Out of all the prequel opportunities raised in the original X-Men trilogy - Professor X and Magneto's friendship, the formation of Xavier's school (and, don't worry, we eventually got all of those) - Fox chose to first go with the one key bit of backstory that had already been extensively covered. Wolverine was, as in the comics, the breakout star of the franchise and thus the obvious candidate for the inaugural standalone origin story (the plan was for the Origins banner to be a series in its own right), but that posed a big problem; wasn't that was what X-Men 2 was all about? To their credit, the solution wasn't just "do it again", with so many story elements Wolverine's backstory expanded, although sadly to the point where they feel stretched; in-between growing up in 1800s, becoming a part of a merc team and becoming a science experiment there's endless running and hiding that fails to give weight to the character (especially as it's all undone at the end with an amnesia bullet). There's even an entire subplot with Cyclops and a bunch of the early X-Men. And that's exactly the problem - there's so much unnecessary elements stuffed in here to pad out the movie and avoid repetition that it has absolutely no focus. So yeah, Origins was already working at a disadvantage before you get to the oft stated issues of the shoddy CGI (of both the claw and Patrick Stewart variety), lazy plot devices (the moment you introduce memory-removing bullets the shark is well behind you) and complete aberration that was supposed to be Deadpool. What a mess.
