Te Kōrero
What happens on screen, and what happened behind the camera.
Hugh Jackman stands alone in a glacial valley. Snow-covered peaks stretch to the horizon. He's playing Wolverine, but the mountains behind him aren't the Canadian Rockies , they're the Southern Alps, and they look more Canadian than Canada itself. When Hollywood needed the Rockies on a budget, it discovered something unexpected: Queenstown's alpine terrain, shot through the right lens, was indistinguishable from North America's most iconic mountains , and considerably cheaper to access.
When Hollywood needed the Canadian Rockies on a budget, they came to Queenstown. X-Men Origins: Wolverine used Deer Park Heights (the same location LOTR used for Rohan) to double for Wolverine's remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness. The 360-degree mountain panorama from the summit: looking across Lake Wakatipu to the Remarkables: sold the isolation perfectly.
Skippers Canyon, the historic gold-mining gorge above the Shotover River, provided the mountain chase sequences. The narrow, winding road carved into sheer rock faces is one of New Zealand's most dramatic drives, though it requires a 4WD and nerves of steel. Several tour operators run guided trips into the canyon, which is how most visitors experience it: and for good reason: the road has no guardrails and drops of several hundred metres in places.

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“High-contrast action cinematography. Hood shot the wilderness sequences with anamorphic lenses to capture the full width of the Southern Alps, using the golden-hour light that Deer Park Heights is ...”



















