Wanted

It seems not many people were aware that the movie Wanted was actually based on a comic book. The concept for the book was that there were really super powered beings n the world and what they chose to do with these power was to use these powers for their own benefits. In short, absolute power corrupts absolute.


Wesley Gibson was a loser in every sense, until he met a woman named Fox who told him his father was in fact a super assasin with the Fraternity who was just killed not too long ago. Wesley was promptly invited to take over his place. He learnt then that superheroes did exist but were wiped out when every super villains in the world decided to team up. Following that, one of them with reality altering power proceeded to also wiped out from every living memories these heroes. I would have prefer a more grounded story of these supervillains corrupted lifestyle but I thought the addition of the hitory and other alternate universe where those heroes still exist to be far-fetched. What most readers enjoyed most from the book is the extreme attitude. Wesley went from being a loser to smug confidence. He is not afraid to do anything because the Fraternity has his ass covered. Consequences are a thing of the past.

Was the movie true to the book?

Well, they have Wesley (James McAvoy) the loser and Fox (Angelina Jolie) the hottie. They have the Ikea table and Wesley's girlfriend having an affair on it. They have the shoot the wings off the flying flies test and they have the beat the face up training session. Beyond that everything else is different.

The comic is about owning superhuman ability and abusing the power to do anything and own everything desired without care of consequences. In the end, though Wesley was the lesser of the evil compared to his enemy, he was still a criminal. And he wins and own everything in the end. The moral of the story was crimes pays. Obviously Hollywood cannot make a movie with that kind of message so they made a few changes.

Wesley's father was a super assasin. Yes, and he has in his blood to become one himself. But these assasins were not just out to make a profit from their ability. They belong to a secret society with a noble goal of kill one to save a thousand.

Centuries ago, a group of weavers found a secret language in the cloth they weaved. Calling it the Looms of Fate, they came to understand the code was intruction from Destiny for a specific person to be assasinated to prevented certain tragedy. These assasins eventually evolved to what they are in the present days, able to use adrenaline to increase their speed, strength, awareness, and other skills. They were also able to shoot with uncanny sharpness and even bent the bullets from their guns. The man introduced in the beginning of the film as Wesley's father was shot by a fellow Fraternity's assasin with a sniper rifle from two whole city blocks away! Imagine that.

Basically the movie merely took the basic characters and setting from the comics and changed everything else. What the heck? Why did they do that? I wasn't disappointed but I thought the concept of the Fraternity presented was awesome and deserving of its own mythology. Why do they need to use the comic reference? They should just released that as its own movie. After which they can tells story of the Fraternity in the medieval age and other eras in history. Heck, they can claimed the Fraternity assasinate JFK. The concept was awesome and the potential limitless. It would be bigger than Star Wars.

Was it obvious that I enjoyed the movie? You bet I did. The directing was very stylish, from the art direction to the action. I must admit though that the more creative actions all appeared in the beginning while those toward the end were less spetacular, although still awesome all the same. And the movie shows what they means when Sloan, played by Morgan Freeman, said creating the orchestra symphony with guns. Watch that out in the start of Wesley vs everybody in the Fraternity at the end of the movie. There was something else they adapted from the comic book as Wesley found out later the story of his father's death was not entirely true. Neat twist, even better than the one in the comic.