How true is Magneto's future catharsis?

Magneto's future self in X-Men: Days of Future Past seems to be a refined and wiser man to some degree. While there were earlier instances of him working together with the X-Men and this time it might also just be a mere convenience partnership in light of the Sentinel threat, his mannerisms and statements about himself to have been on a "darker path" in the past suggest that he seems to have overcome his aggressive and elitist attitude.

Yet, I'm not sure how much this is really due to a change in his character or just due to the fact that the humans aren't a threat anymore at all and it's only about sheer survival now. And in fact this Sentinel threat shows that Magneto wasn't so wrong with his fears about the future of mutants in the human society. If he is still not entirely convinced of Charles' peaceful way, he might even have intended for his past self to follow his own goals when he asked Logan to find him, too. So I wonder how fragile the alliance and reconciliation of Magneto with the X-Men really is. What caused him to change his whole attitude in favour of Xavier's way? Or is it really only a convenience partnership for now?

I see that this is a highly speculative question since the movie doesn't seem to answer it (I would be happy if does, though) and especially since the future arc of the story is more or less moot, having been effectively annihilated by the past actions anyway. But maybe I missed something or the corresponding source material does provide some more information on this (if the movie was actually true to it in this regard).

Best Answer

I can't speak to the source material but considering First Class to back some of these claims:

In this movie, it is portrayed that Charles and Erik were actually really close friends. Albeit they did have different ulterior motivations for their cause. Charles' mostly scientific vs Erik's compassion for mutants after being discriminated by Nazis facing a similar discrimination wasn't exactly something desired. But they did have one thing in common which was a unity of mutants whether it be for peace or war.

This relationship is then torn asunder by the ending events of First Class with Erik becoming vindicated in his fear that Humans would act against the mutants much as he has experienced before whereas Charles' truly thinks it is just a case of people fearing what they don't understand and to not feed into that fear but show it as irrational.

Forward onto the events of Days (1973) and see that they are torn apart still due to those events with small sub-plots of fighting for Raven's heart and Charles believing that Erik actually killed JFK instead of trying to save him. They then revive their friendship in order to stop the dystopian future (2023-D).

Again, however, they conflict with each of Erik's irrational ideals. Killing Raven is the only way to stop the future, publicly killing the figureheads of the US is the only way, etc. Combine this with his previous outburst of wanting to use all the missiles against the Soviets & US at the Cuban Missile Crisis event at the end of First Class we can just see that Erik is mainly just irrational and a misguided planner in his regard for "Mutant Superiority".

Combine this with the Erik we know in X-Men 1 & 3 and we see the same thing: Misguided in all his plots and a tad extremist.

It is only in 2023-D that we see Erik, as he is near death's door along with the rest of the remaining mutants and the person that was once his closest friend realize his flaws. It is then where he utters the line: ( to the best of my memory, someone have a script?)

All those years of senseless fighting...

That we truly see that he knows that what he did was actually what caused this current future. And he feels genuine regret.

I don't think he planned for his past self to follow any intention at all but it is fair to say that he probably suspected his past self to be as adamant as ever and would try something, whether it was intentional or not.