Chris Claremont On The Wolverine

Claremont, one half of the duo that brought us possibly Wolverine's greatest adventure in the Japan saga, had a chat with Bleeding Cool at the MCM Expo. He talks about his take on how the movies have portrayed Wolverine so far, and also that if he had his wish over 20 years ago, Bob Hoskins would have played the mutant berserker..

I haven’t seen the screenplay. I’ve heard lots of talk that the screenplay is brilliant, true to the comics, everything else. Reading the cast list, so to speak, was the first inkling I had to the structure of the narrative itself.

..Over the course of the three films he evolved on screen in much the same manner he evolved in the comic. The Wolverine quite naturally becomes the core essence of the group. It would have been interesting if we’d done it 25 years ago and I’d gotten my wish and Bob Hoskins had played him. Hoskins has that same degree of mad fury, and he’s short. Don’t think of Super Mario Bros. think of The Long Good Friday. With Hugh Jackman, it just reverses the paradigm, he’s six foot four and who cares?

..The Wolverine in the film adaptation of the story exists in a different world than the Logan in the story, but that’s the same in any adaptation like the difference between Romeo & Juliet done by Baz Luhrmann versus Franco Zefirrelli versus on the stage. You mentioned that the film starts with him in jail so something happened between Wolverine 1 and Wolverine 2, he’s in jail, but the essence of the character is the same. There’s no X-Men back story to it so you know this won’t end with him sending a note back to the mansion saying “Come to the wedding.”

..The responsibility of the filmmakers is to define their own reality in that two hour stretch. The reality is what occurs in that 110 minutes. The idea with any film is you walk in the door never having seen anything before and you’re introduced to the totality of the experience.

I dunno, even in The Long Good Friday Hoskins was bald and chubby! Still, I do get what he means about the rage. He was a beast in that movie. Anyway, sounds like Claremont is optimistic enough about things. And I like his comparison to the various takes on the works of Shakespeare. I'm sure some will disagree. Hit the link for the full interview at Bleeding Cool, which has more from Claremont on how he and Frank Miller decided to write the Japan story in the first place.