Hugh Jackman Retrospective ( as Wolverine)

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With the passing of Len Wein, co-creator of WOLVERINE, there have been some lookbacks on the character --

www.thewrap.com/hugh-jackman-joss-whedon-others-pay-tribute-x-men-reviver-len-wein/


Photo gallery of different phases in Wolverine's life before LOGAN -- please scroll down :

www.thewrap.com/complete-x-men-movie-timeline-logan/

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When Hugh first met Len Wein --

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Len/s Wife, Chris Valada, acknowledges Hugh Jackman's message --

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A good feature on Len Wein from The Hollywood Reporter --

www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/len-wein-wolverine-creators-characters-reflected-his-health-struggles-wife-says-1037672

Legendary comic book writer and editor Len Wein created some of the world's most popular characters as a reflection of the health issues he had since childhood. 

The Marvel and DC talent helped bring about Wolverine, Storm, Colossus and Bruce Wayne's business right hand, Lucius Fox. He also edited the Watchmen series, among other notable works. 

Wein died Sunday. He was 69. 



In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, his wife, Christine Valada, said her husband's loyal and adoring fans meant the world to him. 

"I think sometimes he was a little taken aback," she told THR. "People have always treated him with a great deal of respect and affection."

Valada opened up about her husband's health struggles, which had plagued him since youth. But, ironically, those same struggles led to some of the comic world's most beloved creations. 

"Most people don't know exactly how sick Len was throughout his life," she said. "He was in and out of the hospital since he was three years old. And I have always felt his characters reflected a lot of what he went through. Swamp Thing was a reflection of this body that didn't work for him. But then there was that healing factor of Wolverine, which kept getting him through it." 



The New York native, described as "very funny, very gregarious," was a fan of the characters he created, but Batman was his No. 1 comic hero, Valada said.

However, he did create Lucius Fox, which "has been more lucrative than probably any other character," she said. The character was played by Morgan Freeman in Christopher Nolan's massively successful Dark Knight trilogy from Warner Bros.
His most famous creation is Wolverine, the clawed character who debuted in a 1974 issue of The Incredible Hulk.
As for whether he was properly compensated for his other characters after comic book films became a multi-billion dollar business beginning in the early 2000s, Valada said, "He was always like, 'I know what I have done and the people who know me know what I have done.'"

Valada added, "In terms of the financial situation, DC's Paul Levitz [the company's former president], he did everything he could to make sure people were appropriately credited and compensated. Marvel has been a little late to that game. I will say this about Marvel, they have become very nice about inviting us to their big premieres in Los Angeles."
Valada is a lawyer whose area of expertise is creators' rights.
 
Her husband loved his work, but he wrote for himself, Valada said. 
"He wrote the stories he wanted to to write," she said, pointing out that the one time he wrote in order for fans to be happy was when he changed Thor's love interest. He got an earful both when he made the original change and when he caved to fan displeasure and changed her back. 

"And that was the point at which he said, 'I write for me. I wrote the kind of stories I want to read,'" she said. "He felt that reading comics, as he did when he was a kid, would make him a better person and he wanted to pass that along to his readers as well." 



Wein and his wife hung out with the Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman on numerous occasions throughout the years, the first time being in 2003 at San Diego Comic-Con while Jackman was promoting Van Helsing.

Their first meeting involved a joke about Wolverine, who in the comics is short, while Jackman is known for being tall.
"And Hugh said to Len that first time, 'I am sorry I am so tall,' and Len replied, 'That is OK. You play him short really well,'" she said. "And everyone knows about the 2008 Comic Con when Hugh jumped off the stage to shake Len's hand for 'giving him a career.'"



She continued, "The last thing Len saw in the movies was Logan and Hugh sent a poster and a piece of Wolverine art, which he autographed, to him," Valada said.

Wein made the jump to the big screen, too, when he appeared in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past in the Congressional committee scene.

He also randomly hung out on set for the scene where Jackman arrives in the 1970s, nude.
 
"So he got the full Monty of Hugh Jackman that day, and I said, 'Truly wasted on you, dear.'"




The explosion in popularity of comic book films, largely kicked off by 2000's X-Men movie, tickled Wein to no end.
"He would say, 'We won. We took it over,'" she said. "And I hear people talking about how comics have taken over movies and I think, 'Hey, it works.' There are these great characters and great stories and that's what sells tickets. If you tell a good story, like Wonder Woman this summer, people will come."

Wein also had a high opinion of Stan Lee. The two men worked in close quarters in the '70s at Marvel.
"I know that Stan has said that Wolverine is a character that he wished he had created," Valada said. 

As for his legacy, his wife said Wein liked to "paraphrase Woody Allen with, 'I don't want to live on in my work, I want to live on in my house.'"

"But that fact of the matter is he will live on through his work," Valada said. "And his characters aren't going anywhere. He liked to say that in comics, no one is really ever dead unless you see the body, and usually not even then."

In a way, Len Wein helped resurrect the comicbook/superhero movie genre, moribund for sometime until the first XMen movie came along in 2000! Because it was a well-loved first movie from the franchise and because his artistic creation named Wolverine, played superbly by the unknown Hugh Jackman, became the face of the franchise which is still going strong up to now, it can be said that he had a hand in the renaissance of this film genre!

I can't remember whether it was for BACK ON BROADWAY or THE RIVER, but I do recall that Hugh met Len and Christine backstage after the show. Maybe they were there upon his invitation ?

On a lighter note -- it has been written in the past and in her blogs, Ms. Len Wein ( Christine Valada) was a big fan of Hugh Jackman -- I wonder if she had asked her husband if he needed company when he watched the filming of that iconic early morning Wolverine-waking-up scene in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST


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Interesting sidelight on why the character of WOLVERINE was created --

comicbook.com/2017/09/11/len-wein-wolverine-x-men-marvel/

Excerpts --

Wein created Wolverine in 1974 at a time when mutants were out of vogue. The ongoing X-Men title had done so poorly that it had stopped telling new stories in 1969 and was instead reprinting classic X-Men tales by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, and Neal Adams. So why introduce a new mutant in the pages of The Incredible Hulk?

It turns out Wein put a lot of thought, and forethought, into that decision.

“When I first created Wolverine, I created him as a Canadian mutant specifically so that whoever ended up with the assignment of writing the new X-Men book, should it ever occur, would have a Canadian mutant handy if he wanted him,” Wein said during an interview for the 2013 PBS documentary miniseries Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle.

A new X-Men series did launch only a year later, and Wein was the one to write it. As intended, he brought Wolverine into the X-Men fold in Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1975. He also created the rest of the core X-Men mutant cast using designs by artist Dave Cockrum, and he gave each a specifically non-Anglo-American origin: Storm from Kenya, Colossus from the USSR, Nightcrawler from Germany, and the Native American Thunderbird.



As to why Wolverine proved to be so popular, Wein pointed to a moment from the first X-Men movie, where the character was played by Hugh Jackman, as an example.

“I think, from my perspective, what makes Wolverine so attractive is the unpredictability,” Wein said. “The belief that he doesn’t give a damn about anybody but himself and spends his whole life proving that’s not true."

“In the first film, there’s that great moment where he first meets Rogue and he’s gonna dump her by the side of the road because she’s not what he wants at that moment," Wein continued. "He’s in search of something else and she goes, ‘Well if you leave me here, where do I go? What do I do?’ And he says, ‘I don’t know.’ And she says, ‘You don’t know, or don’t care?’ And he says, ‘Pick one.’ And I think that kind of describes the character. And yet he spends the rest of the film protecting her and spending the whole thing trying to save her life even though he just said, ‘I don’t care what happens to you.’ It’s not true. Part of him cares about what happens to everyone around him.”...

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From a series of Hollywood costume anecdotes --

Hugh Jackman has enjoyed a little family fun — and an odd Halloween anonymity — in the past.


“I dressed up once as (his X-Men character) Logan because my kid, my 3-year-old, went as Wolverine and the costume department gave him the full leather suit and the claws,” he said. “Only one out of 50 houses actually recognized me playing Logan. So I think I could roam the halls of Comic-Con and people are like, ‘No. Too tall.’”

I have heard the story of Oscar playing trick-or-treat dressed as mini-Wolverine ( courtesy of FOX Costume Department) but it was never said that Hugh dressed up as Logan ( obviously not LOGAN of 2017, but the Logan that Professor X first me -- dark brown jacket and all). I thought he just tagged along as Hugh Jackman

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http://instagram.com/p/Batg-15jVM4

Hugh -- don't raise the hopes of all the fanboys!



Instagram is in shock -- it refuses to load the image - LOL.

Here's the twitter link :

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Film sites have picked up the social media tease from Hugh --



comicbook.com/marvel/2017/10/26/hugh-jackman-wolverine-costume-halloween-tease/



www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/hugh-jackman-teases-he-may-be-wolverine-halloween-1052013

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This near-nude Wolverine can give Hugh Jackman ( if he wears the yellow spandex) real competition

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If OSCAR is fair, this actor would have already received a Lifetime Honorary Award for such commitment!

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Blame Kevin Feige, Marvel Studio Chief and erstwhile XMen assistant producer, for Wolverine's pompadour in the movies!

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/marvel-cover-story

Excerpts --

As he relaxes in the interview, Feige’s storytelling instincts kick in, and he begins to infuse his own narrative with touches of destiny or, as he calls them, “Can you believe it?” moments.

The first of those moments came years before when Feige landed a college internship working for director Richard Donner and his wife, producer Lauren Shuler Donner. Later, when each Donner was looking to hire a full-time assistant, Feige thought the choice was clear. Richard Donner, who directed Superman, was one of Feige’s idols. (“Superman was formative,” he says.) But he ultimately decided to work for Shuler Donner—the busier of the two—and set himself on the road to becoming a producer. Which is how he found his way to Marvel and an important lesson in risktaking.


Shuler Donner was a producer on, and a driving force behind, X-Men, a 2000 Fox film starring Marvel characters.

One day on set, Shuler Donner and Avi Arad, then head of Marvel Studios, watched as an exasperated stylist, at Feige’s insistence, sprayed and teased actor Hugh Jackman’s hair higher and higher to create the hairstyle that would become the signature look of the character Wolverine. The stylist “eventually went ‘Fine!’ and did a ridiculous version,” Feige recalls. “If you go back and look at it,” he admits, “he’s got big-ass hair in that first movie. But that’s Wolverine!”

The experience stuck with Feige. “I never liked the idea that people weren’t attempting things because of the potential for them to look silly,” he says. “Anything in a comic book has the potential to look silly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make it look cool.”

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This was the infamous Wolverine hairstyle that Kevin Feige favored

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The ship has sailed for this Wolverine!

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Interesting speculation --

www.comicbookmovie.com/x-men/sebastian-stan-says-hugh-jackman-has-been-thinking-about-returning-as-wolverine-for-the-mcu-a157001

Sebastian Stan Says Hugh Jackman Has Been Thinking About Returning As WOLVERINE For The MCU

While Logan was the perfect swan song for Hugh Jackman's legendary run as Wolverine, it sounds like he may be having second thoughts, especially in the wake of Disney's proposed acquisition of Fox.


Rohan Patel | 1/13/2018
Filed Under: "X-Men"

Most will agree that Hugh Jackman ended his historic run as Wolverine on the highest of high notes with last year's critically-acclaimed Logan, but now that the Walt Disney Company has officially announced its plans to acquire 20th Century Fox's film and TV assets, many fans have been clamoring nonstop about the possibility of the fan-favorite X-Men hero reclaiming his claws and finally joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


Now, while a Jackman return remains a longshot at best, especially after his emotional swan song, it doesn't look like that's going to stop current MCU actors (and his potential future co-stars) from trying to recruit the Academy Award-nominated actor into the biggest superhero universe of all-time. Following Thor: Ragnarok star Chris Hemsworth's comments earlier this week, Winter Soldier actor Sebastian Stan has now spoken out about a recent conversation he had with Jackman while sitting together at the Golden Globes.

When asked about the proposed Disney/Fox merger at Ace Comic-Con where he appeared alongside his Captain America co-stars Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie, Stan said "Recently, I happened to be sitting next to Hugh Jackman. I didn't know what other awkward thing I could talk about, but to be like, 'Am I going to see you soon?' I don't know, but he said a couple things to me and I'll just leave it at that. Otherwise, I think I'm going to get into trouble." He continues, "I asked him cause I kept thinking whether or not he said Logan was supposed to be the last Wolverine thing. He said to me what's probably been said out there that he's been thinking about it and it's on his mind. So, I don't know." Well, that's certainly intriguing, to say the least.

Check out a video of his comments below, starting at the 9:25 mark:

Check out the video from the link.

Maybe this was why Hugh seemed to be looking intently at Sebastian ( in another famous/notorious photo from the GGLobes ) - they may have talked before actually sitting down on their shared table?

If there is anyone who could probably talk to Hugh into considering a final bow as part of a team, it could be Marvel Studio chief Kevin Feige ( who was producer Lauren Shuler Donner's assistant producer during the first XMen movie and worked with Hugh then).

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http://instagram.com/p/BeKZ5JNjnyk

They first worked together almost 19 years ago! And Hugh had to portray a much shorter Wolverine compared to Cyclops

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LOL - James posted the same photo, with his own version of the photo message ( "old" friends and tired faces indeed ).

http://instagram.com/p/BeKfHgHlgF2

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http://instagram.com/p/BUcX9mmAkiI

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