A controversy faced by Grant Morrison during his run on New X-Men was that he morphed Magneto from a well-intentioned extremist into a hardened drug-addled dictator, a decision causing such debate that it was eventually retconned in that tiresomely convoluted style only X-Men comics seem able to master. It would come as no surprise then that many complained of the same in Last Stand when Eric, a Holocaust survivor with whom audiences could commiserate even at his most villainous, became a full-blown reactionary in the face of humanitys attempt to cure the mutant race, hijacking a bridge from which to play out his cruel game of chess as he sacrifices countless eager disciples (Let the pawns go first). Magneto has gone from trying to instill every mutant in his cause with a sense of self-worth and purpose in the face of hate to surrendering them as though they were little more than expendable, much as a fascist dictator would to further their agenda; he appeals to the same militant animosity as his oppressors. The truth is, this interpretation seems the most authentic to Magnetos character. A prominent conceit of political philosophy is that any rebellious faction under repression is bound to adopt that same repressive attitude in time, given the right catalyst. In the comics, that catalyst was the destruction of Magnetos country of Genosha; in The Last Stand, it was the threat of extinction of the mutant race. Collapsed under fear of surviving a second genocide, Magneto combats his enemy using the tactic with which he is most familiar. In truth there is not much separating Magneto from your garden variety despot: a repressed homeland, cynical world view, rousing gift for rhetoric, and barely contained megalomania, not to mention a stalwart faith that his actions are ineluctably justified. In essence, no matter how brave he is to combat it, Magneto in his heart is the very monster he has been forced to endure since his youth, and in this film we at least got a glimpse, briefly and imperfectly, of what a mutant uprising led by such a conflicted autocrat would entail.
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