Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine just wants to be loved, sort of (Picture: AP)

Here’s how you make a film successful – get Hugh Jackman to run into the cinema just before it starts, let him high-five members of the audience and then introduce the movie with infectious passion and humour.

Those of us in the Empire cinema in Leicester Square tonight were lucky enough to experience such an introduction and it helped save The Wolverine from being a baffling and at times arduous watch.

Unfortunately for cinemagoers everywhere, I think Mr Jackman might not have time to introduce every showing of his new film, which goes on general release in the UK on Friday, meaning disappointing times may lie ahead for many.



The last Wolverine film was awful yet for some reason so many people were willing to forgive it, presumably due to their undying love for the character – let’s be honest, the chiselled beast with the claws can do no wrong.


Without ruining the new incarnation, director James Mangold has fallen into the same trap as all of those before him and tried to humanise the mutant with an adamantium skeleton.

Sure Logan hates it when Wolverine slips into his periods of blind destructive rage, but we don’t – that’s what we pay our money to see.

The reason people love Wolverine so much is because he’s a grumpy a***; that constant sulk helps make his humour so wonderfully dark and the violence so extreme.

He can’t be stopped and we love it.

But Hollywood needs you to believe he can be stopped, that it could all end at any time. You have to believe our hero is just like one of us.

And that’s the problem. He isn’t and when he’s depicted as such it just looks ridiculous (in one scene in The Wolverine he even runs for cover when it starts to rain for goodness sake).

Mangold would have been better off focusing on fixing his weakly written characters and constantly mumbled script rather than hunting for the hidden soul of Wolverine.

After all, it’s what he would have wanted – just to be left alone.