Now nine years on South African-born director Gavin Hood brings everyone's favourite X-Men figure back the screen in his own X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and the result is hugely disappointing.

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The film follows Logan (Hugh Jackman) from childhood and his relationship with brother and soon to be arch-nemesisses, Victor (Liev Schreiber) as they fight through 150 years of wars to the present day.

Fighting in Vietnam, the pair are soon recruited by the mysterious William Stryker (Danny Huston) to become part of a special team of mutants operating behind enemy lines in top secret.

Long after the group have disbanded, Logan is living a quiet life in Canada which is torn apart when his love is brutally murdered – leading him to volunteer to have his skeleton clad in super strong Adamantium by Stryker in a bid to track down her killers.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine suffers much the same fate as X-Men 3: The Last Stand, taking on too many characters with a plot too limp to sustain an interest in any of them.

The film takes comic book excess to a pointless extreme, and whilst the first two X-Men films carried interesting enough narratives of the struggle between humans and mutants to forgive some more unbelievable aspects, X-Men Origins has none of these traits.

The film's plot is vague and bewildering, and while the first half of the film follows an interesting curve of Logan's motivations to become Wolverine, these are ruined by the latter half – which backtracks wildly in an attempt to throw more characters and twists into the occasion, none of which work.

While the premise to provide a back story to one of the franchise's best and most loved characters seems a promising one, the result is an utterly disappointing mess of ideas – epitomised by a comment from one of Stryker's generals after Wolverine goes AWOL: "This is turning into a disaster."

Director Gavin Hood does little to pull on the reins throughout the film, with even the best action scenes spoiled by obvious CGI and ridiculous over acting.

The saving grace is Jackman, who puts in yet another great performance as the character, clearly showing he has made the role his own, putting in a performance balanced with savagery and comedic instinct.

Hopefully X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not prove to be the nail in the coffin for the franchise, but the film is destined to be a let-down for fans of the series.

2/5

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