Originally Posted by illmaticsoulchild
In retrospect, with all the talks after X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men Last Stand about a Magneto spin-off, this technically should have been entitled Magneto. Everything in the film revolves around him. The screenwriters just integrated the arc regarding the Cuban missile crisis so that the "X-Men" would have some stake in the story, which I felt was very weak. The "X-Men" were useless IMO. The only characters worth noting other than Charles and Erik were Raven, Beast and probably Moira (who essentially was a poorly developed "mutant sympathizer"). The purpose of the other mutants were to help fill the second act and the fight scenes in the Climax which I didn't like at all.
The fact that you empathize with Magneto's character the most makes it even more obvious that this should have been solely his film. The studio probably thought that something entitled Magneto wouldn't bring people in the theaters than X-Men would. Still, I think that if they structured it right, they could have just had Charles and Erik's origin in this film and then a sequel with a true character development for recruited mutants.
In the end, even though they completely desecrated the X-Men mythos, it was an entertaining film, and the underlying messages weren't too blatant.