Viggo Mortensen reveals how his son schooled Bryan Singer on the X-Men

Never cross swords with a teenage comic book fan.

Bryan Singer learned that lesson to his cost at the hands of Viggo Mortensen's son Henry, when Mortensen was meeting Singer with a view to potentially becoming the new Wolverine.

Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Mortensen discussed taking Henry, likely around 12 at the time, along to his meeting with Singer as 'a good luck charm'.

But the young man's knowledge of the X-Men, and Wolverine in particular, took the meeting in an unexpected direction.

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“I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide,” Mortensen said. “In the back of my mind I was thinking he could learn something too, because I did let Henry read the script and he goes ‘This is wrong. That’s not how it is.’

“And [Henry] goes, ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t look like this.’ And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties. We walked out of there, and Henry asks if he will change the things he told him about, and I say, ‘I don’t think so.’ I’m not going to do it anyway, because I’m not sure I want to be doing this for years, and then a couple of years later I’m doing three Lord of the Rings, so who knows.”

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Mortensen adds that he ended up going cold on the part because of the 'commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over'.

Before Hugh Jackman was cast in the role, Russell Crowe was in line for the job, as was Dougray Scott, who was offered the job but had to turn it down due to his commitment to Mission: Impossible 2.

Crowe then recommended the then-unknown Jackman for the job, and the rest is history.

Jackman played Wolverine seven times in all, finally in 2017's Logan.

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