Ah, Wolverine - a word that sets a million fanboy hearts racing. Fanboys are shit and need to die.

Of course, the fact Hugh Jackman is Wolverine means... well, girls melt for him. Guys think he's awesome. Fanboys... are like lawyers. Not really human. Not worth the consideration of being human.

This film apparently needed ten minutes extra... it really didn't. It needed a STORY. Wolverine's story is one of the most tediously over covered parts of Marvel continuity these days. Given the fact his origins are SECRET... anyone that touched a comic book probably knows the Weapon X story by heart.

Sadly, even the recent animated Hulk vs. Wolverine managed to do a better job at the Weapon X story... and everything except Wolverine popping his claws back in the mid 19th century is skipped over. Granted, 150 years would be a fair bit to cover but there you go. After we get to Vietnam, gross insubordination leads to the an execution for Sabertooth and Wolverine - who are half brothers, by the way. So, we get to them joining the Weapon X project. Wolverine gets a bit bored of murdering people - he has apparently fought in a good portion of all major conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries... so, makes sense he might get bored of seeing his brother go crazy.

There's no real point getting to know his team mates because they're one dimensional and their screen time is easily counted in seconds. Get used to that. There are a whole gamut of mutant cameos that are short even by cameo standards. Even characters that are significant to the plot - like Gambit... who actually is essentially there PURELY as a plot device to move Logan from A to B - don't get a great deal of screen time. It's really all about Wolverine... like all the X-men films, really. Anyway, he hooks up with Silverfox and is a happy lumberjack - for... no reason but predictably... walking away from a secret black ops group doesn't work out too well and Sabretooth is murdering former team mates - but who REALLY cares. There's no investment in these characters... so, Sabretooth kills Silverfox and Wolverine goes to Weapon X to get adamantium so he can murder Sabretooth.

Then he goes to fight Sabretooth - fights Sabretooth... Then Weapon XI turns up. Yeah, not a real character from the comics... and he has a half dozen powers - oh and he's supposed to be Deadpool... even though Deadpool just has a healing factor... and the fight was fairly anticlimatic.

Then, naturally - Wolverine's memories get wiped by a magical plot device bullet. Silverfox dies... again - oh and Emma Frost is her sister... and another swathe of meaningless mutants... including Cyclops... for no real reason. They do nothing more than run out of the base after Wolverine frees them. So, Gambit comes back to pick up Wolverine - and Wolverine goes off to forget everything and wander around until the X-men film...

It's the problem all prequels suffer from... you always know where things are going to be come the end... so, we knew that Logan was going to end up having his memory wiped... ah well... That's really the least of the problems. The characters really just seem to orbit Jackman, pushing him in the direction he needs to go. The story is pretty weak and it's hard to give a damn about anyone other than Wolverine and maybe Sabretooth because no one is really around long enough to do more than show their abilities. Wolverine's claws look terrible throughout - it's very obviously they're CGI... Really, just a chronically weak story, pretty average fight scenes and just a slew of not very compelling cameos that amounted to little make this a pretty luke warm film. Fanboys might get hung up on some of the details... but really, they're not worth paying attention to compared to a number of rather more glaring inadequacies.