hmnut7 posted... By mainstream you mean WHITE PEOPLE'S view of the civil rights movement.
I've never been a fan of the Magneto = Malcolm X idea (which now makes me not want Denzel in the role because it would amplify it).
At worst you could say Malcolm X was more of an "anti-hero" of the Civil Rights Movement, he did not want violence or to hurt people, BUT if he was attacked he would not just sit there and take it.
Meanwhile Magneto originally was a straight up villain. Magneto named his Mutant group The Brotherhood of EVIL Mutants. He was total monster. In the 70s and 80s they changed him to more of a morally grey character. But at the start he was a mustache twilling evil villain.
I don't know if Stan Lee really meant for Xavier and Malcolm to be parallels to Martin and Malcolm when he first created the characters or if that was just what people started saying so he ran with it... but if that was his idea from day one, it means Stan Lee was the typical white man in the 60s scared of Malcolm because he said black people shouldn't just let white people literally kill them whenever they want.
And the Black peoples mainstream view of it.