Just because they’re an allegory doesn’t make them special. What they’re really fighting for is to maintain the status quo.
Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) peacocks in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
20th Century Fox
Because they're superheroes fighting for themselves rather than for All Mankind, because they're a team and not a solo act, and because their problem is political, not criminal, the X-Men seem set apart from the other superheroes.
Critic David Edelstein wrote that the first film based on the Marvel Comics mutant franchise was "about freaks yearning for normalcy, channeling the pain of their outsiderness into doing good, and fighting other freaks who've chosen a different, more vindictive path." The "mutants find the humanity and the fun in a genre," the Chicago Tribune said of the newest installment, Days of Future Past. "It's a remarkable invention, a superhero whose directive is empathy first, butt-kicking second," the review continued — these mutants, they're not like other superheroes. They fight inequality! There does appear to be a clear contrast between the explicitly evil nemeses of the 20th century and the ideologically driven superhero movie enemies of today, and that change did start in 2000, with the first X-Men movie. Looking at the superhero films among the top 20 box office performers each year since 1978, a true shift in the nature of villainy in these films didn't really occur until 2000, after which more villains in more movies became more complex and, perhaps, less outright evil. The progressive development is, however, an illusion.
Much like Superman, Batman, and Captain America, our X-Men heroes are still orphans (cast out by society!), but the villains they face have more murky motivations (fear of the unknown; crises of assimilation; mutant separatist aims). Despite the fact that the comic book X-Men was intended as an allegory for the civil rights movement of the '60s — because apparently white people want to understand black suffering through allegory — the series gets far too much praise for being progressive. In reality, the X-Men, just like all other superheroes, are fighting for the status quo, with a slight adjustment that allows mutants to participate in society as it is: They don't want change, they want to assimilate. As the mainstream gay rights movement is consumed with fighting for the rights of LGBT citizens to be just like straight people and, therefore, fighting to preserve institutions as they are, so the X-Men fight for their proverbial picket fences and their place in the military. Magneto and his mutant separatist cohort are the enemies of the X-Men because the enemy is the one agitating for change.
At its heart, the X-Men franchise is about structural inequality, not crime-fighting as such. Still, while "bad" mutants are instigating rebellion, "good" mutants want to assimilate. The X-Men continue an inherently conservative genre: Superman's avowed commitment to "truth, justice, and the American way" obviously precludes him from sedition, as does Batman's interest in maintaining his wealth and, therefore, the status quo. This is why superheroes can never escape their cornball tendencies: It's not because they have magical powers or because they wear tights, it's because no matter how evil their enemy is, they're still fighting change.
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