THE SCREENPLAY:
Magneto's real name is Erik Lehnsherr. He's a Jew and a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and there are several ideas at the core of the script: the Nazis' wartime activities to create a master race; the Holocaust and its lasting impact (on Lehnsherr in particular); the hunt for war criminals who have escaped justice; and also a note of optimism and reconciliation from Professor Charles Xavier with his own quest to learn from the mistakes of the past and build hope from the ruins of horror.
Here we find out about Magneto's early friendship with Xavier (as indicated at the start of X-Men: The Last Stand) and how the seeds are sown for a bleak future when mutants will be persecuted as much as those other minorities sent to the death-camps.
The script begins and ends with a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, when leaders and survivors gathered in Krakow, Poland, to remember the atrocities committed by the Third Reich. Erik Lehnsherr is present at the ceremony; he sees the metal gate he crumpled as a 14-year-old boy, when his powers emerged in the painful moment his parents were herded to the gas chamber (as seen in the opening scene of the first X-Men movie). We then flash back to his lifestory.
We see Erik experimented on and tortured in the camps by a Nazi called Dr Kleinmein who wants to create a master race of supermen and is especially interested in unlocking the key to human potential in those such as Erik who have extraordinary capabilties.
After the war, Erik builds a new life in the Ukraine but personal tragedy drives him on a journey to track down the Nazis such as Kleinmein who have escaped prosecution. The story takes us to Paris, Argentina, Israel - where he meets Professor Xavier - and then the USA, where he closes in on Kleinmein and his inhuman research to exploit mutant DNA. At first Erik tries to bring Nazis to justice through official channels but that fails and he joins forces with a CIA agent called Owen Graves, but he soon finds he has to go it alone and use unconventional methods to get justice and vengeance.
The story closes with Xavier offering some hope for the future - and then takes us back to that Auschwitz liberation anniversary event where Senator Kelly (seen in the first two X-Men movies) warns of mutants as the next threat after the Nazis, thus setting the stage for the three X-Men movies we have already seen.
Head on over to
io9, or to
The Coventry Telegraph for a more detailed review of David Goyer's script...