5. Hugh Jackman Basically Nothing
Again this one's a bit of cheat. After all, Hugh Jackman didn't throw out a famously poor performance before he got his big break, but I always like to think that no publicity is worse than bad publicity. So especially when you're dealing with superhero juggernauts, no performances at all can be cast with the same brush as a bad one. After all, neither one inspires much in the way of confidence. With that leap of faith out the way, let's get down to it. Everyone loves Wolverine now, but I'd like you to cast your mind back to the halcyon days of 2000, when the superhero movie boom was still in its infancy. The only Marvel film that had been released to any sort of fanfare was Blade, an 18-rated flick from nigh-on two years beforehand, and both Superman and Batman the nearest things to sure bets in the genre had seen their latest efforts laughed out the room by critics and panned by audiences. It was this superhero-starved wasteland into which Bryan Singer's X-Men was released. I don't think I need to tell you how big a gamble this was, throwing a $75,000,000 budget into a market already sceptical of superhero films. And when you take into account that the main protagonist role was taken by then-unknown actor and musical theatre veteran Hugh Jackman, it looked like suicide. For a part that started out with A-listers like Russell Crowe in mind, this was a hell of a comedown. To fans, it must have seemed baffling they would've known how to react if someone with any sort of movie CV had taken the part, but in casting a complete film novice, Singer had both wrong-footed and horrified fans. After all, Wolverine's the most masculine character ever, and here he was being played by a song-and-dance man. Jaw-dropping astonishment was probably the most measured reaction on show here. Of course, as it turns out, we were all wrong to doubt the incredible manly powers of Hugh Jackman, who simultaneously managed to rock a pair of mutton chops, become the new person your girlfriend thought about instead of you and seem like a really nice person too. Damn you, Hugh.