Some notes about Wolverine's bum

The blue-not-red carpet at Shaw House was about 80 metres long and the stars were in no rush to rush down it so they could get onstage and get this over with. On the contrary, they dawdled among the devoted masses who’d been waiting more than two hours in the heat, signing autographs and answering questions for reporters from around the world. Most of all, of course, they squeezed their heads into dozens of selfies.

Not even the scar on Jackman’s nose – a relic of his basal-cell-carcinoma removal on May 8, the stitches from which were removed at a clinic in Singapore that morning – could stop “Hollywood’s Mr Nice Guy” from posing with the fans.

The Singapore premiere was one of seven planned and followed New York, London, Moscow and Beijing. Stalk the stars next, if you want, to Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Melbourne, Australia – Jackman’s hometown. It’s quite a marathon for the three of them, who are coping without director Bryan Singer. Singer withdrew from the tour after being accused of child molestation (a crime that allegedly occurred 15 years ago).

For some reason the reporters at Thursday’s press conference in Singapore were keener on Wolverine’s bum than his nose. They wanted to know “how he prepared” for the nude rear shot in the movie. Dinklage leapt to his co-star’s rescue: “I was his body double for that scene,” he cracked (pardon the superfluous pun).

Jackman kept the laughter rolling: “It was a full-body naked scene and I just didn’t feel too happy with my derriere, so Peter stepped in. 

“There were a few lunges and squats done that morning!” Jackman said, referring to the physical conditioning that got his butt in such fine shape. “The day it was shot was May 21. It takes a long time to get into shape and you have to be ready on the day. So when the assistant director came up to me and said, ‘We’re going to move that scene back two weeks,’ I said, ‘Here’s the deal – you can do whatever scene you want on May 21, but I’m going to be naked! It could be on the plane or in the White House – I don’t care. I am going to take my clothes off and that is the only day I will have them off!’”

“Days of Future Past” is set in the near future, the world taken over by Sentinels, large, mutant-killing robots. Most of the beneficent superheroes are dead, so Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) sends Wolverine back to the 1970s, when the Sentinels were created, to convince the young Xavier (James McAvoy) and the other mutants, including X-Men archenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender), to stop them.