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It might be strange to remember now, but there was a time when the summer box office wasn't dominated by comic book movies. How far back can you trace the origins of our current superheroic movie landscape? It just might start in the year 2000, when X-Men changed everything.
Looking at the opening sequence of a film like 1997's Batman & Robin, it's the hero who's immediately set up as the main character. In this case, it's both Batman and Robin.
Everything about it is cheesy and over the top, and then X-Men came along and did something completely different. The film opens in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944 with a boy who, separated from his parents, makes a desperate attempt to reopen the camp's metal gates with his superhuman powers. The boy is a young Erik Lehnsherr, who would go on to become the film's primary antagonist, Magneto. But we don't see him as a villain - at least not at first. We see him as a child subjected to an unimaginable horror. When it is revealed that the child has grown into the villain, it's as a sympathetic one.
Fast forward to the present, and it's clear that the trend of creating sympathetic villains hasn't gone away. X-Men played a huge role in introducing the idea of a villainous monster you could actually care about. This also blurred the line between good and evil. While Professor X advocates for peace, Magneto is convinced the only outcome is war, but ultimately, they both want the same thing: for mutantkind to be raised up from oppression.
In fact, much of X-Men's hour and 44 minute runtime is spent on character development, introducing audiences to the main players, explaining their special abilities, and delving into their personal struggles against bigotry and discrimination. Fight scenes and action sequences are there, but they're not the main focus of the film. Keep watching the video to see how the X-Men changed movies and no one noticed!
#Xmen #XmenUniverse
A sympathetic villain | 0:17
A new adaptation | 1:29
Characters first | 2:38
Comics departure | 3:27
Fresh faces | 4:17
A push for success | 5:20
The sequel tease | 6:06
Box office winners | 6:38