Nazi superheroes

The no-swastikas poster is careful not to tip its hat, but what Tom Cruise's kill-Hitler movie Valkyrie is clearly suggesting is that these costumed guys, allied against "evil," are historical X-Men. The iconography is comic-book movie marketing, as if these "good" Nazis are equivalent to the Marvel crusaders and Superman, the stars of director Bryan Singer's previous pictures. I don't know if it works or not--the trailer, where Cruise's non-accent sounds more like Berlin, CT, than Berlin, Germany, isn't much more than mundane--but the blurring between superheroes and fascists in the studio mindset is revealing. It's also interesting that Singer, who took on the Third Reich and neo-Nazi tendencies in 1998's Apt Pupil, is mining the territory again for a nostalgic right vs. wrong saga. Stuff that in your stocking for Christmas.