After watching the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie last weekend, the usual impassioned debate in the car on the way home wasn’t about the young Logan’s family issues, the hack and slash violence throughout or the extent of faithfulness to the original comic books. No, the big question centred on whether that was really Patrick Stewart at the end of the movie.

If you haven’t seen Wolverine yet, suffice to say that Professor Xavier definitely wasn’t looking in the pink of health. In fact, he looked a little cadaverous, along the lines of a lizard creature back from the dead. When his face popped up on the screen, the first reaction in the theatre was a collective gasp, followed by derisive laughter. Poor Jean-Luc; I’m sure he would have been a mite pissed off had he been in the audience.

Maybe the movie studio couldn’t afford the real Stewart, and had him replaced with an unfortunately creepy-looking Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) version. Or, were they trying to make him look younger to fit in with the movie’s timeline by giving him a bit of CGI “help”? (“Sorry, Mr. Stewart, the usual make-up and airbrushing aren’t enough to do the trick this time….”)

Further sleuthing online revealed no mention of Stewart in the credits. So either that wasn’t him, or it was an uncredited cameo.

How far are we going to let this CGI thing go? Arnold Schwarzenegger just came clean about his upcoming appearance in Terminator Salvation. Because he’s a tad busy in his current California governator role, it turns out his appearance in the film will be in the form of stock footage from the first two Terminator films, with CGI renderings thrown in when needed.

Thanks to modern technology, our favourite movie stars will soon be able to just stay home, getting fat and old like the rest of us, while the special effects wizards keep them looking eternally buff on-screen. It sounds like the routine “fix-ups” on magazine models these days; enlarging eyes, removing wrinkles and lengthening legs.

Now it’s me that’s getting pissed off.