Taylor Kitsch Talks About Getting His Cajun On For “Wolverine: Origins”
When it was announced that there would not be a follow-up to the cinematic DISASTER that was X-Men: The Last Stand, some fans, like me, lost hope that we would ever see some of our favorite X-characters brought to the big screen. The first three films kind of missed a number of big name team members and villains who might have been able to show up in another film. If the people making X3 hadn’t decided that rather than make a good movie they wanted to make a movie bad enough that they could try to save it with bad internet memes.
However, with the announcement of Wolverine: Origins, it seemed that we’d at least be getting more of Hugh Jackman as the amnesiac Candadian with a healing factor and a nasty set of claws. What we DIDN’T expect was that this movie was going to take steps to apologize for X3.
The film will bring in a few fan-favorite Marvel characters. One of these is Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth, being played by Ryan Reynolds. Which, if you’ve seen him in Blade Trinity as Hannibal King? You realize that yeah, he can probably pull this part off.
But then the big news came out: Gambit will finally make his big screen debut in the franchise, portrayed by Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch.
Well, in a recent interview he kind of turned me off by saying “[Gambit]’s just another comic book character that has kinetic energy.”
Okay, Taylor, we’ll let that one slide. Because you’re so very pretty.
When asked if he knew about the character beforehand, Kitsch replied “I knew of him, but I didn’t know the following he had, and I’m sure I’m still going to be exposed to that. I love the character, I love the powers, and I love what they did with him.”
AWESOME!
“I didn’t know that much, but in my experience, it was a blessing to go in and create my take on him.”
Er, good or bad? I mean, we all saw that when you let an actor take on a well established role themselves, they can make it their own and do it well. I’m mostly talking about Heath Ledger’s turn as The Joker in that little movie called The Dark Knight. I think some people on the internet have heard of it. But is Kitsch as good as Ledger was? I’m not saying he has to be the next Legder by any stretch of the imagination. But, can he make the character his own in a way that will satisfy the Gambit fangirls (TRUST ME, we’re crazier than you girls fawning over Edward Cullen. We’ve got a lot more canon and the ever looming Marvel-verse threat of “Meh, we’ll just kill him off for awhile” hanging over our heads. Oh, he’ll be back, they all come back. BUT WHEN?)…okay, more importantly, can he satisfy Marvel fans in general?
I’d be happier if he’d named story archs he’d read in preparation for the role. Considering that stars like Robert Downey Jr., Edward Norton and Christian Bale all did their homework while preparing for their roles in Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and the new Batman franchise, respectively, why hasn’t Hollywood learned that when you get a role in a comic movie, you immediately start looking at back issues to see who you’re playing and what their history is?
More importantly: Can he do the Cajun accent? Could he just called me “petite” once to see if he’s got it down?
Oh well, as I’ve said before, this film could be 90 minutes of Jackman, Reynolds and Kitsch walking around without their shirts off and I’d be appeased. But I’m very, very shallow in that way. And the bootlegged version of the trailer from ComicCon this year looks pretty bad ass.
