As the X-Men story continues to unfold on the screen, I sense some sort of panicky scramble behind the scenes of this post-Bryan Singer franchise. Like, if you’re on an airplane, and you receive word that the pilot has just had a stroke, and somebody’s going to have to land the plane: who will it be? Who’s most qualified?

Why, it’s Gavin Hood– the director of Tsotsi! Thank goodness. I thought we were screwed.

Not that Bryan Singer’s take on the franchise and its characters was flawless, but Singer has a knack for this stuff, and knows how to modulate an action film without relying on too many clichés. His X-Men films felt confident and intact.

I feel like this film is continuing in the wrong direction on the precedent set by X3; Wolverine is liked by so many fans for the exact reasons that do not appear in this film. It feels like a two-hour trailer, or the flashy centerpiece of a film student’s resume portfolio; your favorite characters make cameos so that you can say, “Hey! There’s so-and-so!” Everybody looks good, but what’s holding it together? The action is, you know, action-y, but I don’t get the sense there are any real characters underneath it all.

I like Hugh Jackman. I think he looks the part, and I think he has a genuine concern for the material, but I can finally say confidently that he’s just somehow wrong for the character of Wolverine. Maybe it’s solely the script’s fault: he comes off as likeable, gallant, gullible, and soft. Yeah, that’s right– I called him soft. Sure, he cuts stuff up real good, but it feels tacked on by mandate of the script rather than an extension of his character. He seems a rube, the perpetual victim to the schemes of those around him. With as much as has been given to his back story (and by “back story,” I mean the events that comprise Logan’s life ten to fifteen years before the first true X-Men film) how can he still feel so shallow? The clever and abrasive anti-hero is absent; the animal nature that makes him such a favorite among fans seems like a hasty footnote more than a visceral reality to the character. I’m not remotely unnerved by Jackman’s Wolverine, and I think I should be. Oh– occasionally he roars and makes a mean face. That’s not quite going the distance.

The credit sequence offers great promise. It’s a striking (if gratuitous and odd) montage of the brothers Logan and Victor Creed (Sabretooth, played by Liev Schreiber, who makes for a pretty good villain) as they fight in various wars throughout history. The montage hints at the visceral possibilities of the story that are never again fully investigated, and I felt shortchanged. It does, however, beg the question, why were they fighting in all these wars? To satisfy bloodlust? Because they were bored?

This is one of many questions the film doesn’t answer. When it feels like it’s becoming mired in plot points it simply rushes headlong for the finish line; Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool is a victim of such clumsiness.

The X-Men universe is, in my opinion, probably one of the most difficult to wrangle successfully onto a screen. The cast is enormous, the mythology vast and difficult to pin down, and the stories seem as a whole less emotional than they are purely spectacular. Even saying that, the movie could use more spectacle, as some of the locations look either plain or cheap. Some of the effects, too, look canned. That shot where Wolverine’s walking away from the exploding helicopter– wow. Should have looked at that one again fellas.

Maybe I’ve sounded like this movie is a failure. It’s not; not really. It’s perfectly watchable action entertainment, and it’s certainly better than X3. But the flaws in approach have been building for a while now, and it’s clear that more could be done to fully realize these characters to their full potential.