X Men Origins: Wolverine

The fourth of the recent X-Men films, Wolverine takes a step back in time to fill in some gaps from X2. There are no great surprises for anyone who’s read the comics and there’s really not a lot of plot. More a sequence of set pieces and shots of Hugh Jackman looking to the heavens and roaring. Or squealing in his earlier incarnations.

Some characters such as Stryker, who appeared in earlier films (though set later in Logan’s life) are played by different actors but on the whole, the cast is OK. The special effects are pretty good in most places, which important as there’s very little else in the film to get excited about. Except maybe Mr Jackman in the buff (yes, Leah, I’m looking at you).

Plot-in-a-nutshell: young boy growing up discovers that he and his brother both have mutant powers. They run away, grow up and one goes bad. He hunts for the good one so the army can “help” him and they meet other mutants on the way.

No spoilers, but anyone who’s remotely familiar with the comics will know the story anyway. My main quibble is fanboy related. We all know Wolverine gets his invulnerability from Adamantium being bonded to his skeleton. We see the procedure in the film (and briefly in X2). Needles go in, squirty-squirty, out comes the superhero.

So if all they’ve done is plate his skeleton, how come his bony claws turn into sharp knives? Shouldn’t they just be shiny bony claws?

But I digress. The film’s entertaining enough for its running time, but it’s a little like X3 – all eye candy and little plot. The final battle scene has some rather nice destructions in it along the scale of the Golden Gate Bridge being ripped up but after all’s said and done there’s a lot more story in the X-Men canon that could have been used.