'Eye in the Sky' Director Gavin Hood Talks About the Mistakes of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'

When director/actor Gavin Hood presented his new film “ Eye in the Sky ” at Miami Dade College’sMiami International Film Festival earlier this week, he didn’t expect to take theconversation on a tangent about what went wrong with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” But, as he said more than once thatevening, he felt obliged to the aspiring filmmakers he knew were in the audience.

The event was more than the Florida premiere of Hood’s

latest film, it was also a career tribute, one of four at this year’s 33rd annual edition of the festival. Before bringing Hood up for the conversation

portion of the tribute, Miami International Film Festival programming director

Jaie Laplante took the stage at the Tower Theater in Miami’s historic Little

Havana neighborhood. He spoke of Hood’s keen eye for camera placement, and then

it was into clips of “Rendition,” “Wolverine,” “Ender’s Game” and Hood’s career-making Oscar winner “Tsotsi.” After the scenes rolled and the

sold out theater applauded, Hood was brought on stage.

READ MORE: Immersed in Movies: Gavin Hood Talks the End-Game Zeitgeist of ‘Ender’s Game’

He said of the clips, “I find all this a little unsettling

but thank you…I’ve never had to sit over an audience and look at those reels

and try to make sense of them.”

It seems watching the clip from “Wolverine,” a simple, dialogue-driven shot-reverse-shot repartee

between Daniel Henney, Danny Huston and Hugh Jackman, triggered something in

Hood.

Laplante asked about what happened when Hollywood came

calling, after he had won the Oscar. Hood framed his response as a warning to

aspiring filmmakers. “When ‘Tsotsi’

happened, the best we were hoping for, frankly, was to get the film released in

our own country. It was made for a very low budget, and so the event that

followed, including the Oscar, were not something you planned, and they came,

frankly, as a huge shock, and I thought we were very lucky, and it could have

been somebody else, but when it happened, Hollywood has a strange sense of

calling, and when you’re young, you have a strange way of being flattered by

that call, for good or bad.”

He explained that his first Hollywood film, ‘Rendition,’ was a “very good

experience.” He said the studio left him

alone to do his own thing, and even though Meryl Streep played a supporting

role, it was still a lower budget film that wasn’t star-driven. However, he

said the stakes were much higher with “Wolverine.” He said it was Jackman who approached him to make the movie.

“He’s a great guy

to this day,” said Hood of Jackman, “and he’d seen ‘Tsotsi,’ and he really felt that he wanted to try to make this film

about a guy who is a superhero, but doesn’t really like what he does and has

all this post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The film ultimately became something else, Hood said. The

reasons for it were plethora, including having to deal with stunt casting, a

second unit director who didn’t match his style (“I felt the action looked like

‘80s action”), and the writers’ strike that left the director with an

unfinished script and facing a looming, fixed release date. He felt he had little control. Characters

like Gambit and Deadpool were written in, and even the title was changed on him,

which Jackman broke to him after the actor stumbled across the change on IMDb.

It was a bit of a rant for Hood that took everyone by

surprise. He paused several times to admit that he had never been as honest as

this about the making of the film, but he felt beholden to the aspiring

filmmakers in attendance.

“I’m very grateful because I managed to buy a house

off that film, so don’t get me wrong,” he said at one point. “I own the

mistakes I made. I learned a great deal, but I hope that the film tonight is

more in my wheel house. If you don’t like the film, you can tell me after. I

come back for Q&A, and I have no one to blame. It comes from working with a

writer who I loved, prepping it with producers who really wanted to make the

same movie, and that’s the Hollywood story.”

READ MORE: Watch: Aaron Paul and Helen Mirren are the ‘Eye in the Sky’ in Pulse-Pounding Trailer

It was the first question of the night, and his answer got a

huge round of applause. It was a bit of a show stealer for the evening, but it

also prepared the audience for a director ready to express deep passion about

his work. Indeed, he feels quite strong about “Eye In the Sky,” set for commercial release this Friday, March 11.

It examines what it takes to fire a hellfire missile from a drone during a “prosecution mission” of several terrorists, through various points of view,

from intelligence on the ground to the offices of decision makers to the pilots

at the trigger.

Though Hood was only scheduled to appear in conversation on

stage before the start of the film, he announced that he would come back for a

Q&A afterward. After the intense 102-minute movie, Hood received a long

round of applause that he expressed his gratitude for. He clearly seemed

concerned about the film’s reception.

The film features constant legal and moral debates, as the

clock ticks before any action is taken, which proves to be quite devastating.

He mentioned how his experience as a lawyer has long influenced his

movie-making and revealed that he had consulted with military advisors for this

movie. One of those advisors was a drone pilot who was on set with Aaron Paul

and Phoebe Fox, who play the pilots who not only have terrorists in their

sights but also an innocent child selling bread.

Hood said the advisor was key on both a technical level but

also in helping the actors understand the psychological ramifications of being

a trigger man in this scenario.

“Drone pilots are suffering twice as much

post-traumatic stress disorder as fighter pilots, and people are quite

surprised by this,” revealed Hood. “What the research shows — and speaking to

our military pilot, he would have done both — he said when he was a fighter pilot

dropping payloads over Iraq, he said, yeah, you were a little nervous, but

there wasn’t a great chance of getting shot down. You drop your payload and

then leave. You’re not compelled to go back and stay and look back…The fact

that his life isn’t at risk [as a drone pilot], and he’s in a combat zone is

causing some kind of weird disconnect, and also, oddly, a feeling of guilt

because there’s something about being face to face with the enemy with a sword

that’s honorable.”

Despite the film also having the distinction of featuring

Alan Rickman in his final role, as a British general who is playing an

intermediary in the chain of decision-making, the actor was never brought up in

the Q&A. Hood only referenced his character as a person who seems to do a

very good job of compartmentalizing his job and feelings. In the end, the film

did its job to get the audience thinking about what was on screen and not about

his past with what he called “the Hollywood machine.”

Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.