comics it barely counts in the genre. It may not be to quite the same level as The Dark Knight, but X-Men treats the concept seriously, with real reverence to the graphic novels on which it was based.

That was what X-Men's real secret weapon was. Yes, it showed how superheroes could work within the modern world, but it was what it went through to do that that made everything so successful. In the preceding decade the likes of Batman Forever, Steel and Judge Dredd had treated the source as a simple idea to jump off from into more predictable territory. Singer understood that it was more than basic concept that had made the characters endure for so long and that really shows on screen. This is the X-Men, not just a flippant interpretation.