Code 8 is X-Men minus the budget and the A-list cast, and that's the good news. Unfortunately, the movie suffers more, not when it deviates from, but when it copies Marvel's mutants. Code 8 is set in a world where 4% of the population are born with various supernatural abilities, but instead of being rich and famous, they face discrimination, live in poverty, and often turn to crime.
As far as I can tell, Code 8 is an allegory about illegal immigrants in the US – the image of day laborers waiting for a van to take them to work is unmistakable, because we have seen it in other, better films (e.g., El Norte). There is also the matter of an addictive narcotic called Psyke manufactured from the cerebrospinal fluid of the People with Power (doesn't quite have the same ring as X-Men, does it?); a drug literally made by and for them.
Addressing that some immigrants are forced to smuggle and sell drugs while others turn to alcohol and other drugs to cope with depression and anxiety is one of the things that Code 8 does well. The problem is that the movie doesn't seem to understand that illegal immigrants do these things because they are powerless. If Mexicans entering the United States illegally had the kind of power that Code 8 characters have, Los Angeles would have been returned to Mexico a long time ago.
Connor and his similarly 'empowered' peers are oppressed because they want to be; what prison could contain them? I estimate that four “People with Powers” could reasonably demand that the President “kneel to Zod” within a week at most.
We know where illegal immigrants come from; of places where, to put it in the terms of the United States Declaration of Independence, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are nothing short of impossible (otherwise they'd stay put). Conversely, establishing the origin of the protagonists' powers in Code 8 is not as simple.
Like those of the X-Men, these powers are unexplained – and unexplainable –, and include the usual for a superhero (manipulation of electricity, superhuman strength), as well as, for lack of a better term, magic (telepathy, telekinesis) and finally, as Jules Winnfield would say, "miracles according to Hoyle" (healing the sick). Consider this: Sutcliffe's main lackey is bulletproof. Bulletproof! How does one even go about becoming bulletproof?
Code 8 is a very imaginative movie (my favorite part is the Guardians, robot cops that drop from drones), but it has absolutely zero curiosity about its own characters. Where do their powers come from? How do they work? And why don't they use them on a larger scale? These are all questions that Code 8 doesn't answer because it doesn't even bother to ask them.
