Hugh Jackman recently did press for this weekend’s magician movie, The Prestige, and SciFi.com asked him about the negative reaction his next film, The Fountain, garnered at some festivals in the past few months. Hugh wasn’t at the festivals – he was doing The Boy From Oz in Oz, it turns out – but he has some opinions, especially about the angle that the media (gulp, I think that includes me) took with the story.
“The truth was, at that press screening, about 80 percent of the people gave it a standing ovation, and about 20 percent of the people booed… a fight began between the press. And two of them had to be pulled apart. And I thought, ‘That’s a great story. Why wasn’t that story told?’ That’s exactly how the movie, I think, will be seen."
I have been at many screenings where I wanted to beat the shit out of people, so I do believe that the disagreement he talks about came to blows.
Jackman echoed my thoughts about the people who booed being just plain offbase, by the way: “ [I] think regardless of what you think of the content, it’s visually amazing production-wise. I think it’d be hard to deny that it deserves attention, even if you don’t like the subject matter. But hey, that’s just me.” This is the main sticking point for me – even if you don’t like the movie it’s impossible to realistically deny that it looks amazing, that it’s a beautifully made movie.
Meanwhile I still stand strong saying that this is a film that should earn Jackman an Oscar nomination. Sadly, while he definitely deserves it, his actual odds will be decided by how the rest of the press reacts to the movie when they finally see it.