This world features a growing population of mutants, humans who develop special abilities at puberty, and the growing unease amongst ordinary humans, who largely view mutants’ differences as a threat. Directed by Bryan Singer, the film accomplishes the gargantuan task of establishing the world of the X-Men, over a dozen major characters, and still telling a decent story. The series began with X-Men (2000), which is credited with beginning this century’s glut of superhero films. And so, the story of X-Men: First Class is the story of its filmmakers attempting to distance and differentiate this film from its failed predecessors. Audiences were not fatigued with superhero films at the time - just with bad superhero films. In the case of the excellent X-Men: First Class (Vaughn, 2011) however, I argue that its biggest challenge was overcoming the reputation that the X-Men series had garnered after two very poor films in the series were released. But for a variety of reasons, from poor script ( Green Lantern, Campbell, 2011) to unrealistic expectations ( The Green Hornet, Gondry, 2011), many superhero films did disappoint. After two relatively light years, studios finally responded to the comic book films of 2008, which was a banner year for the genre. Throughout 2011 there was no shortage of comic book films. This practice continues today, seven yeas later, and not one of them has been correct so far. Each time a comic book film was underwhelming, or underperformed at the box office, a hundred articles declared that this could mean the end of the superhero film craze. By 2011, that term had fully entered the lexicon. As I discussed in my previous article on The Incredible Hulk (Letterier, 2008), the first mentions of “superhero fatigue” began to pop up in 2008.
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