Incredibly, More Wolverine Casting: Monaghan, Henney

Dominic Monaghan, so glad his superpower won’t be having a beak.

The X-Men Origins: Wolverine screen gets ever more crowded, as today Variety reports that Dominic Monaghan and Daniel Henney have joined the cast.

Variety says Monaghan will play “Barnell, a mysterious character from Wolverine’s past who has the ability to manipulate energy and electricity.” A quick lookup through X-Men history tells me (and undoubtedly many of you already know this) that there’s a character named Beak, who first went by the name Barnell Bohusk, but his main character traits were a large beaklike nose (as if you couldn’t guess) and a lighter than normal skeleton, somewhat like a bird’s. This isn’t much to go on but manipulating energy and electricity? Okay, we can work with that.

As for Henney, he’ll play “Agent Zero, a member of the Weapon X program and an expert tracker with lethal marksman skills.” Again, a look through history reveals that Agent Zero is Christoph Nord, aka David North, and he has a loooooong history with Wolverine.

All this is very nice and good for Monaghan and Henney, but again, I will say that it raises alarm bells to see so many characters being added to a story. This hasn’t worked well in the past. That’s not to say that the Wolverine folks might not get it right, but past history shows that this tends to produce cluttered storylines and underdeveloped characters. Oh well, I’ll try to have a little faith that the filmmakers know what they’re doing.