Although Hugh Jackman ended up becoming the definitive on-screen incarnation of Wolverine, it’s no secret that he wasn’t the first choice of X-Men producers. Russell Crowe was the top choice and Dougray Scott was initially cast before dropping out due to his commitments to Mission: Impossible 2. One of the actors considered to play Wolverine before Jackman signed on was Viggo Mortensen, who went on to play Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy instead. In a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Mortensen revealed why he turned down the part.
As it turns out, Mortensen rejected the role of Wolverine for the same reason that most actors reject superhero roles in long-running franchises: “The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over. I was nervous about that.” He also noted that there were a couple of issues with the version of the script he received, although he acknowledged that “they straightened most of them out” in time for the final cut.
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When he went in for his first meeting with X-Men director Bryan Singer, Mortensen brought his son Henry (his “good luck charm and guide”), who had a few choice words for Singer about the liberties he was taking with the source material. After reading the script, the actor’s son bluntly said, “this is wrong, that’s not how it is.” Singer spent the rest of the meeting trying to explain the changes he made – in Mortensen’s words, “falling all over himself” – and when Mortensen and his son left the meeting, he’d already decided he didn’t want to make the multi-movie commitment. He also pointed out the irony that, a few months later, he signed up to shoot three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back.
The X-Men franchise that began with Singer’s initial 2000 movie has since come to an unceremonious end with box office bombs Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants, the series’ last installments before Disney acquired 21st Century Fox. Thanks to this merger, Marvel Studios is now free to reboot the X-Men movies in the MCU. There have been no casting announcements as of yet, but WandaVision has included a couple of hints at how the mutants will be incorporated into the franchise. Funnily enough, as Marvel prepares to reboot the X-Men franchise, Mortensen has become a popular fan casting choice for Magneto along with Giancarlo Esposito and Ralph Fiennes.
When asked what he thought of Jackman’s performance as Wolverine, Mortensen said, “I think he did great. I’m sure no one could imagine anyone doing it better than he did, anyway.” Jackman landed the role on Crowe’s recommendation and was only given a couple of weeks’ notice before shooting began, so he had to hit the ground running when the cameras started rolling. Most recently, Mortensen starred in Falling, his own directorial debut, in which he plays a gay man whose conservative homophobic father comes down with dementia and has to move in with him.
X-Men is now available on Disney Plus.
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Source: Happy Sad Confused