There shall be no more X-Men movies – at least for the time being – but there shall be spin-offs. The first of those will be Wolverine, which is set for release in 2009. Supeherohype caught up with the director, Gavin Hood (Rendition), who revealed a little of his thinking on what the film should be.
"When I was first approached to do it, my first thought was, 'What? Me? Do this? What is that? I don't know enough about comic book characters.'," said Hood, who's breakthrough film was the Oscar winning Tsotsi. "It seemed to me that really what it is, is that it's a little like great Greek mythology, which is something I've always been in love with, where the Greek gods threw thunderbolts and Poseidon conjured up storms, but those mythological stories were designed to examine emotional truths. It seems to me that the character of Wolverine epitomizes, in a modern context, a kind of great mythical tradition of using larger-than-life characters in order to play with and examine human emotion at a sort of operatic level." So, basically, this isn't going to be some thrown together, cash-in rubbish, which it could so easily have been.
The website also asked Hood about the likelihood of shooting in Japan, which in the comic books is where Wolverine did much of his training and where the fans' favourite bit of backstory is set (more unrequited love, much samurais-vs.-ninjas potential). Since this is set to be an origin story, it would be a seemingly natural place for the film to shoot. Not so, says Hood: "Sadly we're not going to Japan. I think there might be a Wolverine 2, but I won't say more than that".
Does this mean that the film will focus only on Wolverine's very early days? For those not particularly familiar with Wolvie's official origin, he was born in the mid-19th century to a wealthy Canadian family. He was a sickly child who endured tough times when pretty much everyone he loved was murdered, killed themselves or died by accident. He then headed North, where he fell in love with his only companion, Rose, started hanging out with packs of wolverines but fell foul of perennial nemesis Sabretooth. It was only after another tragedy there (and quite a bit of bumming about the world, hanging with Hemmingway during the Spanish Civil war and such like) that he headed to Japan to train in the Samurai arts and find yet another unrequited love affair.
Since Sabretooth has been mentioned as being part of the movie, it could make sense that the movie will stick with Canada and that period could be turned into a lean, interesting movie. But expect the story to skip lots of the childhood background, which many Wolverine fans hate. Our hero, a whiny little boy? Not even! What's more, concentrating on that section might mean we don't see the Hugh Jackman aged version for about half the film. Would producers do that? What do you think?