09 February 2021
Newsdesk
Viggo Mortensen has revealed his son Henry called out Bryan Singer's vision for Wolverine in a meeting for 2000 movie X-Men.
The Lord of the Rings actor has spoken about turning down the role of the clawed mutant in the past, but during a recent appearance on MTV's Happy Sad Confused podcast, he explained how a meeting with Singer in the late '90s helped inform his decision.
Already reluctant to sign up to play one character across many films, Mortensen brought along his son Henry, who is now 33, and the comic book fan challenged Singer's vision for the superhero.
"The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over," he explained. "I was nervous about that. And also there were some things, I mean they straightened most of them out, but I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide. In the back of my mind I was thinking he could learn something too, because I did let Henry read the script and he goes 'This is wrong. That's not how it is.'
"And (Henry) goes, 'Yeah, but he doesn't look like this.' And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties. We walked out of there, and Henry asks if he will change the things he told him about, and I say, 'I don't think so.' I'm not going to do it anyway, because I'm not sure I want to be doing this for years, and then a couple of years later I'm doing three Lord of the Rings, so who knows."
The part of Wolverine was originally offered to Dougray Scott, but due to a scheduling conflict, it ultimately went to Hugh Jackman, who was awarded the Guinness World Record for having the longest career as a live-action superhero in 2019. He had played Wolverine for 16 years and 228 days until his final appearance in 2017's Logan.
