This essay was written for The-Solute's monthly Year of the Month column, with January 2019 being dedicated to pop culture from 2000.
At the dawn of the 21st century, movies based on Marvel Comics were not a recurring fixture of American cinema. Though now it's like saying that the sky was once colored green, it was true at the very start of 2000, with Marvel Comics having about as many box office hits based on one of their properties (the 1997 sleeper hit
Blade) as Image Comics. That all changed in July 2000 when the very first live-action
X-Men movie made its way to the silver screen courtesy of 20th Century Fox and director Bryan Singer. The feature managed to gross $157.2 million domestically, a sum that put it ahead of all superhero movies sans the first three post-1988 live-action
Batman movies. In an era where
Batman & Robin seemingly killed off the comic book movie, and the likes of
Spawn and
Steel weren't making the case for the subgenre's revival,
X-Men proved not only did comic book movies still have life left in them but that movies based on Marvel Comics characters could make big bucks.
