Claws in the contract: Gavin Hood on directing Wolverine

RUMOURS ABOUT RESHOOTS AND FBI-investigated internet leaks – both have swirled around the latest X-Men movie. It's enough, you would think, to throw the man at the helm of this multi-million dollar project into a Wolverine-like rage. When we speak, though, Gavin Hood is charming, not snarling.

Hood, best known for 2005's Oscar-winning Tsotsi, is the man charged with directing one of this year's most anticipated blockbusters, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which recently had its release brought forward by a month after a million people illegally downloaded the incomplete movie from the internet.

The film, starring Hugh Jackman as the mutant hero with the deadly claws, is planned to be the first in a series of prequels exploring the early days of key X-Men characters. After the disappointment of Brett Ratner's third part of the original trilogy, X-Men: The Last Stand – which jettisoned plot for slam-bang action – expectations are high. It's little wonder Hood sounds nervous. He's worried about upsetting the fans ("Make me look good; don't misquote me, please") and concerned that my hopes for the movie might be too high. ("Lower your expectations," he says when I tell him I'm looking forward to the film, "these things get so over-hyped. I'd rather you were pleasantly surprised.")

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Caution might be sensible, but bombast is what we expect from superhero movies, isn't it? Maybe it's the challenge of keeping up with recent comic book adaptations that's taking its toll. Hood admits that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight "raised the bar" but he reckons that's a good thing. "In some ways it's intimidating, but then again you can only make the movie that you're making."

Hood's reserve might also be linked to his background. Known as a director of small budget indie films doing the international film festival circuit and gritty, political dramas – such as Tsotsi and 2007's Rendition – the South African wasn't the most obvious candidate for a high-octane superhero spectacular. It's not his emotional capacity as a director that's in doubt, but whether he can handle – or is interested in – high-calibre, full throttle action.

"In Rendition I had 67 visual effect shots and in this movie I have 967," he laughs. Wolverine has been a "massive learning curve", he admits, although he's clear what makes the film tick. "Shot to shot, emotional beat to emotional beat, that's what you've got to focus on. For me the most exciting moment when filming is still when I'm on a big close-up of an actor and I've got the eyeline tight to lens and I'm looking into the actor's eyes for that moment of emotional truth. That's the most exciting moment, it's more exciting than when there's a giant car crash happening with 11 cameras filming it."

Nolan's Dark Knight, an unavoidable benchmark, was as much a meditation on good and evil, corruption and anarchy, as it was about monster-truck tyred motorbikes and wince-inducing fight scenes. The same goes for the cultish Watchmen and, to a lesser extent, the Robert Downey Jnr vehicle Iron Man. Superhero movies are no longer merely visual pyrotechnics for the prepubescent, popcorn-munching masses. They are films driven by questions about character and motivation, and not a little existential angst. And that sounds altogether more like Gavin Hood.

"Tsotsi dealt with a character who suffered from a certain degree of self-loathing, is a loner and lashes out at the world in ways that are fairly ugly, and yet is in search of peace," Hood says. "Right there, that's what Hugh Jackman saw – Wolverine is an outsider, has this tendency towards berserker rage, frequently regrets lashing out and is not able to find much peace in the world."

Wolverine focuses on the early life of the tortured hero, and early reviews suggest that Jackman is in awesome physical form alongside Liev Schreiber as his evil brother, Victor (aka Sabretooth), Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool and Danny Huston as the villainous Colonel Stryker.

Hood has nothing but praise for his star and supporting cast. "Hugh is a delightful force of nature," he says. "I mean, he's 6ft 3in, incredibly physically imposing, the sexiest man in the world, but also just a genuinely good person. For my first very big movie I was extremely fortunate to have a movie star who is warm and dedicated and never makes a fuss. I think that what can break a director is if you've got a movie star who is just impossible and Hugh is the polar opposite of that."

So what did Hood make of Wolverine's tortured soul? "Of course, the first line that strikes you is the famous one: I'm the best at what I do but what I do best isn't very nice." (This is the line he begs me to get right, knowing how ferocious fan outrage can be.) "Right there you've got what Hugh was talking about – a character which, if not self-loathing, is certainly self-reflective. And then I started reading a little more and that got me thinking about this notion of mutation."

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The mutant gene in the X-Men oeuvre is what gave director Bryan Singer scope to explore prejudice and intolerance in the first two movies. The gene is carried by some and triggered by a traumatic experience, usually at puberty, giving them a super power which is as much burden as gift.

"So let's leave the claws to one side and look at the question of mutation, post-trauma," says Hood. "Every human being mutates or changes after a traumatic event, whether it be the loss of a loved one, the break-up of a relationship, a violent act committed upon them, the experience of war. These events change us. Some also make us incredibly angry at the world and produce in us the desire to lash out. In Tsotsi's case he lashes out with a gun and in Wolverine's case, his rage manifests as literal claws with which he lashes out at the world."

The thematic concerns work for Hood, but what about the scale of the film? And the inevitable studio interference that's as much part of superhero films as CGI?

"I know where this is coming from," he says wryly, "all the gossip on the internet. You have to know, as a director you're essentially a salesman. You're constantly selling ideas to often very forceful personalities in the creative and financial worlds. And everybody has very high expectations because everybody involved is at risk at some level. People have a legitimate interest in knowing what the hell you're going to do with something that affects them."

What Hood says makes sense, but it also sounds rehearsed. What seems more genuine is his understanding of how high the stakes are. "Hugh has tremendous interest in this – he might want to do another one. He hasn't said so but he might. Similarly, I have a huge interest in this succeeding because if it doesn't then I might never work again."

But then Hood's independent spirit returns. "I can't be trying to make something for someone else to like and that's what's tough," he says. "It is possible for movies of this scale –I can see having been through the experience – to go wrong. It's not because anyone wants them to go wrong but simply because you can try to please everybody and end up pleasing nobody."

So is he happy with his film? "I hope that I contributed a point of view that will allow the film to be slightly different and to achieve two things. First, it's got to stand on its own, as its own Wolverine, so that people who've never seen any of the other movies can go and see it and enjoy it. And at the same time it is part of a franchise so it can't deviate so radically from it as to be unrecognisable."

Jackman has said that he's "heartbroken" by the leaking of the unfinished film, comparing it to a "Ferrari without a paintjob". If I had to guess how Hood is feeling now, I'd reckon it's not that much different than when we spoke. The pressures have moved elsewhere, that's all. And it's still his movie, even if some of the wires are showing.

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• X-Men Origins: Wolverine is on general release from 29 April.

The mutations of Wolverine, superhero

THE hirsute Logan, aka Wolverine, appeared for the first time in comics in 1974 as a character to give the Incredible Hulk something to get angry about. Created by writer Len Wein and Marvel art director John Romita Sr, he was first drawn by Herb Trimpe (until his big screen debut Wolverine was a short critter, around 5ft 3in – post-Jackman he's apparently had a very late growth spurt). By 1975 Wolverine was part of the X-Men line-up and by 1982 he had his own series.

A mutant possessing animal-keen senses and super physical capabilities – retracting bone claws and the ability to heal instantly from virtually any wound – Wolverine is a tortured soul, constantly battling to keep his "berserker rages" in check. Ever-changing comic book continuity and the handy device of false memory implants allows writers endless possibilities, but makes it tricky to pin down a definitive origin. One version has it that Howlett, born in 19th-century Canada, witnessed the brutal murder of his father and his mother's subsequent suicide when he was 13. This trauma brought his mutation to light and he savagely avenged the death of his parents. After this he ran away, working in mines, living wild with wolves, then with Blackfoot Indians before finally moving to Japan where, in some versions, he married and had a son. After the Second World War he was co-opted into the Canadian government's secret Weapon X programme where the indestructible metal "adamantium" was grafted on to his skeleton and claws, and served as a secret agent.

He may be brutish but Wolverine is also a polyglot, speaking English, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Cheyenne, Spanish, Arabic, and Lakota and with a working knowledge of French, Thai, Vietnamese, German, Italian and Portuguese. He's a dab hand at martial arts and does a fine line in anti-authoritarianism. He probably cooks, too.

Last year he was ranked at an impressive number four in Empire magazine's The 50 Greatest Comic Book Characters. Well, he's the best there is …