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Director Gavin Hood Brilliantly Explains Why He Chose Wolverine

by Alex Billington
September 29, 2007
Source: SuperHeroHype

If you've been waiting for that final reason to be fully interested in the upcoming X-Men spin-off movie Wolverine, then this is finally it. Director Gavin Hood, who was announced back in July, spoke recently about Wolverine answering the question of why he chose to direct it. His response will have any comic book fan realizing that he is the perfect choice and that the film he's going to deliver may be one of the best comic book movies still to come this century. Hood, who directed the Oscar winning South African film Totsi as well as this year's upcoming Rendition, isn't the most likely choice to direct a superhero movie, but once you hear what he had to say you'll know that he's undoubtedly the right choice.

SuperHeroHype had the honor of speaking with Gavin during his promotion for Rendition. Here's what he had to say about Wolverine.

"What appeals to me about the Wolverine character of all the other characters is that my feeling that he's the one that suffers from the most existential angst," he began. "Since I'm a guy who loves emotional complexity, it seemed to me that... 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.' And of course, I then did some further research and I realized that the character of Wolverine, I think his great appeal lies in the fact that he's someone who in some ways, is filled with a great deal of self-loathing by his own nature and he's constantly at war with his own nature. 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."

The guys at SHH got in one last question as well: whether they'd be shooting in Japan. His answer here leads into some juicy details.

"No, sadly no. We're not going to Japan," he responded then mischievously added, "I think that will be in 'Wolverine 2' but I won't say any more than that."

A Wolverine trilogy all from Gavin Hood?! Or at least a sequel? This definitely is good news! Unfortunately this isn't anything fully confirmed, but it sounds like they're at least going for more than just one Wolverine movie.

As for his first response above, I don't think I've heard a more brilliant answer and introspective on a comic book character coming from a director ever, except for maybe Sam Raimi on Spider-Man. Ever since Gavin Hood was announced, I've been bewildered by why they would choose an Oscar winning director, but I always knew in the back of my mind that would be a good thing. Now I know why they chose him and it's obvious that he knows what he's doing and he's done his research. I will definitely say that I can't wait until Wolverine. It hasn't even started filming and yet it's encroaching onto The Dark Knight and Iron Man for my most highly anticipated comic book movie.

Image Credit Joe Dodd on DeviantArt

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