I'm not nearly as versed in the X-Men as other characters and teams (I was a DC guy in my youth; the only Marvel book I read in the 90s was Todd "Talentless" McFarlane, and I was turned off until about two years ago), but this last movie seemed to me to be more like an X-Men comic book than the other two.
There was a great number of deaths/depowerings that you *know* will be reversed as quickly as possible (no body = no death, and the Phoenix *always* comes back, she's a phoenix!).
The character work was slim to none, and mostly there to serve the main plot, as opposed to a plot built to display/work with characters themselves.
The action sequences, though eye-popping, weren't actually the draw of the final scenes of the film. Despite popular opinion, most superhero comics end with some kind of discussion or emotional resolution (though that's not a statement of universal quality, of course). Pure action climaxes are kinda boring, and since artists can create anything they can draw, there's no 'gee whizz' quality to the special effects. The big battles usually stand for some kind of basic ideological struggle or personal problem that is overcome.
Finally, the human/mutant relations thing. Magneto has, since at least the late 80s, referred to mutants as 'homo superior.' He believed that mutants were the 'next step in human evolution,' and mere humans were the neanderthals. That idea wasn't as pushed in the first two films. They were going for something a lot more akin to the gay rights movement in the first one ("Mutants could be your kid's teachers! You can't always tell!"), but in this one, they switched to a slavery narrative (Mystique "doesn't answer to [her] slave name"), which gave rise (probably coincidentally) to a kind of civil war between humans and mutants.
Your comparison to white supremacy is, I think, part of the irony of Magneto's character, since he was a victim of Nazi anti-Semitism (I believe that's still in-continuity in the comics, but I have no idea how they've handled his lack of aging since the 60s). From his perspective, the government is victimizing mutants, therefore they're the Nazis, and anyone who's every watched an movie with Nazis in it knows, you're "allowed" to kill them remorselessly. They're monsters, just like vampires or zombies. Once you see the world from that perspective, Magneto's position becomes oddly compelling (and he was right about the 'cure guns,' after all!).
But of course, a human perspective sees Magneto and the Brotherhood as oppressive and racist. So the interesting question, with whom does the real-world, human audience identify? I think we sympathize with the mutants; they're incredibly strong representatives of 'any marginalized group' that just about anyone can see the world from their point of view (even straight, white, male geeks, who tend to feel excluded from the social world). That said, when we watch the Brotherhood, I think we probably start thinking like humans who could, potentially, have to live with extremely dangerous people walking around all the time.
I suspect we identify, in the end with (surprise surprise) the heroes, who are: not interested in perpetuating racial superiority, and have the super-powers that we, the audience members, desire, and they're predominantly quite human-looking, and therefore not subjected to the same kind of discrimination as a lot of mutants, a point that Beast makes by his very presence, but that they emphasized with dialogue.
Superhero stories tend to want to have their cake and eat it too, and this one no less than most.
Posted by orion at June 1, 2006 7:47 PM