Let's all face it: this could have been this summer's Wild Wild West. Okay, Battlefield Earth already stole that honor, but it could have been pretty bad. After the trenchant films such as Spawn and Batman & Robin, the super-hero genre definitely needed a winner. After the poorly received Apt Pupil, Bryan Singer needed one too (though The Usual Suspects should carry someone a pretty good distance). X-Men is that winner.
First, they got the spirit of the comic right. I'm not claiming to be a big
fan - I've only read a few episodes - but I do know a bit about the comic
and it is not campy, it is not cheesy, and it does demand some respect if
its fans are going to be happy with any translation of it. It is a comic
about difference, about tolerance, and about nifty superpowers - all of
which come through in spades.
Second, they didn't make the mistake of trying to develop too many characters. A film like this has lots of characters (Dr. Xavier, Jean Gray, Wolverine, Rogue, Cyclops and Storm are just the "good guys") and could tempt a director to try and give each their due attention. The result is that none of them would have gotten enough attention and they would have ended up stale and unsympathetic (see Schumaker's Batman films). Instead, Singer chose to concentrate on a few of the characters: Wolverine, Rogue, and Magneto, mostly, leaving the rest for the inevitable sequels. While some are criticizing this move, I praise it. (An addendum to this would be that the cast was well-chosen, each contributing without overrunning the others.)
Third, the special effects were awesome. I don't mean that the audience couldn't help but "oo." Instead, they fit the film and didn't seem hokey or imposed. They did just what special effects are supposed to: they looked natural (though the idea that lightning causes people to fly through the air seems a little sketchy to me).
Fourth, the script was well done. It had both the necessary jokes and clever banter that such movies require and the subtle lines that give depth into the characters that one couldn't find in the more schlocky super-hero scripts (see Spawn). It constructed characters that grew through the film, brought us (as audience members identifying with newcomers Rogue and Wolverine) into Dr. Xavier's school and showed us the ropes (just like the introduction of Winston in Ghostbusters did). Best of all, it developed the openings for lots of interesting places to take the sequels. As Jenny pointed out to me on the way home from the film, most films fail to do that, forcing the next film to come up with an entirely new story, rather than leaving openings here and there for new bits of plot.
The only thing that I see as a failure in X-Men is its failure to do anything new for the super-hero genre. While it did begin to introduce a bit of self referentiality to the genre, it still depicted the characters as we might expect them to. I look forward to the next level of the super-hero film. As each genre moves from Classical (Superman) to parody (Blankman, Mystery Men) to revisionist, so shall the super-hero genre. I can't wait to see if the sequels to X-Men lead the way, as they might very well be able to.