Temperament wise, Hugh Jackman doesn’t have much in common with his most famous screen role.
As the embodiment of Wolverine — a mutant blessed with miraculous healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst — Jackman is the face of the character. But off screen he is as gracious as his cigar-smoking X-Men alter ego is testy.
His Prisoners co-star Terence Howard told me Jackman was, “a sweet man,” while director Josh Rothstein said the actor “leads with smiles and warmth.”
Doesn’t sound much like Wolverine to me.
When he isn’t playing Wolverine he devotes his time to charitable causes like World Vision and Laughing Man, a coffee company he established that sells fair trade coffee and tea, products farmed using ecologically friendly methods and sold for the benefit of the farmer and consumer.
This weekend he stars in Logan, the third solo Wolverine film. In the new movie the X-Men antihero makes tracks to the Mexican border to set up a hide-out for ailing mentor Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart.
This installment marks the ninth time Jackman has slipped on the adamantium claws, and will be his swansong in the role.
Having played the character for almost 18 years Jackman owns the part, bringing real humanity to the mutant in a powerful and accomplished performance.
But, as he told me in a friendly, wide-ranging and informative interview, he wasn’t always as self-assured.
“When I started acting I was the dunce of the class,” he reveals. Success in school, he says, came because of his work ethic, a trait he picked up from his father.
“He never took one day off in his life,” he remembers. “He had five kids he was bringing up on his own. If anyone deserved a day off it was my old man, but he never did. I learned that from him.
“There’s always that feeling of, ‘I have to work harder than everybody else. I’m not born Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I’ve got to just work harder and I’m prepared to do it.”
Being the youngest of five children also contributed to his outlook.
“I always wanted to do stuff and not be left out,” he says, but adds, “I was quite a fearful kid, which I hated.
“I’ve always had a fear of fear. It’s weird to think back now but drama school is a pressure cooker situation. People get kicked out of drama school. You are constantly being judged on how you are doing; are you progressing, are you not?
“Almost everyday you had to get up and do a monologue. Sing a song. Do it in front of everybody. I noticed I was always first. I never wanted to sit there waiting. I’m not saying that out of courage. It was too uncomfortable to sit, stewing. I don’t think I’ve told anyone else that.”
Later, fear of unemployment pushed him to expand his talents.
“When I came out of drama school I was like, ‘I’m going to do anything I can just to keep working.’ In drama school you do Shakespeare to movement to circus skills to singing all in one morning. I know a lot of people hated it but I revelled in it. I loved it.”
Seems hard work and confidence is the X-factor that made Jackman the most famous — and friendly — of all the X-Men.
“Logan” takes a Canadian superhero played by an Australian actor and places him smack dab in the middle of the great American movie genre, the Western. The third solo Wolverine film stars Hugh Jackman in his ninth and final incarnation of the cigar-smoking X-Man but this one is different from the others.
Set in the near future, when “Logan” begins the mutant world seen in the other “X-Men” movies has changed. Mutants are almost extinct, their greatest champion, 90-year-old Charles Xavier (Sir Patrick Stewart) is senile and his school, the Xavier Institute, shuttered. Wolverine, a mutant blessed with healing powers but cursed with a bad hairstyle and existential angst, tends to Xavier, but age and a lessening of his powers have reduced the superhero to working as a chauffeur in Texas near the Mexican boarder. “Charles, the world is not as it was,” he says ruefully.
He is drawn back into his old life when he takes a job driving an 11-year-old girl named Laura (Dafne Keen) to a mysterious safe haven in North Dakota called Eden. Turns out the youngster is a chip off the old block, a clone-daughter of Wolverine. Like her old man the silent but deadly kid—she barely speaks a word until the last half of the film—has regenerative healing powers and retractable adamantium-coated bone claws; like most adolescents she’s volatile, with mood swings and the potential for violence.
They are on the run from the Reavers, a team dedicated to the destruction of the X-Men. Led by part cyborg head of security Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook) and Zander Rice (Richard E. Grant), a surgeon whose father was killed by Wolverine, the Reavers are ruthless and possibly unstoppable.
Like the superhero at the heart of the movie, “Logan” is angsty and dark, a film that drips with sweat and regret. Director James Mangold tosses away the pop psychology of earlier “X-Men” outings, replacing it with something usually lacking in comic book movies, humanity. Wolverine may have super powers, but he’s never been more human than he is in “Logan.” A lion in winter, he’s a mentor, a friend, a warrior nearing the end of his run. “You are dying,” says Laura. “You want to die. Charles told me.” Sure, he can slice your head off with a flourish of his claws but this time around psychological vulnerability is front and centre, not his physical prowess.
Mangold has also done away with much of the computer-generated clutter that have become a de rigour in superhero flicks. He’s turned Wolverine’s valediction into a traditional drama. Think “Unforgiven” with claws. The character is wounded, wracked with regret for a legacy of bloodshed, a life he never asked for. It’s the kind of existential reckoning that fuelled Westerns like “Winchester 73,” “The Shootist,” “Shane” and “Ride the High Country” and while there are no cowboy hats on display, make no mistake, “Logan” is a call back to the days when antiheroes wore their wounds on their sleeves.
The movie works because Jackman digs deep. His portrayal of Wolverine has grown over the years from cartoon cut out to fully realized character. It would have been easy and probably commercially prudent to allow Wolverine to downplay his anguish and simply have him slice and dice his way through the “X-Men” franchise but Jackman rides the line. This is a violent movie that should satisfy fans hungry for action but his remorse, his regret is palpable and the character is more interesting for it.
There are echoes of other comic book tropes in “Logan.” There’s an evil Logan and an “Iron Man 3-esque” child sidekick, but it still feels like the evolution of the superhero movie. A hybrid of brains and brawn it is unafraid to call “X-Men” comic books “ice cream for bedwetters” while at the same time paying respect to one of it character cornerstones.
Front Row Centre Events presents the Great Digital Film Festival for one week only, January 30 – February 5, 2015. Showcasing favourites in digital on the big screen. For select screenings Richard introduces the films on the big screen (that’s Richard shooting the intros at left) and you don’t want to miss the exclusive chat with Guillermo Del Toro on “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
The Great Digital Film Festival 2015 will take place on January 30 – February 5, 2015. Learn more HERE!
Words like disappointing, dismal and other disparaging words beginning with the letter “d” have been used to describe the summer’s box office yield.
In movieland the summer season is defined as the first Friday in May through Labor Day Weekend, a period that saw revenues fall to an eight year low, down 15% from 2013.
There were some very big hits, like Guardians of the Galaxy and Transformers: Age of Extinction, but even their multi-million dollar grosses weren’t enough to compete with last year’s $4.75 billion overall take.
“We’ve seen this before,” says Michael Kennedy, Executive Vice President, Filmed Entertainment at Cineplex. “Right now everybody’s binging. After a while they will get tired of binge watching TV and say, ‘I’m really tired of being in my house. I want to go out.’”
Kennedy adds that the summer slump could also be attributed to several high profile absences.
“Pixar was originally scheduled to go in the summer with a film that got moved back and Fast and Furious was supposed to go but after Paul Walker’s accident they moved the movie back and nobody replaced it. One or two movies move and millions disappear.”
So how does it work? How do studios and distributors determine a release schedule? Mongrel Media’s Director of Marketing Danish Vahidy says studios put “down the tent pole for flagship properties one, two or sometimes three years in advance. With the success of sequels studios feel more secure planning in advance for franchises rather than an unknown entity.”
That means the wannabe blockbusters from this summer, the X-Men, Godzilla and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles et al, probably had release dates attached to them before Prince William walked Catherine Middleton down the aisle at Westminster Abbey.
Kennedy says counterprogramming is one of the keys. “They look at what everybody else does and if they see a Fast and Furious sitting on the second week of July and they have an action movie, they’re staying away from that weekend.”
Mongrel Media took a risk and counterprogrammed a movie that went on to become one of their biggest hits of the summer. “Boyhood was released in July as the summertime nicely captured the notion of childhood set in the film,” Vahidy says. “It was also a great way to counter program with the Hollywood blockbusters and offer movie goers a smart original film as an option.” The critically acclaimed film was aimed at a different audience than the other two big releases that week, Disney’s kid friendly Planes and the raunchy Cameron Diaz comedy Sex Tape. “That move paid off for us as Boyhood is one of our most successful releases ever with a theatrical box-office of over $2.3 million in Canada and growing.”
So why didn’t it work for the big releases this summer? Suggested reasons for the downturn range from a lack of family movies, which traditionally pull in big numbers, too many sequels and superhero movies and even divided attention from the World Cup.
Kennedy adds one more reason. “Everybody has busy lives,” he says. “The one thing we’ve always found is that people always come back. It’s not the price of the movie ticket or the popcorn, it’s putting aside the time to go. People want to go out and we offer the most affordable out-of-home experience there is.”
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” offers up two for the price of one.
Merging the young versions of Magneto and Professor X with their older counterparts is a cool idea, and certainly gives the movie a boost in the marquee department, but I felt the old timers were left with their own heightened sense of drama and not much else. It seems a shame to have McKellen and Stewart, the Martin and Lewis of mutants, on screen together and not give them much to do.
Based on a 1981 two-issue special of the X-Men comic series the new film begins in a post-apocalyptic future. “A dark and desolate world,” according to the narration. “A world of war, suffering and loss on both sides—mutants and the humans who tried to help them.”
The causing all the trouble are indestructible robot warriors called Sentinels. Able to adapt to any mutant power they’ve created chaos for the mutant race, bringing them to the edge of extinction.
In an effort to “change their fate” long time enemies Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) team up with Storm (Halle Berry), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bishop (Omar Sy) and use Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) teleportation ability to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to change history and prevent the creation of the murderous automations. His first task is to convince the 1973 versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and young Professor X (James McAvoy) that they are stronger together than apart.
The only things larger than the movie’s lengthy list of stars are the big ideas contained within. Wrapped around a simple time travel story—the kind of thing “Family Guy” does once or twice a season—are timeless ideas about racism, tolerance, war and rebellion. Not usually the stuff of summer blockbusters, but the X-Men franchise has always been a bit brainier than most. At times it’s a bit too ponderous, but I’ll take that over the flash-and-trash of most CGI epics.
Not that it’s a total head trip. It’s a movie about time travel, mutants and serious actors like Michael Fassbender saying lines like, “We received a message from the future,” so, of course, it’s a little preposterous. That’s part of the fun. It plays with the conventions of big time summer entertainment—check out the spectacular time-shredding sequence featuring the lightening-fast mutant Quicksilver (Evan Peters) that’s both eye-popping and cheeky—but tempers the bombastic stuff with thought provoking notions.
In fact, it could be argued that the ideas are the stars of the film. Jennifer Lawrence is the a-listiest actress in Hollywood right now, but in her second outing as Mystique she almost gets cut adrift in a sea of characters. Ditto Peter Dinklage as the closest thing the film has to a villain.
They’re all good, but Magneto, Professor and Wolverine are complex, cool characters that bring the film’s themes to life; all the rest is set dressing, except for the Quicksilver scene. That was like The Matrix without Keanu’s hangdog expression.
SYNOPSIS: Based on a 1981 two-issue special of the X-Men comic series the new film begins in a post-apocalyptic future. Menacing robot warriors called Sentinels have created chaos for the mutant race, bringing them to the edge of extinction. To combat the threat long time enemies Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Magneto (Ian McKellen) team up with Storm (Halle Berry), Blink (Fan Bingbing), Bishop (Omar Sy) and use Kitty Pryde’s (Ellen Page) teleportation ability to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time to change history and prevent the creation of the murderous automations. His first task is to convince the 1970s versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and young Professor X (James McAvoy) that they are stronger together than apart.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 4 Stars
Mark: 4 Stars
Richard: Mark, Days of Future Past offers up two for the price of one. Merging the young versions of Magneto and Professor X with their older counterparts is a cool idea, and certainly gives the movie a boost in the marquee department, but I felt the old timers were left with their own heightened sense of drama and not much else. It seems a shame to have McKellen and Stewart, the Martin and Lewis of mutants, on screen together and not give them much to do. What did you think?
Mark: This installment really belongs to McAvoy, Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender. I didn’t care for the “future” plot with the fogey mutants, but I thought the movie snapped to attention when it flashed back to 1973. The sense of time and place seemed very authentic; in one scene Lawrence is dressed exactly like Carly Simon on the cover of her third album. I half expected her to launch into a rendition of “You’re So Vain” at Fassbender. There’s some interesting historical revisionism revolving around JFK and Nixon that even conspiracy theorists would find preposterous-more X-Files than X-Men—but I appreciated the creative effort.
RC: It’s a movie about time travel, mutants and serious actors like Michael Fassbender saying lines like, “We received a message from the future,” so, of course, it’s a little preposterous, but wrapped up in the time bending plot are some interesting ideas about racism, tolerance, war and rebellion. Not usually the stuff of summer blockbusters, but the X-Men franchise has always been a bit brainier than most. At times it’s a bit too ponderous, but I’ll take that over the flash-and-trash of most CGI epics.
MB: Me too. I like the franchise for its superior acting, plotting, and its whiff of Ayn Rand objectivism. But it’s got a sense of humour too, which is rarely found in these epics. There’s a fantastic scene in this movie where Evan Peters as the young Quicksilver, who can move faster than human time, rearranges an entire tableau of bad guys so they wind up hurting themselves instead of our heroes. But he does it with such juvenile glee that it captures the joy of being a powerful mutant and an adolescent prankster. And casting height-challenged Peter Dinklage to play a scientist out to destroy the “outsiders” is brilliantly ironic.
RC: The actors are all good, but I would argue that the real stars of the film are the ideas. Magneto, Professor and Wolverine are all complex, cool characters that bring the film’s themes to life; all the rest is set dressing, except for the Quicksilver scene you mentioned. That was like The Matrix without Keanu’s hangdog expression.
MB: Oh, and just a warning, Richard. When I googled the film there was a link to a movie called XXX Men. Do NOT click on this link!
By Richard Crouse – Metro In Focus
