Tag: Wolverine

Retired police officer Darwin Bullock was slapping a blue wristband on Wolverine on Saturday afternoon at Comic-Con. Bullock staffs the event’s weapons check, a small station in the lobby of the San Diego Convention Center where costumed characters of all varieties come to have their fake swords, guns, or — in Wolverine’s case — claws inspected for safety. Though from across the hall he looked like a potentially deadly mutant, Wolverine turned out to be a low-key fellow named Yosef Ghiassy from San Francisco. Bullock deemed his plastic, blunt-edged talons nonthreatening, marking him with the wristband so other security personnel know this superhero has passed inspection. “Go have fun, sir. Enjoy,” said Bullock, who is working for one of the private security firms hired by the convention. A Comic-Con spokeswoman declined to comment on security protocols, but the gathering’s official ...

“Wolverine” star Hugh Jackman made a surprise appearance at Comic-Con on Thursday  morning to promote his robot boxing movie “Real Steel,” answering questions and bestowing swag upon a cheering crowd. In the film, Jackman plays a down-and-out former boxer 10 years in the future when the sport is no longer done by humans, but rather 2,000-pound robot gladiators, two of which Jackman showed off to the crowd at the event. “The world of human boxing is being superceded by robots who box,” Jackman said. “They’re badass. They’re unbelieveable. They’re great. But the reason I love the story was the human element of it. It’s a father-son relationship.” Jackman said his character, Charlie Kenton, goes on an emotional journey and compared “Real Steel” to classic sports movies. “His son turns up on his doorstep, and the two of them go on this great ...

John Horn checks in from CinemaCon in Las Vegas … Hugh Jackman won’t be playing Wolverine as soon as he wanted, so he’s breaking into song while he looks for a new director. Darren Aronofsky, who was scheduled to direct Jackman this summer in 20th Century Fox’s “The Wolverine,” backed out of the project this month. “He would have made a great film,” Jackman said in an interview Tuesday in Las Vegas, where he was promoting “Real Steel” at the annual  theater owners gathering called CinemaCon. “But it wasn’t the right time for him personally.” Jackman said the start of photography should only be delayed a matter of weeks. But the film also could need to change its production location, as it was originally set to be shot in Japan, which is still recovering from its catastrophic earthquake. “That’s in limbo ...

At 24 Frames, our must-read sister blog, Steven Zeitchik wonders if the great arthouse experiment is losing steam in superhero cinema. When Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” movies became a massive critical and commercial success a few years ago, it touched off one of the more unexpected mini-trends in modern filmmaking. Suddenly quirky directors were being handed the reins to big-budget men-in-tights tentpoles, as studios looked to replicate the formula that had the director of “Memento” scoring with splashy movies about a caped crime-fighter. It was an arrangement that seemed to give everyone what they wanted. Studios gained credibility and the potential for a massive hit, while the auteurs got to play with a bigger budget and on a bigger stage without (they hoped) giving up much artistic freedom. Plus they got to make a greenlighted movie, which in this climate may ...

Darren Aronofsky, the Academy Award-nominated director of last year’s “Black Swan,” falls in love with a project, gets his star to pack on the pounds and gain new muscles for the role and then leaves the movie. It happened several years back with “The Fighter” and now, it’s happened again. This morning, news came that Aronofsky has officially departed “The Wolverine,” leaving star Hugh Jackman all bulked up and with no one to direct him in battle. Twentieth Century Fox confirms Aronofsky has officially moved on from the project, which didn’t have an official start date but was expected to go before cameras in late spring, with the filmmaker stating that he didn’t want to be away from his family for a long period of time.  In a statement, Aronofsky said, “As I talked more about the film with my ...

Hugh Jackman got on the phone Monday to talk to our Geoff Boucher about his upcoming projects. Here’s what he had to say about his return to the metal-clawed mutant persona that has been the signature role of his Hollywood career. Geoff Boucher: I remember coming by your office back in the summer of 2009, and you were already talking about your hopes of making a movie out of Marvel’s 1982 ”Wolverine” miniseries, the classic by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. And now you’re doing just that — and with director Darren Aronofsky, of all people. You must be thrilled. Hugh Jackman: I’m really, really pumped about it. I feel like all the planets are finally aligned to make a great movie. We finally have the character and with this mythology — ever since [the 2000 Bryan Singer film] “X-Men,” when I was kind of hanging around ...

I interviewed Ryan Reynolds not long ago and asked him a classic fanboy question:  “Deadpool versus Wolverine, who wins?” “Deadpool could beat Wolverine any day. I know it, you know it. Hugh Jackman knows it.” Reynolds worked with Jackman, of course, in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,”  and though it didn’t really go so well for Reynolds on screen — Deadpool, you might recall,  got his head chopped off — that didn’t sour the actor’s view of the movie star in the film’s title role. “Hugh is a great guy. He’s a very classy human being. He sets the bar for being classy in Hollywood. It’s almost mayoral, his approach to Hollywood. It’s as much his job to sign an autograph or take a photo with a fan as it is to blow people away with his performance on screen. He could host a master class on how ...

The U.S. may be far behind pirate kings like India, Sweden and China (though they’re cracking down) but that doesn’t stop some of us from trying! Gilberto Sanchez, charged by an L.A. grand jury with illegally uploading “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” to the Internet before its theatrical release, was arrested today on suspicion of violating federal copyright law, authorities said. Read the entire story on L.A. Now – Jevon Phillips RECENT AND RELATED ‘X-Men’ future looks especially uncertain  Hugh Jackman says there’s a lot of Mike Tyson in Wolverine Essay: L.A. Times film critic looks for heroic heart of 2009 ‘Wolverine’ hits $160m worldwide and women are 47% of U.S. audience ‘Wolverine’ review gets Fox blogger Roger Friedman in hot water Wolverine, by the numbers Photo: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) face off in “X-Men Origins Wolverine.” Credit: James Fisher / 20th ...

FOUR FRANCHISES AT A CROSSROADS   Talk about heroic: Four film franchises, one decade, more than $10 billion worth of theater tickets sold. And more than that, in their very best moments, each of these franchises shown above delivered sparkling adventure and escapism for moviegoers. Now, though, with the decade winding down and all four franchises sitting a nice tidy trilogy, the question must be asked: Isn’t three the magic number? Do we really need a fourth movie from any of these aging popcorn enterprises? Clearly, all of them will be written up in the Hollywood history books but right now the indelicate must be asked: “How can we miss you if you won’t leave?” Last week we gave you an in-depth report on this quartet of mega-franchises and their quests for a fourth visit to theaters. We told you how “The Hobbit“ must escape the the towering shadow of “The Lord of the ...

Betsy Sharkey is one of the two film critics at the Los Angeles Times. After surveying the great glut of fanboy fare this year, she got to thinking about the nature of the modern film hero and the inner workings of their characters as well as their appeal. Here’s an excerpt, or you can read the entire piece right here.   This summer’s heroes may go boldly, but in every case, someone has gone many times before: three earlier “X-Men” and “Terminators“; one earlier Michael Bay “Transformers,” a 1984 animated film and the pervasive TV series; and countless iterations of “Star Trek” on every size screen known to modern man. It hasn’t been easy to be the fresh prince this year. Yet on they came in their own distinctive ways. For “Terminator’s” Christian Bale and Sam Worthington, martyrdom drips like sweat from their brows. Others swagger with ...