Leaving X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I had several lingering questions. The first was, “I waited through the credits for that?” The second, and more important was, “What exactly was the point?”

Wolverine is an exercise in futility; a movie with no stakes, no consequences, and no real thrills. It’s just an excuse to get Hugh Jackman back in his star-making role without having to pay the entire cast of X-Men. It’s supposed to shed light on his beginnings and explain how he became a killing machine. But the bulk of that was effectively covered in X2. Wolverine’s relationship with Stryker in X2 is more of a father-son deal. It implies their connection is fairly complex. But as Origins shows, Stryker’s just the guy who injects Logan with adamantium. Sure, he also orchestrates a fake marriage and steals his DNA, but if their relationship is (and should have been) the crux of Origins, it fails completely.

The other important relationship in the movie is between Logan and Victor Creed, his brother (Liev Schreiber). Unfortunately, there’s no motivation for Sabretooth, except that he likes to kill things. And when Wolvie objects to the killing of innocent things, Sabretooth takes it personally. Uh, okay. Wolverine does gain motivation when Sabre kills his wife, but that proves to be useless and false anyway. Again, exercise in futility. Especially when, at the end of the movie, Victor has a change of heart for the stupidest of reasons. (”Nobody kills you but me.”) Everything is painted in broadstrokes like this.

As I mentioned in Sticky Floor Friday, there are about 30 mutant jammed into this movie. And every single one of them is useless. Take Gambit, for instance. It really feels like there was a meeting where the producers said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had Gambit in this movie? I don’t care if the script is already written, just stick him in there somewhere!” I love me some Tim Riggins (Friday Night Lights fans represent!), but Taylor Kitsch is given nothing to do in his three scenes as Gambit. He doesn’t have a memorable introduction or a memorable line, and he exists based solely on his reputation from the comics. Anyone who didn’t know him before this movie won’t know him after.

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