clay face is out, and a movie about a shapeshifter naturally involves a decent amount of that. Once the film has its main players figured out, you can guess who Matt Hagen will be, but there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss face that would have added another side to Matt’s character.
That would be Aaron Paul as Jimmy “One Nut”, Matt’s father mentioned earlier in the film by a Gotham gangster who killed him. In the third act, Matt storms gangster Victor Szabo’s club, briefly becoming Jimmy long enough to distract that same gangster and punch him. Originally, we would have seen more of Paul in the film – director James Watkins told Entertainment Weekly that he would have featured in scenes reminiscent of Matt’s childhood in Gotham.
In these sequences, Paul would have played the eldest and violent Hagen, with Watkins explaining that the film almost explored “sins of the father” as a theme. Over time, he decided that revenge was “more universal and accessible”, citing films like John Wick And The equalizer as proof. For him, Matt “is an honest guy, so like everyone else, we all have primal impulses within us that can be dangerous, whether they’re impulses of love, or impulses of revenge.”
“It doesn’t matter if you have trauma or anything,” Watkins continued. “If we are wronged, we feel wronged and we all want to do something, but generally in life there is nothing we can do about it and we are helpless.”
As a result, Paul’s Jimmy was used to help Matt get revenge and “probably” prove that he is not his father. But if that’s Watkins’ intention, maybe clay face Should you have had at least one of these flashbacks to make this point?
Want more io9 news? Check out the best movies and TV shows to stream this month and all the upcoming sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books that should be on your radar.
Gn entert
