I walked into…well drove up to the movie theater prepared to hate Wanted‘’s guts. I read the comic the movie was based on and when i saw the trailer i figured the movie would not do it justice…quite the achievement as I wasnt too fond of the comic (admittedly it had its good moments). My feelings for the film after watching it are mixed; as a movie it was better than i thought itd be and yet as a movie based off of a comic it was worse than i thought itd be.
The movie’s overall premise is there is a group of assassins called the fraternity who believe that “killing one could save maybe thousands”. The protagonist is Wesley Gibson who led a terrible life with a terrible job while his best friend fucked his girlfriend behind his back. It turns out his father was one of the greatest assassins of all time and now his son must train to avenge his father’s death. He grows into a man, leaves his girlfriend and friend behind and embraces the life of an assassin. The Comic’s premise, on the otherhand, was that there was a group of supervillains who took over the world called the fraternity who believed in doing whatever the fuck they want, whether it be murder, rape, of theft. The protagonist is Wesley Gibson who lives a shit existence in a shitty job while his chubby gothic girlfriend fucked his best friend behind his back. He embraces the life of a super-villain, kills his asshole friend(and many random people) and embraces the life of doing whatever the fuck he wanted). In general they sound kinda similar but they really were not.
In the comic the main event was that within the fraternity someone tries to usurp power and a civil war sorta erupts within the fraternity. The plot twist was that His father never died he staged his death so he could wait for his son to become the best and then his son would kill him. The main event of the movie occurred after the twist which was: Cross(the person he though was hunting him down) was actually his father(it was so predictable i was able to say “No Wesley Gibson, I AM your father” before it was revealed and that The leader of the Fraternity was choosing targets for his own personal reasons. The main event is Wesley kills just about everyone in the fraternity(In the comic Wesley kills all those who betrayed his sect of the Fraternity). The plots were just so different that they really should not have even called it wanted as it was so different from the comic.
The movie started out…well just awful. In a similar fashion to the comic it opened up w/ a character who is killed by a sniper show from about 2 miles away thought the movie replaced the gay near-sex scene with a business transaction-type deal. What made this part awful was the fact that the agent, who has to jump between 2 buildings to kill his assailants, engages in a super run(he moves so fast things from the wall fall off behind him) to get to the other side. He uses a goddamn super-power and they never explain how he did it or why other assassins were not able to pull it off. Terrific story-telling, just terrific.
The movie went along pretty well, no real complaints until the secret of the Fraternity was revealed. They take the names of the people they need to kill off of a loom. That is the worst idea ive ever heard of and I had to stop myself from leaving the theater at that point. Not only was it justbad, but it constantly re-occurred over and over in the story.
Fox, who had been like a mentor to wesley, was assigned to kill him(the name was one of the ones faked by the leader) right as Wesley was closing in on fox. Wesley learns the secret from his father(who he accidentally killed) then fox tries to kill Wesley and he gets away. Wesley returns to the Fraternity to attack it head on for, ill admit it, a kickass few scenes. Then its just Wesley and the Fraternity’s elite left, them in a circle surrounding him. Wesley tells them the Fraternity’s secret and the leader lets them know that all of the elite’s names came up(though he could have very well been making that up aswell) and he said that if they were to kill him they had to kill themselves aswell, fox then shoots a curving bullet that kills every elite(excluding the leader but including herself).
The end was pretty awesome but the final line was not quite so. In the movie Wesley turns to the camera and says “what the fuck have you done lately” which was pretty badass. On the otherhand in the comic the final thing is Wesley with and angry expression with the caption “This is my face while im fucking you in the ass”.
The movie implemented one very important thing from the comic; Wesley’s narrative monologue. In the comic however the monologue involved alot of hatred twords the human race, insulting the readers, and general douche-ness which is essentially what the person had become. In the movie the only thing in the monologue even close to the comic’s is the “what the fuck have you done lately” making his dialogue seem like a weak version of Fight Club’s.
In the end the movie was okay for a shoot-em up but it was unacceptable for a comic based movie. The gun scenes were well planned, Fox was hot as hell,they made a decent choice in casting Wesley. Had they stuck more with the plot of the comic I Think the movie would have been so much better…especially if they included the character Shithead, a being created solely out of fecal matter.
Tags: Movie review, Review, Wanted
