‘Wolverine’ offers questions, few answers

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is the first action blockbuster of the year. For that and several other reasons, it’s bound to make a lot of money.

Such is the fate of even an average movie that opens the summer movie season, has ties to one of the highest-grossing movie trilogies in Hollywood history and boasts some fairly effective computer graphics.

And you could argue that “Wolverine” isn’t even average. I heard more than one 20-something leaving the theater call the film “horrible.”

I wouldn’t go that far. But it is only a shadow of the better of the three “X-Men” films.

Wolverine, or Logan, always has been my favorite X-Man. And as I pointed out in a previous post, it’s one of the few roles that Hugh Jackman plays well. But despite the “Origins” part of the film’s title, this Gavin Hood-directed effort offers many more questions than it does answers.

Our story begins in 1845. Why? No reason given.

And that’s just the beginning. Sickly James and his brother-with-an-attitude Victor live in a mansion of their …. father? Or is he? If so, then who is the guy who shows up with a shotgun?

James, suddenly not so sickly, and Victor end up running away. Only to, it seems, get involved in every American war of the next century or so. Even stranger, it seems they can’t be killed. Why? And why do they age only to a certain point and no older. (As adults the brothers are played by Jackman and Liev Schreiber , respectively.)

Even stranger, why do they wear such strangely shaped facial hair?

After being bad boys in Vietnam – yeah, Victor, at least, may be the first and foremost crazed Vietnam vet – they team up with Major (later Col.) Stryker (Danny Huston). Things go from bad to worse as the brothers and a bunch of other misfits – mutants, of course, for those of you who are X-Men initiates – spread their My Lai Massacre ways to Africa.

What are mutants? And why do they have special powers, ranging from speed and strength and apparent immortality to other far more interesting skills? No clue.

Africa is where James, or Logan as the Major calls him, decides to bug out. Wanton killing isn’t for him. And so he walks to, uh, British Columbia? From Africa?

There he manages, on a salary of $18,500 a year, not only to build a picturesque cabin on a mountainside but also to attract the attention of a fairly attractive schoolteacher (Lynn Collins). Must be the whiskers.

Of course, this is Jackman, whose build would make an in-his-prime Sylvester Stallone look like D.J. Qualls . So I guess here, at least, the question of how Logan can manage to score chicks has an obvious answer.

But this being an “X-Men” adventure, happiness can’t last. Pretty soon, Logan is again alone. But now he’s on the trail of his brother, a hunt that teams him – again – with Stryker. And which transforms him into Wolverine, the man with the skeleton of adamantium, the hardest metal known to man … and, apparently, superman.

From there, though, the questions just continue to pile up: How is it that Logan, above all others, can withstand the procedure? Who is Gambit, and why doesn’t he just land his plane instead of making Logan jump from it? How is it that the man with a skeleton of metal doesn’t just sink and drown? Why is it that an adamantium bullet won’t kill but will wipe out all memory?

Furthermore, who figured out that beheading a mutant is the one way to kill him/her? What is this, “Highlander” ?

And whose idea was it to give Ryan Reynolds such crappy makeup?

I could go on. But what would be the point?

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” will no doubt be just enough for some moviegoers. Some fanboys, maybe. And others for whom a few fights and neato explosions are the only reason for watching movies anyway.

But most of the rest of us are bound to wish that Hood and his crew had worked just a bit harder on a script that actually tried to answer a few questions instead of simply piling them up.

I imagine they ran out of money. Too much spent on the hairdresser crew, most likely. Whisker wranglers, after all, don’t come cheap.