"He came straight from Australia, Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman!"
It was absolute pandemonium as the star of next year's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" walked onstage.
Jackman said he came straight from the airport to the Con, adding that they have just wrapped filming on the X-spinoff.
"I've been waiting to bring Wolverine to Comic-Con for years," Jackman said. "I owe you guys my career." He pointed out that the three X-Men movies never did huge presentations at SDCC for one reason or another and said there was no way he would miss it this time around.
Jackman then earned huge points with the gathering by not only lavishing praise on Wolverine co-creator Len Wein, and then ran offstage to shake Wein's hand, who was sitting up front. Is it any wonder fanboys love this guy?
Jackman told Wein "thank you for creating this character. It made my career," he said.
The Aussie actor talked about the film being action-packed and bad ***, and said to expect 'lots of berserker rage in this one.'
Ever the showman, the Tony-award winner asked the audience, "So you guys want to see some footage?" He pointed out again the film just wrapped production and a lot of the shots are finalized, but admitted there was no way he could come here empty-handed.
And then we saw footage of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." First impressions: Liev Schreiber looks insane as Sabretooth. He and Jackman appear to have lots of scenes together including a number of fights. There were several scenes that were instantly recognizable to longtime X-Men and Wolverine readers (including a scene from the Weapon X training program that looked right out of Barry Windsor Smith's classic origin story).We also saw a ton of mutants in the quick-cut trailer, including the Blob, Deadpool, and .... Um, what was his name? Oh, yeah.
GAMBIT!
The reaction to the Ragin' Cajun's appearance nearly blew the roof off Hall H. Jackman even commented on it afterward.
So ended the first panel of Comic-Con '08, and with it we have the first Big Splash of the show. Just like "Iron Man" kicked things off last year with a bang, Jackman's surprise appearance and the clips from "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" just set the bar for other acts to follow. They have their work cut out for them.
