It’s sometimes strange to think that a cheerful, musical, Broadway performer is playing one of the great comic book bad asses of all time. But for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, it seems to come quite naturally. Whether it’s tap dancing or with a smile or gutting someone with a sneer, Jackman seems to be the actor of many realms. Sadly though his talents are wasted in the much anticipated yet highly disappointing prequel to the franchise that made him famous, ‘X-Men.’ ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ is an attempt to give viewers the back-story to the famous comic book character by giving us the answers to the gaping questions that have haunted him for three movies. Do we get our answers? Mostly. Are they satisfying? I suppose. Could they’ve have been answered in a much better manner? Definitely.

The films starts off literally from the beginning as we see the mutant Wolverine (now known as James Logan) as a little boy. Through a confusing and rather rushed intro about Logan killing his father, his brother Creed runs away with Logan and tells him that they have to take care of themselves now. The two grow up with remarkable healing abilities and animal like abilities (claws, sharp teeth, ect) which gives them unnatural long life. They survive through several wars and eventually are captured by the government to be used in a team of mercenaries. Though Creed (Liev Schreiber) seems to be more blood thirsty than Logan as Logan decides he wants nothing else to do with the mercenaries’ missions anymore.

This leads to Logan getting a new life in Canada, working as a lumberjack and living (married?) to the love of his life Kayla (Lynn Collins). But Creed finds Logan in his comfy life as is still peeved that he abandoned his troop, so Creed goes after Logan’s love which leads the now vengeance hungry animal to declare war on his brother. It turns out the mercenaries’ leader Will Stryker (Danny Huston) wants to help Logan on his quest for vengeance and offers him a rather strange opportunity. He says he will replace his bones antimantium metal that will also give him metal claws. Logan agrees but discovers that he was just a guinea pig for an even larger experiment, and that Stryker plans to erase his memory after the procedure is finished. Logan escapes and realizes now he’s on his own. The hunt for vengeance on his brother is now only his own.

To the films’ credit the story actually isn’t that bad, it’s twisted, gripping, and filled with action. Where the film falls apart is its execution. The editing is fast, the pacing is fast, and the time we have to identify with our characters is, you guessed it, fast. Every time we start to enjoy or really get to know someone they either die or disappear off the screen. In the opening we see Logan leave the mercenaries, literally in the next cut, he’s married. That’s simply too fast. The film has a lot of action and a lot of effects, but they don’t really matter if you’re not invested in what’s going on, and the film doesn’t give us any time to be invested.

There are little things as well that don’t add up, like how Logan’s brother will become Sabertooth in the first X-Men movie and yet they will never recognize one another. Some fans will enjoy seeing characters like Gambit, the Blob, and Emma Frost on the big screen, but they’re all glanced over, barely given much screen time. Jackman’s accent seems to be relatively thick this time around as well, almost as if they’re forgetting to tell him the character isn’t Australian. As an X-Men fan myself I’m glad I finally got to know the back-story, but I have to say I was probably happier not knowing it to begin with. If this was the execution of it, I would probably say the questions of Wolverine’s past were much more intriguing than the answers.

So who’ll like it? Die hard X-Men fans who simply want to know what happened in the past will be glad they finally got some answers, but will probably be disappointed by how not invested they were. I suppose basic action fans might enjoy some of the stunts as well.

Who won’t like it? People looking for the twisted, gripping drama that we’ve been promised for three movies.

My thoughts? I expected so much more from this movie. Though it isn’t technically horrible, it’s very blasé, and no movie about a man who has claws shoot out of his fists should be like that. A part of me is happy to see characters like Gambit get the film treatment, the amount you could’ve done with him or any of these characters is too large to comprehend. It’s hard to say whether or not the story of this film was strong or too strong. It’s very plot heavy with the characters coming in second, and a proper film should let the characters tell the story not the story lead the characters. Much like Wolverine’s memory, this is one film that will probably be very easy to forget.