Directed and co-written by Bryan Singer, this was the darkest superhero movie since Batman and featured the coolest special effects this side of The Matrix. Set in the not-too-distant future, the film follows the power struggle between two factions of a new breed of humans with assorted strange powers - the good led by disabled professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and the bad led by Magneto (Ian McKellen). The Marvel Comics characters - including metal-boned Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), climate controller Storm (Halle Berry) and telekinetic Dr Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) - are well realised, and Singer mixes the classic values of good storytelling with liberal amounts of digital magic. On the down side, this plays a little too much like the beginning of a franchise and - outside of the theatrically trained Stewart and McKellen - star quality is in rather short supply.

Two mutants, Rogue and Wolverine, come to a private academy for their kind whose resident superhero team, the X-Men, must oppose a terrorist organization with similar powers.