Keanu Reeves has yet to join a Marvel movie, but his biggest Hollywood role still majorly influenced Fox’s iconic X-Men movies nonetheless. The impact of Fox’s X-Men franchise on the superhero genre is hard to overstate as it helped to trigger the modern era of superhero movies starting with 2000’s X-Men. This is where Hugh Jackman scored his big break as Wolverine, the character that would become central to most of the X-Men franchise as its de facto main character before 2011’s X-Men: First Class would take the franchise in a slightly new direction.

By the time X-Men: First Class was released, the MCU was entering its third year. From the jump, the MCU looked markedly different from Fox’s X-Men franchise as it leaned into the colorful aesthetic and tones set by the comics it was based on. After over 10 years of starring X-Men characters that diverted significantly from their comic book designs, X-Men: First Class finally featured costumes that followed a similar route. This bucked a 10-year trend for which Keanu Reeves, apparently, is to thank.

The Matrix Movies Keanu Reeves Starred In Defined The Fox X-Men’s Look For Years

A recent interview with Marvel boss Kevin Feige revealed that The Matrix inspired the black leather costumes sported by Fox’s X-Men. Feige worked as an associate producer on the early X-Men movies and divulged that the studio saw the success of The Matrix, which depicted Keanu Reeves and others clad in black leather, and decided to emulate that aestheticfor the X-Men. These black leather suits remained the X-Men’s standard uniform until X-Men: First Class switched them out for slightly more comic-accurate looks that included yellow highlights.

While working on the set of X-Men , Kevin Feige would flout Bryan Singer’s ” no comics ” rule by sneaking in X-Men comics for actors like Hugh Jackman to reference in their performances.

The Matrix was released in 1999, just one year before X-Men, and was admittedly pretty similar in tone. Though it is not overtly a superhero movie, The Matrix still strikes many of the chords as X-Men, as it features characters teaming up and pulling off inhuman feats in a sci-fi setting. The similarities help to explain Fox’s decision to visually distance themselves from the source material, as 2000 was a very different landscape in which to release a superhero movie, especially with the precedent set by movies like the previous decade’s Batman movies.

Fox’s Matrix-Inspired X-Men Suits Were A Blessing & A Curse For The Franchise

The decision to wear black leather was famously highlighted in X-Men by Cyclops and Wolverine, as Cyclops responds to Wolverine’s incredulity about wearing the costumes with “What would you prefer, yellow spandex?” This derisive statement is more divisive today than at the time, as X-Men was attempting to bring a certain realism to the live-action adaptation of Marvel’s iconic mutant team. In truth, Cyclops was right to suggest that jumping in at the deep end by having Wolverine sport a skintight yellow-and-blue suit with a winged cowl would have been a step too far for most audiences.

The matching black leathers may have made the team more universally accessible, thereby launching a glowing career within the cinematic franchise, but they do have their drawbacks now. Black leather is now an exceptionally dated look that does evoke the imagery of The Matrix and the sci-fi tropes of the period. Furthermore, the titular team in the X-Men trilogy look uncharacteristically homogeneous. Now that they are all so well-established, it is hard to justify not giving each member a unique look to complement their myriad powers, making the black leathers feel like a wasted opportunity.

Why Fox’s X-Men Suits Look So Different To Audiences Now

Now 24 years later, the superhero genre has reached a zenith that fully embraces the ostentatious outfits of comic books. When it was revealed that Wolverine would finally don a comic-accurate costume in Deadpool & Wolverine, fans were sent into a frenzy. Yet this is largely thanks to the fact that Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine has spent so long at the forefront of the genre, that he can arguably get away with pushing the boat on his outfits. The MCU, meanwhile, is also responsible for normalizing the colorful getups that help make its live-action characters so memorable.

With 16 years of the MCU establishing itself as the paradigm for superhero movies, the comparatively muted designs of Fox’s X-Men now look out of place. A vast swathe of superhero fans are additionally too young to have witnessed the impact of Fox’s X-Men first-hand, making their uniforms look nothing short of boring when compared to the colorful members of the Avengers. As the MCU moves into a new era of movies with mutants at its core, this sentiment will no doubt intensify since Deadpool & Wolverine has helped to establish the contrasting X-Men aesthetic that audiences can expect.