Lucky number seven. That’s how many times Oscar nominee Hugh Jackman has played curmudgeon (and killer) Wolverine on screen in various X-Men films since first donning the claws in Bryan Singer’s X-Men. His latest foray into mutant mayhem opens on Friday, May 23, and is called X-Men: Days of Future Past. If you didn’t know yet, it’s a massive telling of an infamous X-Men story that stretches from a post-apocalyptic future to the distant past, where Wolverine (Jackman) has to reunite a splintered X-Men team and prevent the creation of the Sentinels – mutant-hunting robots who are a serious threat to our planet.
Recently, though, I had the distinct honor of sitting across from Hugh Jackman and talking all things X-Men: Days of Future Past and his experiences as Wolverine. It’s not often an actor plays any role as often as Jackman has played Logan on screen. But I wanted to flip the conversation a bit on him and see which beloved character from his own youth he’d love to see on screen in seven different films. To my surprise, he looked to the Star Wars universe:
To many fans, the X-Men movies are like the new Star Wars, delivering multiple adventures with numerous heroic characters we’ve come to adore over the years. There are so many nods to fantastic moments in the X-Men universe in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and I mentioned my favorite to Hugh Jackman, which got him talking about the number of Easter Eggs in the film:
Hugh Jackman also knows that X-Men: Days of Future Past comes fairly late in the X-Men mythology, and the cast and crew are asking audiences to come to the theater with a healthy knowledge and appreciation of his previous X-Men films, as well as the recent X-Men: First Class prequel. But here, he tells me how director Bryan Singer worked so hard to keep the material accessible to all potential moviegoers. This bit of our conversation gets into X-Men: Days of Future Past spoilers, so be warned!
X-Men: Days of Future Past masterfully adapts one of the most popular storylines from the X-Men comic books, bridging the world of Bryan Singer’s original X-Men movies to the younger characters in Matthew Vaughn’s First Class universe. Be sure to read my review, click here to listen to the complete Hugh Jackman interview, and grab a ticket to X-Men: Days of Future Past, because it opens on Friday!
