Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine in this prequel to the highly successful X-Men trilogy. Charting the events that lead up to the Weapon X program and Woilverine’s amnesia, ‘X-Men Origins-Wolverine’ features a host of stars, including Liev Schrieber, Ryan Reynolds, Danny Huston and Dominic Monaghan.

The abundance of actors and characters is one of this movies biggest issues. For a film that’s supposed to focus on the origin of one of the X-Men’s most popular characters, this very much feels like just another X-Men movie. The film could really have benefitted from being stripped down to it’s core characters, without so many fan pleasing cameos.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun to see the Blob, Deadpool and Gambit on the big screen, I just feel that this really wasn’t the movie within which to do it. It doesn’t help that Deadpool is terribly handled and only has a passing resemblance to his comic equavilant.

Another of the issues is the fact that we’ve seen a fair amount of this story in the other X-Men movies. The Weapon X aspect was tackled in X-Men 2 and it does come across like we’re treading old ground with very little extra worth having.

The action sequences are good, though not overally spectacular, and the movie itself takes a little while to really get going. The finale is obviously designed to blow us away, but too much CGI and not enough emotional involvement makes it just a little ho-hum.

Jackman continues to shine as Wolverine and Lieve Schrieber does an excellent job as Sabretooth, completely wiping away memories of Tyler Mane’s piss-poor performance in the original X-Men movie. Ryan Reynolds does a commendable job as Deadpool at the start, but is left with poor material by the end of the film. I’d happily watch a Deadpool movie with Reynolds if the character was handled properly though.

If they strip the movie down to it’s bare essentials I’d welcome a sequel, but will not be watching Wolverine 2 if they do another hatchet job and throw in as many characters as they have this time round. This DVD is only worth recommending to completists.