'Wolverine' Director Gavin Hood Grilled

On complex comic-book heroes, internet piracy, butting heads with Fox's CEO and living up to big expectations.
From: TheWrap.com
Written By: Jordan Riefe.

Since graduating UCLA film school in the early '90s, Gavin Hood has strung together one success after another in his native South Africa, culminating with his 2006 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winning, “Tsotsi." Here, he talks about his latest project in Hollywood, the big-budget, effects-laden summer sequel, Fox's “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” due out May 1.

“Wolverine” is not unlike “Tsotsi,” where a hardened criminal is transformed by caring for this baby. There’s a similarity there.
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think what producer Hugh Jackman (the film's star and a producer) saw in “Tsotsi” -- which is why he called me -- is that there you’re dealing with a character who once again is struggling with his own inner demons and attempting to find his better nature -- sometimes against his will.

It’s that way with all of us -- our better nature does often shine through, but we do have this tendency, as human beings, to do things that we don’t always feel particularly proud of.

So you didn't see “Wolverine” as just another fanboy character?
It very quickly became apparent to me that what drew Hugh to the character and was drawing me to the character was the same thing: that you’re dealing with someone that is uniquely emotionally complex in comic-book lore.

He's very different from the “Pale Rider” kind of hero from the days when I was growing up, where young men were subliminally taught that you should not show emotion -- you ride into town, you solve the problem, you maybe sleep with a couple of women, but you don’t get too attached to them, then you ride off into the sunset, and you don’t show any emotion.

Here you have a massaively popular character that struggles with emotion, struggles with the idea of rage. No sooner does he have his claws out that he wants to withdraw them.

There must be a lot of pressure to sustain the “X-Men” franchise and satisfy fanboy expectations.
Bryan Singer, when he started this franchise, was incredibly brave in combining great thematic ideas with a sort of fantasy comic-book genre. I’m inspired by that and impressed by that, but when you make your own movie, at the end of the day, for me at least, I can’t let that other stuff be coming into my head.

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