X-Men Origins: Wolverine Review

For audiences, relationships with movie characters are like holiday romances: a few fleeting, fully realised moments together are enough. Nobody wants to see the baby photos or meet the parents.

Perhaps someone should have told George Lucas this before he showed Darth Vader as a teenaged Incredible Sulk. Or the makers of Hannibal Rising and Psycho IV: The Beginning before they replaced Anthonys Hopkins and Perkins with, respectively, a strange little Frenchman and that kid off E.T..

Although a judicious reboot worked for Bond and Batman, you get the sense the X-Men series is backtracking because all forward momentum has been exhausted. X-Men and X2, both directed by Bryan Singer, had steely cores of their own due to the array of personal demons on show, the haunting, holocaust-themed subtext and the presence of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, two of the greatest British actors alive. Though fun, Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand hit an immovable force not even Vinnie Jones's Juggernaut could bash through: the law of diminishing returns.