Don't forget both X-Men movies, both successful, and nary an origin in sight!

actually, i haven't even seen the second movie; but i remember being annoyed that the first flick spent so much time recruiting the team that there wasn't much time left for a story.

Well whether X-Men, or X-Men Forever (or whatever) were actually good movies, or good scripts, is a whole other debate.

But at the beginning of the X-Men movie, we have Profesor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm all together as an established team. We also have a fully functioning school full of mutants. At no point do we witness any of their origins. Watching a team that exists recruit new members is not the same thing as telling an origin story.

As for Hellboy, Hellboy #1 began with the same origin sequence that the movie did, almost verbatim.

You're forgetting that people are stupid and need to have things explained to them. Hollywood isn't interested in pleasing fanboys it's interested in making MONEY and the best way to do that is bring in the largest segement of the population possible. They've already got the nerds, they KNOW the nerds will see it just so they can bitch about it on the 'net. It's Joe Nine-to-five they want to fill those seats and he's gonna want to know WHY this kid can squirt silly string from his wrists and climb buildings.