A grouchy, sensitive loner with retractable metal claws and apparently unretractable facial hair, Wolverine brooded and growled through the first three “X-Men” pictures, helping to supply them (or at least the first two) with welcome grace notes of rough humor and macho pathos. And now “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” with its ungainly, geeky title and its relatively trim (under-two-hour) running time, helps explain just what makes this guy so intriguing and unusual.

He’s Canadian.