Here at hecklerspray we’d never dream of gossiping or making crude or childish remarks about celebrities or their sexual preferences.  The depraved acts we’ve considered in the bedsit alone (and not counting the ones we’ve scheduled for the Christmas party) are enough to make any sane person question their sexuality, so we’d never judge anyone.

But then again, we are also enormous liars who will make fun of anyone silly enough to be famous for a living.

WE HEARD THAT WOLVERINE LIKES THE  WARM TOUCH OF SOMEONE EQUALLY HAIRY AND MALE!!

It’s true, the rumours that Hugh Jackman is gay have been around for a while, but it seems that his wife of 15 years, Deborra-Lee Furness, has decided to dismiss these rumours publicly, making us all feel like terrible people for feeding the evil gossip machine.

She roared:

“The line I heard was, ‘Wolverine? Who would have thought?’ Hugh and I don’t pay much heed.”

“It’s kind of tragic that these people have nothing better to do than gossip about people they don’t know.”

We feel it’s more two-faced and tragic to gossip about people we do know, so we’re not falling for that one.

But don’t worry, she still fancies the arse off him.

“I do think he’s the sexiest man alive, and I’d hope every woman would think her husband was.”

Oh shut up. You’re married to Hugh Jackman. What would you know?

“I was always saying I’d marry somebody sensible, like a stockbroker. So he dresses up for that fantasy for me occasionally.”

Brilliant idea. Divert attention from the gay rumours by telling the world your husband sometimes wears a suit and acts like a prick. Hugh Jackman also insists he’s not gay.

In 2009 he said:

“I’d be happy to go and deny being gay, because I’m not. But by denying it, I’m saying there is something shameful about it, and there isn’t anything shameful.

“The questions about sexuality I find more in America than anywhere else, because it’s a big hang-up and defines what people think about themselves and others.”

We’re hoping at some point he’ll also deny dressing up like a stockbroker. This is just wrong.

So there you have it. We have no idea if Hugh Jackman is gay or straight as we’re not all hung up about it like those Americans but while you make up your own sweet minds, here’s a nice video of Hugh.

Enjoying being ‘theatrical’ and being in musicals and that.

WHAT?

It must be rotten being Hugh Jackman. Everyone thinks you’ve got metal claws coming out of your knuckles and you have a face like a leper’s sandal. Still, at least he’s obscenely wealthy eh? What could possibly worry him?

Well, for your information, Hugh is very worried, actually.

By what  you don’t ask? We’ll tell you anyway. He’s frightened of online imposters. Not sharks. Not being stabbed through the rib cage with a pitchfork. He’s frightened of people playing make believe.

Of course, this is massively ironic given that Jackmanator is a man who is paid to pretend to be someone else.

Either way, he’s signed up to Facebook and Twitter (apparently – we really can’t be bothered checking because it’ll invariably be a steady stream of vaguely sanctimonious nonsense and self-help quotes) in a bid to tackle the scourge that is impostery.

The X-Men (he’s not been in anything else, ever) star says:

“There are 360 fake Hugh Jackmans on Facebook. My friends think they are conversing with me but they’re not.”

Apparently, friends were alarmed when Jackson seemed rather engaging and interesting when talking on Facebook chat.

“The idea of people pretending to be me and others believing it is me is frightening. I want to encourage the impersonators to have a life.”

Presumably, he wants their lives to start with buying a ticket to watch Real Steel, Jackman’s latest movie, which sees the actor pretending to train robots to punch each other.

Brilliant.

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Fanboy idol Hugh Jackman knows when he puts on the mutton chops that he is onto a winner.

So much so that, now he’s back again as the Gillette razor clawed Wolverine, he’s barely made any effort to make this entry stick out from the rest of the franchise.

Let’s get one thing straight: This is better than X3: The Last Stand. Watching a lobster snip at your genitalia is a less gruelling experience. Not to say that Wolverine is a good film – not when it throws franchise continuity around with such reckless abandon. If you like Bryan Singer‘s two-stroke masterclass in comic book movie-making, then you may feel slightly bemused after this film is finished chewing up the established Wolverine facts then spitting them out, forming a somewhat hairy mess.

This is, literally, the full origin story (don’t mention Japan); we see him as a bone-clawed child (Original trilogy continuity error #1: He was given claws according to X1 and 2), then whipped through every war before joining a crime fighting group in Africa. These early scenes are the most enjoyable, a miniature team of X-Men raiding a base and using all their powers is enthralling and exactly the type of dynamic a film like this needs. The bunch of mutants features a decent who’s who as well: Dominic Monaghan is great but all too brief in his Electro-like appearance. Ryan Reynolds notches another superhero movie on his bedpost and makes a good wise-cracking Deadpool and then there’s Will.i.am, some sarky Asian dude and a bloke who has popped up in Lost.

The team is lead by a young Striker (Danny Houston) – of whom you know from X2 as Weapon X leader – here representing none of the subtle repression of a man scorned by mutant atrocity on his family. Now he is a panto villain. One that looks like a young Gordon Brown, too. Joining him on the evil side of the fence is Sabretooth, once a little furry package in the first X-Men, now shaven down and possessing the ability to string sentences together. Here as Wolverine’s brother, he runs around killing people and little else. Shame, as Liev Schreiber is a decent character actor and playing a thug-for-hire role really doesn’t provide anything for him to grab hold of.

This film is called Wolverine, though, and any team angle is soon dropped to follow the hardest man in a vest since John McClane. Reliable as Jackman is, this is just a retread, trying so hard to explain everything that it feels redundant, like a greatest hits collection – getting his leather jacket, bike, claws, memory erased, bouffant etc.

When it isn’t concerned with doing this, it’s packing in the mutant cameos. As said before, the X-mercenaries make fleeting appearances and joining them is baby Cyclops, Prof. X, Blob and fan favourite Gambit.

Taking a step aside for a moment to discuss Gambit; on any level of conception it’s hard to understand the casting of the role. Not being a 33-year-old virgin, our X-Men knowledge is minimal, but from what we remember of the guy, he was a slick rogue with an edge. Not a blank-faced OC extra with as much charisma as a pickled onion.

The film is an average romp, having none of the intensity nor the atmosphere of Singer’s films but, thankfully, not being the hyperactive, overcooked turkey of X3. Jackman wears the role like a comfortable slipper but the script and idea are unfocused and what could have been a dark, distinctive film ends up repeating much of what has come before and becoming cameo reliant.

On Blu-Ray the film is packed with some great extras; a Stan Lee conversation, deleted scenes, commentaries and behind the scenes features. Along with the excellent picture and sound on Blu-Ray, it also comes with a copy on DVD and a digital copy for your ipod – a nice little package.

Wolverine is a neutered film, trying to appeal to kiddies can never make this mutant go full berserker. Unfortunately, this means that much like the rest of the film, it never gets its claws deep enough into the really good stuff.

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Here’s a killer pitch for you. James Bond and Wolverine team up to fight crime together. Sounds good, huh?

Wait, we’re not finished. James Bond and Wolverine team up to fight crime together… within the strict confines of the law. And nobody kills anyone. And nothing explodes. And there’s probably a lot of crying. And it’s not even a film, it’s a play. God, we take it all back. This is a rubbish pitch.

But it’s going to happen. Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are going to star in that exact play on Broadway. Not James Bond and Wolverine. Sorry.

Right now, both Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are at the top of their powers. Daniel Craig has transformed James Bond from an entertainingly suave spy into a nightclub bouncer who punches stuff for a living, and Hugh Jackman has transformed Wolverine from an entertainingly wisecracking superhero to a wimp who can’t go any longer than four seconds without dropping to his knees and shouting “Nooooo!” at the sky. They’re both remarkable achievements.

So what’s next for them? Why, isn’t it obvious? It’s the theatre. After all, the theatre is where stars of the big screen go to reconnect with their craft, slowly realise that they get more money and better food on films and then pretend that they’re dying of a sushi overdose so that they can cut their run short and bolt off back to Hollywood. Or, if they’re uncomfortably young, it’s where they can get their genitals out night after night.

And best of all, Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are doing it together, as AP reports:

Nothing has been officially confirmed but two of Hollywood’s reigning hunks may be paired next fall on Broadway in “A Steady Rain,” a two-character drama by Keith Huff. The actors are set to star in the play about two Chicago policemen, friends since childhood, whose lives take divergent paths after an unnerving incident. The Chicago Tribune called the play an “exceptionally rich, gritty and emotional drama.”

We’ve got high hopes for A Steady Rain. The combination of Hugh Jackman’s tested Broadway popularity and the instinctive masculinity of Daniel Craig coming together in a haunting play by an exciting new playwright promises to provide audiences with a night of electrifying intensity. In particular, we’re looking forward to seeing the songs This Steady Rain Has Got Me Moist, (I’ll Show You My) Warrant To Boogie and I Killed And Ate My Vietnamese Nephew Because I’m A Cannibalistic Serial Killer, which – SPOILER ALERT – is performed from inside an enchanted flying car.

So good luck to Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman. We hope that A Steady Rain runs and runs and runs. Admittedly that’s because Wolverine and the last James Bond film were so terrible that we’d like for neither of them to ever star in another film ever again, but shut up.

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Do you want the good news or the bad news? OK, the good news. Star Trek is the first Star Trek movie in ages that’s any good.

The bad news? The bad news is that, because Star Trek is the new number one movie at the weekend box office, Simon Pegg is doomed to spend the rest of his life answering impenetrable questions from stinking spods while harbouring a festering resentment towards Chris Pine’s growing messiah complex.

But still, Star Trek is the new weekend box office movie and that’s good. They’ll get to shout “KHAAAAAN!” in the next one.

Of course Star Trek is the top movie at the weekend box office. Of course it is. It hasn’t just picked up some of the best reviews of the year so far, but it’s also been directed by JJ Abrams who understands how these things should work.

True, based on his work on Lost, it means that the next five Star Trek sequels will get sillier and more incomprehensible and Jim Robinson from Neighbours will somehow become a leading character and there’ll be a bloody statue that pops up from nowhere and Rose and Bernard will just disappear without explanation and WHY WON’T ANYONE SAY WHERE ROSE AND BERNARD WENT, HUH? Where did they go? You bastard.

Here’s the weekend box office top five…

1 - Star Trek (Not really a trek, though, is it? Make it more like a trek next time, Abrams. Sensible walking shoes and Ordinance Survey maps and flasks of orange juice and inescapable boredom please) $72,500,000

2 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Note to online pirates: if any of you plan on leaking any more summer blockbusters to the internet weeks before its release date, could you please make the next one a good one? Thanks, love hecklerspray) $27,000,000

3 - Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past (Why are they all ghosts? Because they killed themselves. They killed themselves because Matthew McConaughey was their boyfriend and he’s a massive turdface. That’s why) $10,450,000

4 - Obsessed (It’s great that Beyonce is in a film called Obsessed, because people really are obsessed with her. It’s why the other two members of Destiny’s Child are about to star in a film called Vague And Constantly Diminishing Awareness Of Your Existence) $6,600,000

5 - 17 Again (Narrowly edging out Next Day Air, the new movie starring that person from Scrubs. No, not that person from Scrubs. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. That one) $4,405,000

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10 – So now we know why onions make you cry – Welovevegetables

9 - Do you have £500 and are insultingly stupid? Then why not buy this – Domesticsluttery

8 - A very good site that you should all read – Thewaterboarder

7 - The ugliest mobile phones of all time! – PCWorld.

6 – Intense-looking table tennis players. You’re welcome – Bestweekever

5 – A breathtaking array of songs that sound like other songs – PopEater

4 - A rather wonderful alternative celebrity richlist – Scumbagmillionaire

3 – Eminem‘s still doing that ‘one happy song/ one sad song’ shtick, then – Popsugar

2 - Duelling banjos with handfarts. Yes, you read that correctly - Gorillamask

1 – Wolverine in a minute and a bit. Better than the real film, because it’s shorter…

Finally.

An X-Men movie that doesn’t rely on special effects ejaculation or a star studded cast. Marvel appears to be getting things right with this gritty prelude – it actually has a script!

Follow Wolverine through a life of turmoil and endless combat. Watch him executed, resurrected and turned from man to beast as he battles with Sabretooth, Gambit and hordes of private soldiers.

With adamantine rage, Hugh Jackman rips the Wolverine saga from the comic book (with a few changes) and brings this legendary chapter of the X-Men mythos to the screen. Major William Stryker (Danny Huston) assembles a hand-picked group of mutants to carry out special missions, dubbing the project ‘Weapon X’. Wolverine refuses to join until his brother (later Sabertooth) murders his woman. Wolverine goes all out for revenge and lets Stryker turn him into a weapon. A myriad of old favourites are included: Cyclops, Agent Zero, Silver Fox and Blob join the ruckus making Wolverine the violent superhero orgy that everyone was waiting for.

[story by Alex de Moller]

If you like looking at the hands and feet of Hollywood stars, there’s only one place to go – a mental hospital.

Or Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. But a mental hospital would probably make more sense, you creepy sod. Anyway, fans of seeing what some famous people’s hands look like have now got another reason to visit Grauman’s Chinese Theatre – because now they can see what Hugh Jackman‘s hands look like.

Because now Hugh Jackman’s hands and footprints have been immortalised in concrete there, alongside the notice ‘HUGH JACKMAN (you know, Hugh Jackman from Wolverine. Wolverine. It came out in 2009. No? Anyone?)’.

Anyone visiting Hollywood for the first time will have several destinations on their must-see list. The Hollywood sign, Universal Studios and, for anyone who likes being harassed by awful people dressed as mutanty versions of semi-beloved animation characters, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

That last one’s just become a little more must-see, though, because now – alongside said mutants, hopeless souvenirs that you wouldn’t give to your worst enemy and pickpockets – there’s Hugh Jackman’s handprint. Yesterday Hugh Jackman became the latest star to be immortalised outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, alongside such luminaries as the cast of Ocean’s 13 and Jean Simmons. No, not Gene Simmons. Jean Simmons. She was in Black Narcissus. Anyway, Reuters reports:

“It’s a very humbling moment as an actor to be here. You look down at the names, from Fred Astaire to Cary Grant, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, and to think that those people have been immortalized and pretty soon I’ll be putting my hands in wet cement,” Jackman said, before planting his palms in the concrete.

Hugh Jackman is in impressive company there, we’ll admit. Fred Astaire, who popularised dance on film. Steve McQueen, who redefined masculine cool throughout his career. Clint Eastwood, who’s arguably one of the most famous men of the last century. Hugh Jackman, who’s made a stupid film about a man with spiky hands blowing all sorts of crap up. Immortal, the lot of them.

Actually, we’re just kidding. Hugh Jackman deserves his place in the concrete – in the last 12 months he’s been named as the sexiest man in the world and has hosted the Oscars, and right now he’s on the brink of releasing what could be one of the year’s biggest movies.

Plus there’s a pretty good chance that Hugh Jackman will go down in history as the first actor whose career has been completely derailed by online leaks, and so it’d be better to get him now before he chops his hands and feet off in a flurry of drunken, destitute self-pity. It’s just more practical this way, trust us.

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Tune in, turn off.

Folded:

• Eagle Eye on DVD (couldn’t be any dumber if Shia LaBoeuf was wearing Bermuda shorts, but it is fun)
• Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood (delivers all its title promises)
• Easter (not the being able to eat chocolate like you can do every day of your life, more the time off. Time off is nice)
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (no, of course we’ve not watched it, but some people who have say it’s pretty darn good)
• New series of The Inbetweeners (sod Skins. If this doesn’t take you back to being a teenager then you weren’t a teenager)

Creased:

• Why do letters from your bank always arrive on a Saturday? (because they want to ruin your weekend, that’s why)
• Domino’s piri piri pizza (it’s piri piri everything at the moment and it tastes like someone’s spilt an entire spice rack into a bottle of ketchup)
• Baby Mama on DVD (even Tina Fey can’t save this empty movie about absolutely nothing from being as boring as hell)
• Taylor Swift (pick a reason)
• People who still get stoned all the time (just grow up and be miserable like the rest of us)

You know who this Wolverine leak has hit hardest? Will.i.am. Everyone knows that he’s bad in it before it’s even out.

Second-hardest? Probably Hugh Jackman, the man who produced the movie, stars as Wolverine in the movie and is prepared to fling himself out of a helicopter to promote the movie. Will.i.am hasn’t commented on the Wolverine leak – the law states that he has to wait for Fergie to sing about her knockers for two verses before he’s allowed to speak at any given moment – but Hugh Jackman has.

And apparently Hugh Jackman isn’t too happy. Who’d have guessed?

This Wolverine leak has done no good for anybody at all. Roger Friedman’s lost his job because of it, 20th Century Fox stand to lose millions of dollars because of it, there’s less likely to be a spin-off sequel about the origin story of Bad Gandalf because of it and Will.i.am will probably never get another acting job because of it. Alright, so maybe not all the consequences of the leak are so terrible in retrospect.

A million people are said to have downloaded Wolverine so far, which puts the movie at exactly the point it didn’t want to be – yes, a million downloads equates to a potentially huge financial loss but, in terms of views, this only makes Wolverine roughly as popular as a YouTube video of kitten with a wellington boot stuck on its head. Whichever way you look at it, things aren’t looking good.

And Hugh Jackman knows this only too well. He had so much riding on Wolverine – not only was it going to prove that he could carry a big summer blockbuster, but it was also going to banish any lingering suspicions that – following all his flapping and squealing at the Oscars this year – he was gay. Or at the very least it’d make everyone think that he was an angry gay instead of a musical theatre gay. Whatever that means.

And now Hugh Jackman has spoken out about the Wolverine leak. As you may have guessed, he’s not thrilled about it – especially since it’s put the kibosh on his plans to promote Wolverine in such a moronically spectacular way that he was only a phantom pregnancy or two away from straying into Tom Cruise territory. People reports:

“It’s a serious crime and there’s no doubt it’s very disappointing – I was heartbroken by it,” Hugh Jackman said Wednesday about last week’s Internet leak of a work print of his X-Men Origins: Wolverine. “Obviously people are seeing an unfinished film. It’s like a Ferrari without a paint job.”

You can’t blame Hugh Jackman here – all he wants is for people to enjoy Wolverine the way it was meant to be enjoyed – in an overpriced, uncomfortable seat screwed to a surface that’s been covered with discarded gum, surrounded by 150 teenagers who all seem to be texting each other at the same time and then reading those texts back at the top of their voices. He’s an idealist, what can we say?

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This Wolverine leak is worse than anyone could have possibly feared – word has it the film’s actually quite good.

It’s a disaster! Wolverine was supposed to be terrible from start to finish, but now word’s got out that it might not be a relentlessly dismal parade of cinematic diarrhoea that’ll make you consider actual suicide, and heads are going to roll for it.

First up is Fox’s Roger Friedman, who positively reviewed the leaked copy of Wolverine and got the sack for it. Let that be a lesson – if you’ve watched Wolverine online, make sure you tell everyone it’s crap.

When Wolverine was leaked online recently, it kickstarted a chain reaction of events that could culminate in a genuine disaster. Are we talking about 20th Century Fox losing so much money from the leak that it goes under? No. Are we talking about the implementation of new Draconian internet laws? No. Are we talking about the fact that, with Wolverine hobbled by the leak, Transformers 2 will end up being the biggest movie of the year by some margin? Yes, yes we are. Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

But that’s something to worry about further down the line. In the meantime, let’s focus on Roger Friedman from Fox, who’s just been sacked for reviewing the movie online. BBC News reports:

Fox News said that the company’s representatives and Friedman “mutually agreed to part ways immediately”. It said that Friedman’s behaviour was “reprehensible” and that it “condemned this act categorically”. The journalist wrote in his column on Thursday that downloading the 20th Century Fox film was “so much easier than going out in the rain”.

Yeah, and you know what else is easier than going out in the rain? Choking to death on some coins. You heard it here first, folks – watching Wolverine is about as fun as choking to death on some coins. Or something. Please credit that quote accordingly when you use it on the movie posters, Fox.

Anyway, the problem here doesn’t seem to be that Roger Friedman reviewed the leaked copy of Wolverine, or that he reviewed it positively. The problem seems to be that Roger Friedman didn’t seem to work out that Fox News and 20th Century Fox both have the word ‘Fox’ in the title. And, to be fair, he’s lucky that he only got fired for it – a mistake that colossally stupid should really only be punishable by some form of brain surgery.

Anyway, let’s lament the loss of a man we didn’t know from a website we didn’t read for writing about a film we don’t care about in the correct manner. And that’s by defiantly reviewing the Wolverine leak ourselves. Ready?

No, no we can’t bring ourselves to watch it. Christ, Wolverine looks wank, doesn’t it?

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You know how nobody cares about the Wolverine movie because it’s the fourth film in a creatively-exhausted franchise?

Well, guess what? Now people have a brand new, even more exciting reason to ignore Wolverine when it’s released – anyone with a computer can illegally download a high-quality copy of the movie from the internet. A copy of Wolverine has been uploaded to torrent sites a month before release, leaving 20th Century Fox bigwigs fuming.

Luckily for them, though, comic book geeks are notoriously unable to use the internet properly. Wolverine‘s secret lives on to fight another day!

There are basically three groups of people in the world when it comes to Wolverine – the mega-fans who’ll definitely pay to see the spectacle of the finished article at the cinema even if they’ve already watched it online, the casual fans who’ll watch Wolverine on their computers and then ignore the theatrical release, and those who care so little about Wolverine that they won’t download it or see it at the cinema but will dismiss it as rubbish on their sarcastic British-based entertainment blogs as if they were bloody experts on it.

That last one’s us, by the way. Shh.

Anyway, 20th Century Fox had better be hoping that the first group is the biggest of these, because the new Wolverine movie has already been leaked online to a number of torrent sites a month before its release. BBC News reports:

The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video websites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible. Since being uploaded to file sharing websites on Tuesday, more than 75,000 copies of the film have already been downloaded and reviews by users have started appearing online.

Apparently 20th Century Fox are furious about the leak, and are promising to prosecute the person responsible. But it’s Hugh Jackman who we feel most sorry for. His year was going so well – he was named as the world’s sexiest man and some idiot let him goon about like a hyperactive cartoon flamingo while hosting the Oscars – and now this.

Hugh Jackman has invested so much of himself into Wolverine that an online leak will cause him no end of pain. Just by making it available for free, the Wolverine leak automatically hurts the movie’s box office gross, which a) means that Hugh might have to do the unthinkable and agree to star in a sequel to Australia, and b) massively reduces the chances of 20th Century Fox making additional X-Men Origins movies about Vinnie Jones and that blue Frasier thing. Those were the ones we were holding out for, damnit!

On the plus side, it also reduces the chances of Will.i.am making any more films. So that’s something.

As for us, we won’t be downloading the leaked Wolverine print. Not because of ethics or because we think that movies don’t translate as well when viewed on a 10-inch laptop screen on a train. No, the reason that we won’t download Wolverine is because we’ve already seen the Wolverine trailer and, honestly, sitting through two minutes of interminable clenched-faced explosions was enough for us. Two hours of the bastard would probably finish us off.

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Right now the Wolverine crew are in Canada, probably either filming an explosion or a close-up of Hugh Jackman’s anguished face.

Or something. The truth is, we don’t know. But just because Wolverine is still filming weeks after the shoot was due to be completed, it doesn’t mean that the movie’s a sack of balls. Honest. Hugh Jackman wants everyone to know that it’s just unfinished.

Which, you know, is great for Hugh Jackman, but rubbish for us. We were hoping that it meant Wolverine star will.i.am would be recast with someone more convincing, like Dr Harold Shipman or some broccoli.

Hugh Jackman has got a lot riding on the new Wolverine movie. As well as starring in it and producing it, Hugh is well aware that he needs it to be a great big bloody hit. Because, sure, he’s the Oscars host and the sexiest man alive, but what with Australia tanking and Deception tanking and Flushed Away tanking and The Fountain tanking and Scoop tanking, all Hugh Jackman is running on at the moment is a winning smile and a slightly startling willingness to prance around in skintight golden trousers.

So Wolverine needs to be a hit. And we have to admit it’s certainly shaping up to be one – not least because the first Wolverine trailer was so full of eye-popping explosions that we’re pretty sure we can pin global warming solely on its shoulders.

However, just recently we started to get the hunch that Wolverine would be a big fat turd of a movie, thanks to reports that everyone was shipping up to Canada to do a load of reshoots. Why this was, nobody knew – it could have been that the implied post-Carnapian subtext of the movie was slightly drowned out by the lengthy prelude to the movie featuring nothing but Hugh Jackman reading On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Arthur Schopenhauer in its entirety from the top of a volcano, or it could have been because the story, direction, acting and effects were complete arsebiscuits from beginning to end. Nobody knew.

But it turns out that, in reality, nobody is reshooting Wolverine – they’re just finishing it. In reality, the Wolverine crew had always planned to reconvene in Canada now because of Hugh Jackman’s commitment to escort Nicole Kidman around the world on that weird Aborigine-offending press tour of hers. It’s true – Hugh Jackman even wrote an email to Ain’t It Cool to explain himself:

I wanted to reach out and let you know that due to scheduling conflicts with certain cast members and location/weather considerations, we had to wait until now to shoot a couple of scenes. Please rest assured that WOLVERINE will be badass and hopefully meet all of your expectations. I am stoked by the positive response to the teaser, which clearly reflects the tone and scope of the film. If you like that, we’ve got much more in store!

See? Nothing’s wrong with Wolverine at all. You have no reason to relax – it’s going to be as good as any fourth movie based around the same character that features one of the Black Eyed Peas as a principle castmember and a man whose special power involves throwing some playing cards really, really hard deserves to be. You lucky people.

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Give Hugh Jackman a job and he’ll do it – hosting the Oscars, starring in guffy Nicole Kidman films that everyone hates, apparently being sexy.

But none of this can disguise the fact that Hugh Jackman is Wolverine, nothing but Wolverine and will remain Wolverine until the day he dies. That’s why he’s made a new film that’s only about that one character, and that’s why we’ve got the new Wolverine trailer for you here.

But if you can’t wait for X-Men Origins: Wolverine to be released, or you can’t be bothered to go and see it when it’s released, we’ve knocked out a brief synopsis of the movie based on the trailers. There may be spoilers. But, somehow, we think there probably won’t…

Wolverine starts life as an actor in a touring civil war reenactment troupe who is driven to despair by his inability to do anything other than stare off into the middle distance with a vaguely anguished look on his face. To cheer himself up, Wolverine goes to an unlicensed beauty spa and almost drowns. Rather than write to Watchdog to complain about this infringement on his consumer rights, Wolverine kills everyone, then blows something up, then rides a motorbike through an explosion, then blows something else up, then smashes through a wall, then a window and then he blows up a jeep, flies through the air and lands on a helicopter for some reason.

Why does Wolverine look so furious throughout his entire trailer? We’re not sure, but we think it has something to do with the fact that his best friend is Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas. We’d be constantly putting our life at risk if he was our friend, too.

It’s hard to tell if the Wolverine trailer makes the film look like an epic John Woo-style action ballet or an overblown load of tosh. But one thing’s for sure – we want X-Men Origins: Wolverine to be a success.

That’s because the sequel’s bound to be X-Men Origins: That Bloody Halle Berry Woman, and there just aren’t enough opportunities to fall asleep in a cinema these days, are there?

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Those X-Men movies, they were OK – but it's blindingly obvious that they missed one vital ingredient.

And that's a mutant with the power to take any song you ever liked and ruin it by lazily babbling a lot of meaningless shit about tits over the top while waving a can of Pepsi Max around. But fear not – that'll all be changed with the new Wolverine prequel movie, because Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas has just signed up for a role.

Rumours that signing Will.i.am up for the Wolverine film is just a ploy to make people think that painting Frasier blue and casting him as a monster in X-Men 3 was a comparatively decent idea are still unconfirmed.

Unless you're a 14-year-old boy with enough hormones to floor a moose, chances are that your favourite of the X-Men is Wolverine. He's got it all – a bad attitude, a Flock Of Seagulls haircut and dirty great bits of metal that shoot out of his knuckles. So, with this in mind, it'd have to take something pretty special to talk you out of going to see a movie all about Wolverine, wouldn't it?

After all, these kids will go and watch any old crap if it's got laser beams and fighting and destruction in it. They even went to see X-Men 3, even though Brett Ratner directed it. Brett Ratner, for christ's sake. So the Wolverine movie will be a no-brainer box office success when it opens in May 2009, even if the producers end up casting someone so massively unsuitable that it takes three or four minutes of dumbfounded silence just to let the news sink in at all.

Which is just as well, because Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas has been cast as a see-though mutant in Wolverine. Reuters reports:

Black Eyed Peas singer Will.i.am will make his feature acting debut in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," the "X-Men" spinoff starring Hugh Jackman. Danny Huston, Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins also have joined the Fox project, and Ryan Reynolds is making a cameo. Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") is directing. "Wolverine," set 17 years before the "X-Men" movies, traces the origins of the popular mutant superhero. Will.i.am, whose real name is William Adams, will play Wraith, a mutant with the power to turn himself translucent.

Hopefully Will.i.am's participation in the Wolverine movie won't just end with a minor role as someone who's invisible for most of the time – hopefully producers will see sense and let Will.i.am do the Wolverine theme tune too, Will Smith-style. It's bound to be brilliant, even if Will.i.am just takes a piece of music that everyone's already familiar with from a film or a TV advert, doesn't bother altering it at all, mumbles a load of obvious rhymes about it and then calls it Wolverine's Humps (Pepsi Max – Max Your Life). Which, let's face it, is exactly what he's bound to do.

Will.i.am's casting in the Wolverine movie helps to hide a bunch of other problems with the film, though, like the fact it'll be a prequel set 17 years before X-Men starring an actor who looks eight years older than he did in X-Men, and that if these X-Men Origins movies catch on, eventually we'll have to put up with one about Halle Berry. And that'll just be frighteningly dull.

However, let's not assume that Wolverine is beyond being saved just because Will.i.am is in it. Maybe if he sweet-talks the producers they'll find a role for his bandmate Fergie. And, let's be fair, there's not a movie in history that wouldn't have been improved by the addition of a mutant who can't stop wetting her knickers.

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Black Eyed Peas singer joins "Wolverine" cast – Reuters