It's early July, and most of this summer's superheroes have already flown on past the local multiplex. In other words, it's time to start looking ahead to the super-powered individuals who will be gracing our screens in 2009. First up: Wolverine!

After the whole "X-Men working together to save the world" formula grew stale with the creatively lackluster X-Men: The Last Stand, the powers that be wisely concluded to take their franchise backwards instead of forwards, and give us a movie detailing the origins of its most popular character. Although the film's official title is X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I prefer to call it Wolverine Begins.

The plot will explore Wolverine’s dark past, focusing on his relationship with Victor Creed and the Weapon X program. Along the way, he’ll encounter several characters known to fans of the X-Men comics, including Gambit, Deadpool and The Blob. The promising supporting cast includes Ryan Reynolds, Liev Schreiber, Taylor Kitsch and Dominic Monaghan. But this recently released promo photo gives us all we really need: Hugh Jackman in a wife beater, brandishing those shiny adamantium claws.

What surprised me when I researched this movie was the amount of hostility directed at Wolverine here on the internet. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the fickle and demanding nature of the average fanboy. And X3 didn’t do much to convince anyone there was much juice left in this franchise. But I don’t think we should take our frustration out on the poor, defenseless, incomplete Wolverine movie. After all, X3 failed due to a shoddy script and a lack of focus on the characters we’d grown to care about in the first two films. None of that was Wolverine’s fault. It also wasn’t the fault of Wolverine director Gavin Hood or screenwriter David Benioff. Neither of those guys had anything to do with X3, and for all we know, they could be just the infusion of new blood this franchise needs. Where’s all the hate coming from?

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is one of the toughest, sexiest, and most compelling superheroes we’ve seen on screen this decade. Let’s at least wait until we have a trailer before we start bemoaning the presence of too many villains, Jackman’s inability to age backwards (maybe he’s still holding on to the time machine from Kate and Leopold?), or the casting of a certain Black Eyed Pea. Better yet, let’s look at that promo photo again, which many people are complaining doesn’t give us anything new, and study it at its most basic level. The message is simple: this is a movie about a bad-ass dude with claws that come out of his hands!

Wolverine, as a character, still looks pretty awesome to me. I’m willing to give everything else about his movie the benefit of the doubt for a few more months.

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