X1 was great for its time too. Superhero movies weren't a thing yet.
Yeah, I know. I was just in the middle of college--I think--and having a long past experience with comics, X-Men being my favorite.
I thought the movie, at the time...was kinda crappy as far as X-Men go, but somewhat decent as far as what I thought comics could do in a respected film. It wasn't low budget and horrendous which, outside of 2 good batman movies and 2 of 4 good Superman flicks, already in classic status, nothing like x-men had been seen before. Certainly not from Marvel, that wasn't a C+ class production involving some plastic people playing the fantastic four, or captain america.
That being said....I still thought X1 was pretty bad. Wolverine was great and the only good thing about it. McKellen always overplayed Magneto (while I like his portrayal, I just didn't think that Magneto was ever both menacing and respectable, like he should be). THe costumes--particularly sabretooth and toad; just terrible. I thought that superhero films would die right there, to be honest. I do like Patrick Stewart as Prof X, though. He's damn perfect and he plays him expertly. If they could put together a world where Picard was Xavier, Fassbender was Magneto, and Jackman was always "bubbing" people, it would be a near perfect X-Men world.
But then Spiderman, very soon after that, was fantastic. Then X2: super good and still one of my favorites in the genre. Spidey 2, as well. And yet Marvel was still rather poor at the time and nowhere near releasing their own content.
Weird how that looks today, after the fact.