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CWA Spotlight Interview with GAVIN HOOD

South African director Gavin Hood, famous for his work directing Tsotsi and Wolverine, talks about how he fuses both the subliminal messages with the violence and action in the blockbuster franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

As a director how did you depict the story of Wolverine?

HOOD: For me Wolverine is about the male psyche and through directing it I got to reinvent it. I grew up watching movies like Easy Rider with Clint Eastwood, which were all about the tough guys who don't cry or need anyone. When I grew up, as men we were told to suck it up, be a man and don't be emotional. We all aspired to that but my problem was that I wasn't that. What I loved about directing Wolverine is it portrays the lead male as a vulnerable man, who mutates after suffering abuse.

But surely your audience isn't there to get the subliminal message about the hero are they? They're there for some serious action. How do you work the two?

HOOD: Underneath all the big budget hoopla, I want the audience to leave with an understanding of the nature of the hero. The movie has two levels: it has to deliver on the 'spectacle', which are the bells and whistles, helicopters and explosions which the summer audience will get, but underneath they also have to look up to the hero.

The quote fans really love from Wolverine is "…but what I do isn't very nice." How do you, as a director, capture that?

HOOD: Well Wolverine himself is like an angst driven dramatist. Humans crave love but need space because human emotions smack up against each other.

What's your preparation before you direct a movie?

HOOD: Before I make a movie I write myself a series of notes: from the thematic to the visual, and I write down all my character ideas. With my character ideas I'm conscious of the kind of hero I'm portraying to young people. I was conscious of the PG 13 rating and thus the message he was going to give to kids like my nephew.

There's a lot of violence in the movie. How do you make that work for a PG 13 audience?

HOOD: By creating the subliminal messages about the kind of person the hero is clears away all the violence and action.

How was it filming a big summer blockbuster, considering it was your first?

HOOD: Wolverine was my first big Hollywood movie of scale. When I made Tsotsi it was my movie and I had the freedom to make it how I wanted to, but a big picture film is audience driven. It's about guaranteeing an audience that if they spend their money on a film they will have fun.

Emotionally, any director brings their own sensibility to the movie. Wolverine is a massive franchise so I was directing a film for people who already had an enormous amount invested in it from the first two. I was the new kid coming into a strong existing family.

There's a subversive anti-establishment attitude in Wolverine. I read that someone had asked if you were making a political movie.

HOOD: The character, Striker is representative of the fact that we have to take the fight to the enemy before the enemy takes the fight to us. That philosophy is undone when Wolverine says 'let my people go'. This rendition, this incarceration without consultation is unacceptable: so yes, it's political. It's also why Wolverine has resonated with gay audiences too. Wolverine's mutancy and the rejection of it, resonates with gay people. It's such a powerful franchise for them: the mutant being represented as an outsider. Wolverine is forced to integrate into the establishment but responds with rage and frustration and instead embraces the power behind it. Themes of segregation and integration have always been powerful in these movies.

You see his mutation as being psychologically quite powerful..

HOOD: The thing that interested me about mutation in the comic books is that characters always mutate in response to trauma. So if something traumatic happens to the child in puberty and they have the mutant gene, their psychological traumatic mutation will manifest as some sort of physical power.

So Wolverine's awful discovery of the death of the man who he thinks is his father by the man who really is his father generates this massive confusion, which manifests as claws with is a desire to lash out and just scream 'stop!' But then he withdraws saying 'oh my god what have I done'. One person understands this, which is his brother, who has already mutated. So there's the idea of the abused who becomes the abuser.

What's one of your favourite scenes in the movie?

HOOD: There's the moment where Wolverine throws the brother out of the window and the brother tempts him saying, "c'mon, come over to the dark side, you're just like me". But Wolverine withdraws his claws, then he goes into the cages and says: "Fuck you this isn't how it works morally. You may be the establishment but this ain’t it" and he pulled out the claws and lets the detainees out.

So you really think young people are subconsciously taking in the underlying messages?

HOOD: The subliminal message does not need to be known to be getting through. Most people who are watching this movie don't want a message and aren't looking for one. Let's not get too heavy: it's just interesting to me to have a kind of mainstream comic book hero who didn't conform to the stereotypical image of male heroes that I grew up with. It's an alternative kind of hero: one that is more emotional and concerned about his own morality, and who is willing to walk away.