For me Spiderman 2 succeeds with the love story -- without that there is no tension -- the entire film revolves around Peter Parker trying to protect his love from the villainy that awaits if they discover her. It is one of the best handled love stories that I have seen from hollywood and it is a miracle they managed to put it inside of comic book movie. Not top mention the great life outside of being a super-hero where Parker is trying to make a living delivering pizza's while saving the world while going to school while saving money to impress the girl -- he's not Superman you know -- I liked it even better the second time through.

Add to that a villain who is not the carboard cookie cutting megalomaniac we have a scientist who is briliant but gets entagled with his invention - and a pitiable finale to boot.

I didn't care for any of the X-Men movies largely because all there is on display are cookie cutter characters - This X-Man has this power and that X-Man can do that and after a while it's big fat hairy deal -- film is supposed to create a fan of the film not just speak to the people buying comic books. The comic book folks can fill in the gaps the films miss but as a non X-Man Comic book buyer the film's job is to create vibrant interesting people not just furrowed brows and clever special effects. Spiderman has one super hero to create and make me feel somehting for him. The X-Men series attempts to some degree to do this with Wolverine and Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are strong Shakespearian actors who can carry banal dialog with the best of them which made the first two entries watchable and at times enjoyable. And Storm is just downright lightning strike hot (Thanks Halle for just being you and wearing a skin tight outfit).

I also think you're being unfair to character development in the comics -- I think you'll find Spiderman had a lot of love interest in his comics and Batman is a well drawn character. When handled well there can be high tension and high drama and some humour with it. I prefer Spiderman 2 to Batman Begins (though I greatly liked this film) simply because I prefer the character of Spiderman more -- Batman is ovelry somber and brooding while Spidey is more upbeat and optimistic (and Naive) -- but then I like Spielberg too and the art house folks hate optimism and thus hate Spielberg.