Hugh Jackman's casting as Wolverine was hugely controversial at the time. The actor was primarily known for his roles in theatre and he was also considered way too tall to play the character by a lot of die hard fans. Even so, the Australian actor went on to define the character on the big screen, reprising the role a further seven times after first appearing in 2000's X-Men film.
However, one thing fans may not be aware of is that Jackman was not the first Australian to play the character. Although Wolverine has always been a Canadian in the comics and on the big screen, when it came for the X-Men to make their animated debut, the showrunners decided that he should come from a land down under.
Amazingly, the reason for Wolvie being Australian was supposedly due to the popularity of Australian film characters in the 1980s. The likes of Crocodile Dundee and Mad Max meant the US had Aussie fever, and according to Rick Holberg - storyboard artist on the failed Pryde of the X-Men pilot - Marvel had even planned to make Wolverine Australian in the comics, only for the planned storyline to never materialise.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
