With both WANTED and WALL-E pulling in majorly big bucks at the box office this weekend, I have used my Sherlock Holmes like deductive abilities to surmise that probably a lot of you went to see or are going to see either or both films. That in turns has led me to deduce that you probably have an opinion or two about the films. Now is your chance to let me and everyone else know what you thought. Because that’s something I can’t deduce.
So, is WALL-E really the best film of the year as many are saying, or was it over-hyped? Was WANTED a deliriously fun action flick, or just another trashy brainless Hollywood summer film?
There’s something to be said for good old-fashioned guns, bullets, cars, and hot babes converging into a flurry of visually kinetic, pulse-pounding over-the-top action violence. All the more so when it occurs with creative relish and borderline fetishism yet without a single trace of apology. That’s exactly what Timur Bekmambetov’s WANTED does, and it’s precisely why it’s so much superficial fun.
The film starts out innocuously enough. Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is a young man with no backbone. He works in a dead-end job where he gets repeatedly chewed out by his raging boss, suffers from crippling anxiety attacks, and pathetically turns a blind eye to the fact that his supposed best friend is sleeping with his grating girlfriend. Wesley, however, has a spine forcefully shoved into his back when Fox (Angelina Jolie) comes into his life (with a cacophony of guns, bullets, and cars), and informs young Wesley that he has a much greater destiny. He learns his estranged father was not only recently killed, but belonged to a guild of assassins called The Fraternity that take their orders from fate itself. To avenge his father’s death, Wesley must let the Fraternity unleash his inherent potential, and then realize his destiny. (On a side note, comic fans looking for a faithful adaptation of the graphic novel should look elsewhere, but not without hearing a choice word or two from me about the issue).
Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier in the week I posted a rant about fans of the comic series the upcoming film WANTED is based on bitching about the lack of faithful adaptation. Since writing that piece I was reading through the latest issue of CREATIVE SCREENWRITING and came across an article by Peter Clines where those involved with the script (Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, and Chris Morgan) had been interviewed. It clears some things up.
First off, it appears that Universal didn’t even wait for the comic series to be finished before asking Derek Haas and Michael Brandt to adapt it. They were given the first issues and told to get going.
“Even though they knew nothing about the direction [author] Millar would be taking his series, the two men began to go down what they felt was the natural narrative path after the first issue… The screenwriters finished their first draft just as the second issue of the comic book hit the racks… Brandt and Haas had grounded their story much more in the real world, making it far less superhuman and far more what the average moviegoer was familiar with.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Originally I was only interested in WANTED as a guilty pleasure, “>this featurette and this Red-Band (i.e. NSFW) Russian trailer for the film, have upgraded my anticipation into guilt-free excitement. You have to give credit to the people involved for completely turning around a film that nobody was really looking forward to, and many were passing off as a MATRIX rip-off. Now – if comment boards are any indication – it seems a lot of people are getting excited. Well, with some exceptions.
Check any comment board relating to WANTED, and you’ll inevitably come across some comic book fans bitching about how the film isn’t like the comic book, and bla bla bla. I get where they are coming from, don’t get me wrong. I read the series when it came out in issue form (and was often delayed). So I’m not some guy who doesn’t get it. Instead, I think it’s THEY who don’t get it. After all, even though comic book fans on the net are a loving and protective lot, they’re also knee-jerky and almost instinctively negative.
Movies work differently. Movies, unlike comic books, have to appeal to a massively larger audience. Movies need to have human, relatable character, even if they’re villains. It’s the reason Hollywood always softens anti-hero/villains, because the majority of the movie going public will not follow or watch a completely unredeemable protagonist. Hollywood wants anti-heroes as protagonists, not morally deficient villains in a world where that’s all there is, and all superheroes have been murdered.
Read the rest of this entry »
The advertising for WANTED really really wants you to know that Angelina Jolie is in this film. First we had this poster from the New York Comic Con. Now we get this one. It’s not just that they want us to know Mrs. Brad Pitt is in this, they want us to know she’s friggin’ bad ass to boot. I mean do you see those tats? I mean nothing is more bad-ass than binary code. James McAvoy? Morgan Freeman? Who wants to see them? Apparently not us.
Now that the second trailer for WANTED has hit the net, I think I’m ready to come clean: I’m really looking forward to it. Yes, it looks like it’s going to be little more than excessive and indulgent displays of unbelievable over-the-top action with barely enough plot points to string them cohesively together. Yes, that curving bullet thing is not nearly as cool as the move thinks it is (I mean how many times did the trailer show it?), especially since THE MATRIX has made slow-motion bullet sequences pretty blasé at this point. Yes, it might even turn out to be bad.
But the thing is, sometimes I’m a sucker for just this kind of visceral action film. All that insanely choreographed car action stuff in the trailer, as ridiculous as it may be, entertains the heck out of me, even if the gun fights seem a bit lackluster based on the trailer. But having Angelina Jolie star in a role that is prime material for accentuating her hotness helps that a bit.
Read the rest of this entry »
Loading ...
