Yahoo! Games recently interviewed Aussie movie mega-star Hugh Jackman about the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. Jackman said he did more voiceover work for this game than he has ever done before, including the last (creatively titled) X-Men game, X-Men: The Official Game.
Hughie admitted to Yahoo! that he had never really heard about X-Men before the first movie in 1999,
but now he's pretty into it. He's also not really much of a gamer, and his son isn't either. Apparently, he was rubbish at the last X-Men game and found it depressing and discouraging to see his movie-character dying so frequently. A little insecure, perhaps?
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Jackman explained that the game's plot is able to go more in-depth than the movie (which, hopefully, will mean better), because "a game is much longer than a movie -- it allows you to develop subplots and characters in a way that there isn’t time for in the film. The game expands on certain episodes in the film." He also noted that the writing was top-notch. He even inserted some lines from the game into the film because they were being developed at the same time.
Check out the full interview below, or see it over at Yahoo! Games.
You had to work out like crazy to do the Wolverine movie.
Yeah. Like a madman. Like I've never worked out before. The working out was intense. I enlisted the help of this guy, who's a natural bodybuilder, for the diet, and he's the one that told me it's 70% diet and 30% training. That's what you need. As hard as I tried, trust me, the more intense was the diet. Every three hours, starting at 3:30 in the morning, I'd wake up and have egg whites and one piece of wheat toast with nothing on it, and then go back to sleep – protein shakes, steamed chicken, steamed vegetables. I suppose it was healthy in one way, but it was bland.
Are you a comic book fan at all? Did you ever read X-Men or Wolverine as a kid?
I hate to say it, I never heard of it as a kid. The cartoon wasn't out -- I mainly watched cartoons as a kid. I wasn't really into comic books, and neither were my brothers, so I wasn't really brought up with that. I don't know how big they were in Australia at the time, but no one I knew read them either. So it was interesting to discover, and now I'm into it –- I read them a lot, not only for the films, but I get sent them and I'll quite often read them. And now I find myself reading them with my son as well.
So when you started the movie back in ’99 or so, that was your first exposure to it?
Yeah. I had no idea. There was a pub band in Sydney, called the "Uncanny X-Men," obviously it was named after that, but I thought they wanted me to audition for Brian Mannix [lead singer of the band] – anyway, it was the first I knew about it.
So what has your exposure to video games been? Are you much of a gamer, or do you play games generally?
You know, when I was a kid, for me, it was Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac-Man – that was my vintage, and I used to play them whenever I could afford to. I’m not much into games now, and my son is not into it that much, so I thought I’d get into it with him, but… I did try to play the last X-Men game. I kept getting my ass kicked on that. It was just too much for my ego to see Wolverine going down within seconds, you know?
What was your involvement in the upcoming Wolverine game? Was it just voiceover, or did you do any motion-capture?
There was no motion-capture but I did a lot of voiceover. I did more voiceover for this than I’ve ever done before. The story line follows, very vaguely, the movie storyline, but it actually goes beyond that as well. And of course for a game, you have to have various numbers of outcomes along the whole way, so we worked on it for over a year. I was very involved with it. I wanted the videogame to be as true to the character as I could, for the movie, and make it an experience that I think fans wanted.
Was that an interesting challenge, only having voice to work with? Was that difficult in terms of still getting the character across?
You know, it is – it’s a different thing, because Wolverine in a way is very powerful and intense, and yet in another way he’s kind of laid back. He’s always got a line, and sometimes you can rely more on your facial expressions in the film than you can in the videogame.
Were you impressed with the quality of the writing in the videogame script?
Yeah, absolutely, and in fact I was able to bring some of the lines of dialogue from the game script into the movie, because I liked how well it was written – the game production overlapped with the film, so it was possible to make those changes.
Do you feel the game is a good vehicle for expanding on the storyline, building on Wolverine’s universe?
It really is, because a game is much longer than a movie -- it allows you to develop subplots and characters in a way that there isn’t time for in the film. The game expands on certain episodes in the film. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there are some sequences that the movie only touches on, which the game explores much more in-depth.
And you feel a certain pride of ownership in the character, I imagine.
Yeah, I’ve been playing Wolverine for ten years now, so I want to make sure he’s presented in the best possible way.
Thanks for talking with us.
Thank you.
