2008 looks set to be a bumper year for superhero movies with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight all making appearances. But next year sees the return of one of my personal favourite, and tortured heroes, Wolverine of X-Men fame, played so superbly by Hugh Jackman.
The three X-Men films were each brilliant in their own right, but what they collectively did really well was set the stage for spin-off movies, by giving a sneak peek of each character’s back story without showing too much detail. This has left Marvel with the opportunity for a whole new series of films delving deeper in to the origins of The X-Men.
The first character to receive this treatment is Wolverine, which is an obvious choice really. Hugh Jackman recently spoke to MTV Movies about the film, and the direction he sees the film going in.
“It feels different, but I don’t think its going be night and day.”
“We are dealing with a character who is probably one of the darker comic book characters ever created. The movie has a lot of fun elements, but there are layers of pain and darkness to this character.”
“Tonally, I would put it more in the ‘Batman Begins’ sort of realm. That’s sort of where we’re headed.”
This all sound brilliant. Using Batman Begins as a template for Wolverine’s solo outing makes perfect sense. What’s even better is that if X-Men Origins: Wolverine is as successful at the box office at history would suggest it should be, we may get to see the origins of other X-Men too, with Magneto already being talked about as a possibility.
As for Wolverine – this may not be the end of the story:
“There are two conditions for me doing any more: One is will anybody want to see it, and the second is: Will I still have the passion for it? I really wanted to do this spin-off movie, because I felt we hadn’t truly found who this character was.”
“Right now, I feel like I could do another ten or eleven.”
