The plot — well, it is useless to talk about plots in movies like these. There has to be a Meeting of the Characters who are to make up the Fighting (for the Forces of Good) Team, there has to be An Evil Scheme being implemented by the villain that must be thwarted, there must be a person or persons in positions of needing rescue from said villain, and so forth. There isn't much faithfulness to reality in all this (and there doesn't need to be), but one thing I do know is that if there were a bevy of world leaders congregated together on Ellis Island, then the nearby Statue of Liberty would not be nearly deserted, but would instead be housing squads of G-Men and military troops at the ready, and be surrounded by a phalanx of Coast Guard and Navy vessels. Magneto would not have been able to bring his weapon there in secrecy with the help of his tiny band of mutants; he would have had to blast his way in. Either a scene such as that was too expensive to film or the film-makers didn't want to make the audience think less kindly of the character, or perhaps these facts just never occurred to them.

There was no way to avoid making the comic-book props such as the huge, metal-walled secret hide-outs with their vast doors and gigantic corridors, and the throne-like weapon Magneto plans to use against the human race, less silly-looking. They simply contrasted too greatly with the prosaic scenes of beaches, city streets and the pleasant "School for Gifted Children" that was the X-Men's refuge. The various hyperreal contraptions in the Batman movies did not seem so foolish or glaringly out of place because the directors of those movies were wise enough to make the entire environment — Gotham City streets, apartments and mansions, peoples' costumes, and so on — different from everyday life. In scenes such as that of Professor Charles Xavier showing a new recruit the immense telepathy-enhacing supercomputer, or Magneto appearing in his Evil Villain getup, complete with helmet, it takes an effort to concentrate on the plot and not start thinking things such as: "The Professor needs to start offering a course in Design at his school. There are some major taste crimes going on here."