Wolverine's a new kind of role model says director

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Wolverine's a new kind of role model says director
Wolverine's a new kind of role model says director (Image credit: Kerry Hayes)

Oscar-winning director Gavin Hood reckons that mutant superhero Wolverine represents a better role model for kids than Clint Eastwood. Speaking to whatsontv.co.uk's film blog Movie Talk about the Blu-ray release of his blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the South-African director said that Wolverine represented a new kind of hero. Despite his fiery temper and razor-sharp claws, the mutant fighter played by Hugh Jackman offers young people a very different model of male heroism than the ones 46-year-old Hood grew up watching on screen - the kind of hero typified by Clint Eastwood’s remorseless, unfeeling avenger in Pale Rider. Clint wasn’t 'a good role model of masculinity', he reckons. “When I grew up,” says Hood, whose 2006 film Tsotsi won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, “you were meant to be tough, play rugby and never cry. You were supposed to suck it up, shut up and don’t be emotional. That was the message of the Pale Rider-type heroes and we all aspired to that. My problem was, of course, I wasn’t like that. I get upset. I want to talk. “Wolverine is an alternative type of hero, one who is concerned with his own morality and willing to walk away.” Read the full interview here... For a chance to win the Blu-ray Triple Play Edition of X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Patrick McLennan
Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.