Wolverine has always been something of a feral character. However, a new behind the scenes video shows a bit more dedication to the grunting and screaming then we might have expected. The clip shows Hugh Jackman performing additional dialogue recording for a Logan action scene in which all he really does his breath heavily and scream into a microphone. Check it out.
While movies do their best to record their sound along with the action, it's not uncommon for the sound to not come through clearly enough the first time. This is especially the case with big action sequences. This leads to actors needing to go into a recording studio to do additional dialogue recording (ADR), also called "looping." That's what we're witnessing in the video that Hugh Jackman posted to his Twitter account. He just stands there and screams so that the film can get better audio of his grunts during Logan's big climactic action scene.
It's more than a bit funny to watch Hugh Jackman re-enacting all the action, complete with empty air claw strikes, inside the recording booth. How does one adequately direct an actor to give the proper grunting performance? One of the difficult parts of ADR is getting the lines you read to perfectly match the previously established lip movements of your character. Is that easier or harder to do when you're just trying to match up a scream?
The strangest part of the video may be seeing Hugh Jackman not looking particularly like Wolverine. As this recording session was done during post-production, likely several months after filming on Logan had wrapped, Jackman no longer needed to sport the long sideburns and facial hair. Somehow it just feels wrong to see a clean shaven Hugh Jackman going through the motions of slicing up bad guys.
Still, there's nobody that makes that distinctive Wolverine sound quite like Hugh Jackman. If there's one thing any future replacement will have to work hard to match, it's that. In many ways, Hugh Jackman never looked that much like the comic book character in many ways, but he certainly sounded like him.
Logan had a huge opening weekend that saw the new film bring in nearly $90 million in North America alone. That was well ahead of the projections for the film. Globally the movie has already brought in nearly $250 million which has already made Logan one of the top box office draws of the year.
While we'll never get a chance to hear Hugh Jackman grunt and scream like this again, we'll always have his body of work to go back to whenever we need a dose of rage filled noises. Nobody did it quite like the master. Logan is in theaters now.
