Jackman, Hood present Wolverine in Rome

Fonte: Badtaste.it

Hugh Jackman was in Rome today, and presented X-Men Origins: Wolverine with director Gavin Hood. Here you can read what they said about the production, the leak on internet, the potential sequel:

Hugh Jackman: When the leaked copy came out, it was heartbreaking for us. The people in the studio were working 24 hours a day without sleeping and it was terrible to see this old version online. I'm not involved in the investigation, thus I can only hope they'll find soon who did this. Anyway, I was very happy for the unequivocal support of the online community, considering that 95% of the fansites expressed their negative feelings about the leak. Anyway, I'm sure that fans are going to see the movie, because they know that a summer blockbuster like that needs a big screen. I don't know if the leaked copy will affect the box office receipts of the movie, because I'm not very aware of this aspect.

Jackman: When I first prepared to play the role and I entered in the X-Men universe, I thought that Wolverine was similar to Mike Tyson, Mad Max and Callaghan. I think this is a classical archetype of the big screen, with a good guy who isn't always nice. From the beginning, I told Gavin Hood that I wasn't seeking complacency, instead we should have pushed forward this character. He had the chance to have an Oscar winning director involved in Wolverine and he understood completely the importance of my performance, considering that we passed from a multicharacter franchise to a movie focused on Wolverine. We had to fill the dots connected with his origins and I think we succeeded. I've played Wolverine for ten years, but this was the most difficult challenge I've had.

Gavin Hood: When Hugh approached me, I was flattered, but also surprised. I haven't done anything like that in my career. It's a movie tradition to show the detached hero, a role that Clint Eastwood played many times, the hero who doesn't need anybody. Thus, Hugh told me to focus on this subject and to read the comics, which I have to confess I hadn't done before. He has a great line, "I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice". This line reflects the nature of the character, who almost despises himself. For me, the challenge was to create a very masculine and tough guy, but, at the same time, he has to deal with a lot of emotions, trying to find a way to connect. With Victor Creed, the tragedy is that he doesn't need these relationships. In a certain way, thanks to the great performance by Hugh, we break the tradition of the man who doesn't need anybody.

Jackman: Every actor wants more screen time, thus I was happy for the chance of describing the character in an entire movie. The X-Men universe had great themes, but Wolverine has been incredibly popular for almost forty years. Anyway, when we showed the trailer for the first time and the audience saw Gambit, they started yelling and they were very happy. Maybe I was a bit jealous of him.
I must say that Bryan Singer has created the character that way and he allowed the audience to enter this universe thanks to Wolverine. Gavin and the screenwriter Benioff were correctly pointing out that if you don't know the origins of a character, you can't understand his motivations perfectly. I'm not involved in the other projects about mutants, even if I know that many scripts are circulating. For Wolverine, I hope that we can adapt his japanese saga for the big screen. So, we'll have to keep our fingers crossed.

Hood: From the beginning, I was aware the movie would have to be PG13 and I was happy about that. On the one hand, you'd like to be extreme, but what's great in the franchise is that it presents young people with ideas that are not in other movies. For example, in a regular blockbuster, we have forces of good and forces of evil, with the hero who is good and has to fight the villains. Instead, in our film things are more complicated than that. Our hero needs to understand the capacity of evil. By reading the comics, I was attracted by this great theme, with a character who doesn't like his nature. In that way, the claws are almost a psysical expression of his rage.

Jackman: There's a difficult balance between a movie which has to be entertaining and fun if you want to add something to make people think. I think a great example is The Dark Knight, a successful movie which is not simply a popcorn movie. And Gavin did an extraordinary work in that direction.

Hood: The most difficult scene is the one where Jackman is in the waterfalls and he is naked. Obviously, we couldn't have a full frontal and not because he is not well equipped to do it. We couldn't find a stuntman interested in the job and Hugh didn't want to do it personally, thus we had to scan his body and create a digital version. Like someone said, there's only one Hugh Jackman.

Jackman: For me, the most difficult scene it's the one where I'm on the motorbike and I have to jump and land on top of the helicopter. I almost cut my fingers. Moreover, I had serious problems in the tank. The scenes took two days to film and I felt very unconfortable. At the beginning, we tried to put speakers inside to communicate, but it didn't work. Thus, we found this method, whereby Gavin squeezed my big toe once or more times to let me know if I was going to die or the moment when I had to jump out.

Jackman: Many people ask me if my children will see the movie. My daughter is 3 years old and so she won't see it, but it's possibile that my son, who is nine, could see it. I have seen a few scenes of the movie with him and I noticed that he get some stuff, but not everything. Obviously, I'm not suggesting parents of 3-year old children should take them to the theater and personally I won't do it. We don't decide the rating of a movie, thus it's better to follow their suggestion.