clay face is out, and a movie about a shapeshifter naturally includes a decent amount of that. Once the film has established its main players, you can guess who Matt Hagen will end up being, but there is one blink and you’ll miss it face that would have added another facet to Matt’s character.
That would be Aaron Paul as Jimmy “One Nut”, Matt’s father referenced earlier in the film by a Gotham gangster who killed him. In the third act, Matt storms mobster Victor Szabo’s club, briefly Jimmy long enough to distract the same gangster and beat him. Originally, we would have seen more of Paul in the film – director James Watkins told Entertainment Weekly that he would go back to Matt’s childhood in Gotham in scenes.
In those sequences, Paul would have played the older, abusive Hagen, with Watkins explaining the film almost explored “sins of the father” as a theme. Over time, he decided that revenge was “more universal and relatable”, citing films such as John Wick in the The equalizer as evidence. For him, Matt is “a decent guy, then, like all people, we all have primal impulses within us that can be dangerous, whether it’s impulses for love, whether it’s impulses for retribution.”
“It doesn’t matter if you have a trauma or something like that,” Watkins continued. “When we are neglected, we carry this feeling of being wrong and we all want to do something, but generally in life we can’t do anything about it and we are powerless.”
As a result, Paul’s Jimmy was used to help Matt get his revenge and “probably” prove that he is not his father. But if that’s Watkins’ intention, maybe clay face should have had at least one of those flashbacks to make that point right?
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