How a super-hero movie should be 9/10

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2002)

Watching Spider-Man, I found myself asking certain questions like: what went wrong? To answer some of these, I find myself turning to the surprisingly pleasing X-men. X-Men is superior to Spider-Man for a number of reasons. First, I like the way Bryan Singer was able to take super heros and villains, and place them into the real world. X-Men looks and feels very authentic to me, and I like that. Spider-Man never seemed like anything but a a cartoon that magically came to life. X-Men does the whole origin deal quickly, you get what you need to know, and you get to see a mutant trying to come to terms with her powers (Rogue). X-Men doesn't waste time though. It quickly introduces its villains and their reasons, and quickly introduces us to the heros that must stop them. X-Men is about 25 minutes shorter then Spider-Man, but it seems much longer because they are able to get more valuable things done in the running time. I was never bored in X-Men, unlike Spider-Man. X-Men was made for much less, but the CGI is much more convincing and the action scenes play out much stronger then they do in Spider-Man. To final things off, X-Men has a strong cast, but it benefits mostly from a stand-out performance by Hugh Jackman.
In closing, X-Men stands alone as a great film. Watching Spider-Man, I found myself wondering, why can't this be more like X-Men?