Hallmark movie

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2015)

X-Men can be said to be the movie that by itself launched the modern superhero film madness. There had been superhero movies before, some of them even somewhat successful, but this was the film that defined the new style. It paid homage to the comics, taking its inspiration from them, but it took liberties with its characters, story lines and most importantly the visuals, transforming and translating them to the silver screen.
It also helped that it had an amazing ensemble cast behind its characters. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry were already well-known by this point, but the film also helped to put several people on the map, most prominently Hugh Jackman. And their newfound fame is well-deserved as they all give fantastic performances, breathing life into their characters. Sure, some of their lines... okay, about half their lines were very cheesy, but that's the fault of the script which, while revolutionary in its own way, was still looking its way and thus contained a significant amount of silliness from the previous decades, which had made those previous films so hard to sell to the larger audiences.
Another minor problem is the story. And don't get me wrong, I like the story. But right now, fifteen years and an impressive amount of superhero films later, I can say that it's a bit juvenile. And, to the film's credit, it shies away from pure black-n-white morality with its villain Magneto (McKellen), as well as it should, but overall the tone and the events don't reach that same magnitude and epicness that later movies would.
In the end this makes X-Men very important for the whole superhero genre, but keeps it from being more than an average film. With some very impressive features.