X-Men was released in 2000 to positive reviews and respectable box office numbers at a time when Hollywood studios had little interest in bringing superheroes to the big screen.
X2: X-Men United was an even bigger hit, but things started going downhill with the release of X-Men: The Last Stand (from that point on, any good movies were largely overshadowed by bad ones). However, for comic book fans, there's one thing none of them got right: the costumes!
The entire team was decked out in black leather suits which lacked any personality and, beyond an "X" logo, largely ignored the comic books.
Even when Marvel Studios made colourful superhero suits the norm, X-Men: Apocalypse only teased them before Fox went straight back to bland efforts in Dark Phoenix which led to a fresh round of eye-rolling among fans.
Talking at the global press conference for Deadpool & Wolverine yesterday (which ComicBookMovie.com was in attendance for), Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige - an associate producer on X-Men who smuggled to the cast when the director banned them - revealed the real reason for the black leather.
"There were studio execs in charge, who knew that The Matrix had been a big hit and The Matrix had black leather, so let’s put them in black leather," Feige confirmed, answering a question fans have been asking for the better part of two and a half decades.
Why they had to remain in those dull outfits is an entirely different mystery.
The Marvels featured a far more faithful take on Beast, while Deadpool & Wolverine has finally given Hugh Jackman's Logan his blue and yellow suit (suggesting any other Fox X-Men we see will follow suit, no pun intended, when we next see them).
"Hugh Jackman having never appeared in the character’s most iconic suit is like being Superman in 10 movies and never wearing the Superman costume," Feige said in a recent interview. "It’s a testament to Wolverine that it didn’t necessarily matter; the character is more than the costume."
"When I realized Hugh was in, I went from studio mode to 'You know you gotta get in the yellow outfit, right?'" he added.
Deadpool & Wolverine executive producer elaborated on that earlier this week when she talked about seeing Jackman wear the costume on set for the first time.
"It was one of the craziest things," she recalled. "It was the camera test. It was before we started shooting. To see both of those guys, first of all, in costume together was just mind-blowing, but Hugh walking out in the yellow and blue, I mean, there were grown men, like, sobbing on set. So we knew it was a special, very special thing."
Deadpool & Wolverine arrives in theaters on July 26.