Every Marvel Comic Book Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

15. X-Men

Though Iron Man is acknowledged as the start of the MCU and Marvel's dominance of the big screen, X-Men was really where the current love affair with Marvel movies really started. Coming just three years after Joel Schumacher had tried to kill Batman with luminous paint, Bryan Singer kicked off his mutant franchise with a personal story of Anna Paquin's Rogue and Hugh Jackman's Wolverine - both great casting - as an anchor for a human rights allegory and outright spectacle.

The dynamic of Jackman's cynicism and Paquin's wide-eyed wonder was the best foundation this series could have ever hoped for as it give the audience both sides of a window into the strange world of Charles Xavier's exceptional students. And it was a remarkably clever way to build in exposition to make the characters immediately familiar and comfortable.

The cast on the whole is great - even Halle Berry's woodenness wouldn't really be an issue until the sequels - and in particular the heavyweight trio of Jackman (still an unknown at this point) and Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart was a triumph. Mercifully, they were given great material to work with and Singer cut exactly the right balance between spectacle and heart.