Pain. Unremitting visceral pain. For Wolverine the man I mean, not for someone watching the film. As bone-crunching brutality goes for superheroes on screen, this one is just about the crunchiest so far. And when all the bone-crunching is over, it has done what the title says. I think. After the leaking of the rough cut online, sans CGI there is much talk of alternative endings depending what continent you are on. Pre-planned, some claim. Or Fox themselves deciding to take the piss after the leaked rough cut. Presently rumours abound – aptly – online. In the cut I saw, a brief scene follows as the end credits are rolling and another after they have finished. I’m not sure it adds anything after the direct link has been made to the original X-Men films before the end credits began to roll. Except that Origins in the plural is suggestive of spin-offs from a spin-off. It proves a tad ironic too, as the storyline by writers David Benioff (Troy) and Skip Woods (Hitman) develops.

The film begins with a sickly boy Logan, pre-20th century, set on the path of his future fate (pain) when he discovers unsavoury things about his, um, origin. What about that origin? Well, there’s the origin of Logan the mutant boy; then there’s the origin of Logan the man, pre-adamantium; and then there’s the origin of Wolverine the superhero, post-adamantium. And then there is a curious scene, not that far removed from the origin of the young Superman, but with added bone-crunching brutality and a motorbike. Lots of origins, then. They certainly provide plenty of motivation. Logan displays a feral hunger for the stuff, through which he emotes with his berserker Wolverine rage. If all these origins seem too many, suffering heaped upon suffering, everything’s fine if you learn to love the pain. The unremitting visceral pain.

Director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi) is as much concerned with the emotional pain ride as he is the hurtling action rollercoaster that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The opening montage of Logan (a disgustingly fit looking Hugh Jackman, scoffing at the wimpish prosthetic musculature of the entire cast of 300) and his mutant brother Victor (Liev Schreiber, bruisingly good as Sabretooth) cutting a swathe together through several historical wars is exhilarating. Schreiber is every bit as impressive here as he was with Daniel Craig in Defiance, where he also played one of two brothers at loggerheads. And like the Bielski brothers, Logan and Victor have a serious parting of the ways after Victor’s sadistic tendencies (war brutalises and desensitises) become fully formed in what is hinted is a My Lai-type massacre in Africa, the super siblings having been recruited by government baddie Stryker (Danny Huston) as members of the ultimate in black ops special forces. After that it’s love, betrayal, revenge and questing for redemption on overdrive. And, of course, renewal. The carnage is unrelenting in Logan’s agonised emotional and physical journey. What it makes for is a superb superhero action film with one standout fight scene after another. Deadpool, Agent Zero, Bolt, The Blob, Gambit and Cyclops (yes, Cyclops) are all in attendance for X-Men fans, as is some extreme throwaway cruelty. It certainly provides plenty of raw motivational meat for Wolverine to feed on. While Jackman and Streiber’s energetic performances deliver as compelling a stranglehold on proceedings as Wolverine and Sabretooth do on each other.

Setting aside any conspiracy theories already circulating about that leaked rough cut, to scoff at the film sans CGI makes no sense. At the climax, CGI and all, I watched an enormous nuclear chimney stack being peeled like an orange. My jaw dropped. I saw it happening up there on screen. It happened, I tell you. It was real. Very, very real.