Hugh Jackman's mutant superhero emerges from an adamantium bath in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (20th Century Fox)

For superhero fans, Marvel's X-Men movie franchise has been an embarrassment of riches. X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand were each jam-packed with cool mutant heroes and villains – at times to the point of X-cess. Occasionally, you'd find yourself wishing that those plot-heavy films would spend a little more time on the individual X-Men and their histories.

This movie takes on the personality of Wolverine himself: it's gruff, laconic, macho. It's a showcase for he-man chest and facial hair.

Be careful what you wish for. X-Men Origins: Wolverine does just that, finally revealing the back-story to Hugh Jackman's mysterious, amnesiac beast-man. And it turns out the guy with the adamantium claws isn't that interesting after all. Gorgeous, yes – Jackman's newly bulked-up torso looks great in a lacerated T-shirt and you've gotta love that sexy scowl. But eye candy aside, there isn't much more to his character than what we discovered in the previous pictures.

This movie takes on the personality of Wolverine himself: it's gruff, laconic, macho. It's a showcase for he-man chest and facial hair. In the other X-Men films, Jackman's impulsive hero came up against the calm intellect of Patrick Stewart's benign Charles Xavier. He was forced to do some thinking. Here, he's just a brute warrior battling other brute warriors – chief among them Liev Schreiber as his arch foe, Sabretooth, who bids to outdo him in the claw and mutton-chop departments.

Those who haven't read the Marvel Comics, however, should get some satisfaction from the "origins" part of the story. The first three films kept offering us teasing glimpses into Wolverine's murky past and now, at last, we get a clear picture. Well, sort of.

Wolverine takes on the card-sharp mutant Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (20th Century Fox)

He was born James Logan Howlett, and later became known as Logan, and he's a heck of a lot older than he looks. As a boy in the 1840s, he fled his home in the Northwest Territories after killing his real father to avenge the death of his adoptive father. (Yes, it's confusing, and not fully explained.) Accompanying him was his big brother and fellow mutant, Victor Creed, the future Sabretooth.

As grown men, the pair fought side by side in the Civil War, First World War – in fact, every major U.S. war on through Vietnam. Their self-healing powers have presumably kept them young as well as immortal, while their mutations – Logan had retractable bone claws, Creed, a tiger's teeth and nails – made them formidable fighters. They eventually ended up as part of an elite squad of mutant soldiers, led by military scientist Col. William Stryker (Danny Huston). But Logan, who is more compassionate than his bloodthirsty bro, finally quit in disgust at their vicious tactics.

Most of this is covered quickly in the first 10 minutes of the film. When the plot proper kicks into gear, Logan is back in his native Western Canada, working up north as a cigar-chawing, axe-toting lumberjack and romancing a pretty First Nations schoolteacher named Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Stryker tries but fails to lure him back into service.

"Your country needs you," Stryker says.

"I'm Canadian," Logan snaps. (The filmmakers probably have no idea how funny that sounds to a Canadian audience.)

Then Creed shows up. He's gone rogue and is stalking his mutant comrades. To avoid spoiling the plot, let's just say he leaves Logan once again seeking revenge. Re-enter Stryker, happy to help out. He convinces Logan to submit to one of his Frankenstein-ish experiments. As we know from those repeated flashbacks in the earlier films, Logan has his entire skeleton bonded with the metal compound adamantium, making him even more powerful and turning his bone claws into mini-cutlasses.

There's a funny Edward Scissorhands moment early on, when Logan – now going by the name Wolverine – accidentally slices up a bathroom as he tries to get accustomed to his pointy new appendages. It's one of the few times this tough 'n' gruff movie cracks a smile. It could sure use some of the self-mocking humour that made last year's Iron Man such a delight, but screenwriters David Benioff (Troy) and Skip Woods (Swordfish) prefer to fall back on terse, action-script clichés.

Wolverine and his brother/arch-enemy, Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), face off. (20th Century Fox)

The director is South African Gavin Hood, who made the Oscar-winning township drama Tsotsi (2005) and the less successful Rendition (2007). Hood doesn't seem inclined towards a light touch, either; he's more concerned with delivering the obligatory testosterone thrills. It's no wonder Fox freaked when a workprint of the film was leaked to the internet, sans special effects – take away the action sequences, and there's not much left.

It's surprising, then, that those sequences aren't more creative. As Wolverine clashes with a succession of lesser mutants, en route to his showdown with Sabretooth, we're continually disappointed. His antagonists include the lightning-fast Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), lethal card-trickster Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) and the gelatinous Blob (Kevin Durand). Only the boxing match with the Blob is halfway memorable, and then only because Durand's fat suit is so convincingly repulsive.

There are some good-guy mutants, too, including the dematerializing John Wraith (an amiable Will.i.Am, of Black Eyed Peas fame), who serves all too briefly as Wolverine's sidekick. Too bad – our sullen hero could really use a comic foil. Ryan Reynolds seems ready to fill that role in the opening scenes. The Canadian actor plays a blade-slinging soldier as quick with his tongue as his samurai swords, who riles Wolverine with his endless wisecracks. However, he disappears from the movie early and doesn't return until the climax – by which time he's literally lost his smart mouth.

That climax, in which Wolverine and Sabretooth finally get a chance to out-slash and out-frown each other, is also a letdown. It takes place among the nuclear reactors of Three Mile Island, making this the third X-Men flick to end with a battle at a famous offshore facility – the others being Ellis Island (in X-Men) and Alcatraz (Last Stand ). Is that thematic consistency, or just a lack of imagination?

Speaking of themes, I miss the way the other X-films dealt tangentially with intolerance, co-existence and the pain of being an outsider. This prequel, in contrast, is all brawn and no brains, its hero motivated only by crude vengeance. True, it is showing us Wolverine before he joined Xavier's X-Men and began to gain a sense of greater responsibility. But that still doesn't make the movie anything more than a glorified slugfest.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine opens May 1.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.