Tales from the vault: Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, centre, in wheelchair) with his X-Men (and Women). Left to right, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, James Marsden as Cyclops, Halle Berry as Storm and Anna Paquin as Rogue.

THE JOY OF X

It was the reaction of the immigration guy at Toronto airport that did it. Hugh Jackman, the Australian-born actor who gets his first major movie role as Wolverine in Twentieth Century Fox’s summer tent-pole movie, X-Men, was flying in to Canada mid-way through last year for a final audition with director Bryan Singer. But, in a scenario that will be familiar to travellers everywhere, not only did Jackman not have the right documentation: his arrival also seemed to coincide with every other international landing.

The lines were enormous and Jackman was convinced he was in the slowest one. “I was waiting for about 45 minutes,” he grins, recalling the encounter, “and the guy in my line was just looking at me: it was almost like he was being deliberately slow. Then, when I got up to him, I said: ‘I’m here for discussions with Bryan Singer for X-Men’. He goes, ‘You’re an animator?’ And I said, ‘No, no, X-Men is a feature film’. And he goes, ‘X-Men the movie!?’

“People look at us. So I say as quietly as possible, ‘Yeah, that’s right, they’re making a movie’. And he said, ‘What character are you playing?’ So I said, ‘Wolverine’. “And he goes ‘Wolverine! Sign this form for me, man, sign it for me!’ All of a sudden, he came to life. I think he smiled for the first time in 10 years in his job. That’s when I realised how close to the heart Wolverine is for the fans.”

By the time X-Men has been out for a couple of weeks - it opens in the US (and Canada) on July 14 - it won’t just be fans of the original comic-book who recognise Jackman. For one thing, he’ll be easier to spot because he is hidden behind a lot less make-up than most of his fellow X-Men (two of whom, confusingly enough, are women). Mainly, though, it’ll be because Singer’s approach to the story is designed to take X-Men, the movie, way, way beyond its existing comic-book fan base. Under the direction of the man who made The Usual Suspects, the film looks set to create a whole new franchise: a sci-fi story with a serious theme and characters you care about, the sort of combination of thriller and thrill-ride that goes beyond popcorn and into some major new area of popular culture.

“You learn,” says Singer, “that when you get mired in [comic-book] lore, you forget the story that you’re trying to tell in the movie. You screw yourself. And the fans resent you, too, because even though you’ve got the lore, you didn’t make a good movie.”

As a result, Singer’s X-Men is story and character first, comic-book adaptation very much second. With Wolverine as the audience’s way in to the story - because he is a loner, reluctantly recruited to Professor Xavier’s X-Men, who learns in the process about the duties and dangers of being a mutant - X-Men is about a battle between good and evil. But it’s also a film about a couple of Big Issues, with even a touch of politics thrown in: the X-Men comics are, after all, a product of the sixties. As Singer puts it, “It’s not an action film. It’s a film with action in it.”

“I think the fans that have grown up with the comic-book series are going to love it, because it is faithful to the fans,” declares Jackman, whose previous career high-spots have included an ‘Australian Star of the Year’ award at the 1999 Australian Movie Convention and an Olivier - Britain’s equivalent of the Tony - for his playing of Curly in theatre director Trevor Nunn’s West End revival of Oklahoma! “But those people who are new to the X-Men are going to be surprised that what they think of as comic-book territory is a real world that they can get involved in.”
X-Men shot through the late autumn of 1999 and into the early months of this year, with Toronto standing in for most of the New York locations. Jackman replaced Dougray Scott, who had to pull out when Mission: Impossible 2 over-ran in Australia, and he has very much made the part of Wolverine his own. Like his fellow mutants - Famke Janssen as Jean Grey, James Marsden as Cyclops, Halle Berry as Storm and Anna Paquin as Rogue - Wolverine reveals a real human dilemma in the group of outcasts turned reluctant heroes who make up the X-Men.