After 24 Years of X-Men Movies, These 3 Things Still Make No Sense About Wolverine

Let’s face it, Fox’s X-Men movies aren’t really known for their consistency – including when it comes to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. To be fair, the films tend to mimic the comics in some respects; mutant powers do pretty much exactly what the plot requires, meaning Wolverine’s healing factor varies wildly. That’s common with superhero stories, so we can kind of overlook it. It’s essentially an acknowledged part of the genre.

Matters become worse, of course, when you consider the chaos of the X-Men timeline. Fox rebooted the timeline in Days of Future Past, but even that doesn’t really fix all the various continuity problems. Marvel Studios inherited a broken timeline, and appear to have simply shrugged it off. We’ve already seen another timeline with Patrick Stewart’s Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, while odds are we’re about to get yet another one when Fox’s original X-Men return in Avengers: Doomsday. But even discounting the timeline, Fox’s Wolverine still has some pretty major issues.

3. How Does Wolverine Get His Adamantium Skeleton Back?

X-Men: Days of Future Past is generally seen as one of Fox’s best X-Men movies. Adapted from an iconic comic book story, this sees Kitty Pryde use psychic powers to transport Logan’s mind back to his past self. It’s a desperate attempt to rewrite time, to erase an apocalyptic future in which Sentinels had brought the mutant race to the brink of extinction. It means an older Wolverine suddenly finds himself inhabiting his younger self, and he has to adapt to bone claws yet again – because this predated his going through the Weapon X Project, when Wolverine’s bones were sheathed in adamantium.

There’s just one problem, though: Days of Future Past spins straight out of another (excellent) Fox movie, The Wolverine, which left the present-day Logan stripped of his adamantium as well. The Wolverine‘s post-credits scene is literally setup for Days of Future Past. And yet, this future Logan is shown with adamantium claws again; he pops them subconsciously at one point as he thrashes around, his claws cutting deep into Kitty Pryde. It’s a major continuity flub, and it doesn’t make a shred of sense, because this is before the timeline has been rebooted.

2. Why Are Wolverine’s Adamantium Claws Perfectly Sharpened?

This next one is a problem Marvel inherited from the comics. The history of Wolverine’s claws is rather amusing; they were originally treated as part of his costume, only later revealed to pop out from the back of his hands. The original Weapon X story appeared to imply the claws were somehow created during the adamantium bonding process, but the truth was revealed in the ’90s, when Magneto tore the metal out of Wolverine’s body. It turned out Logan had bone claws all along, with the claws sheathed in adamantium like the rest of his skeleton.

This does, however, raise an awkward problem; the bone claws were always shown as rough and jagged, and Fox’s movies followed the comics in this respect. But, when the adamantium was added, the claws were suddenly smooth and incredibly sharp. The inconsistency is easy to overlook in the comics, but X-Men: Origins – Wolverine – a film that, frankly, has lots of other major issues too – makes it rather more visible. Wolverine’s signature power just doesn’t quite make sense.

1. Why Does Sabretooth Forget Wolverine?

Continuity is baked into the shared universe model; the moment two films begin to connect together, however loosely, writers have a responsibility to keep an eye on how everything lines up. This can often be frustrating, because it means writer can be restricted by the stories that have already been told. Fox mostly avoided this problem by rewriting history, as well as conveniently wiping Wolverine’s memory when he’s shot in the head with an adamantium bullet. Beyond that, it’s best to just shrug and not expect anything to really line up.

A classic case in point? The relationship between Wolverine and Sabretooth. X-Men: Origins – Wolverine established them as brothers, and showed them fighting side-by-side in countless wars through human history. Wolverine forgot all this history courtesy of the aforementioned adamantium bullet, but… what happened to Sabretooth’s memories? There’s absolutely no hint of a past relationship between the two when they fight in the first X-Men film, so presumably Victor Creed lost his memories too. Given he shares Wolverine’s healing factor, that presumably means something major happened to Victor.