Wanted: Subtext, depth, a plot...
Jun. 27th, 2008 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficCall it Shoot ‘Em Up with less brains or The MatriX-TREME!!! More likely, call it Fight Club without the introspection or Office Space with cartoon visuals or just plain wasted potential. Wanted tells the story of that most oppressed of minorities, the middle-class white straight male: Wesley Gibson, whose Mark Millar self-insert status is made clear by the final frames (check the nameplate in the last voiceover). His girlfriend is screwing his best friend, his boss (a “teehee, aren’t I edgy?” black bitch in the comics, a more politically correct fat bitch in the movie) is a bitch, and his father skipped out on him when he was six weeks old. He needs to get away from the dullery of office work to become a man. More to the point, he needs to ditch his respect and courtesy for the common rabble to wrap himself up in the same smugly obnoxious (obnoxiously smug?) white-boy entitlement as Jumper's David Rice, a transformation heralded by the requisite butt rock. Beverly Hills, that's where he wants to be, rolling like a celebrity.
And how does he find out who he is? By reconnecting with the memory of dear old dad, which will help him rediscover his masculinity. No mention is made of his mother, who presumably raised him after his dad skipped out. Indeed, she may even be responsible for his momma’s boy status. Wesley has ninety-nine problems and a bitch is ninety.
From there on, it becomes The Matrix-by-way-of-the-Matrix-sequels. A foxy brunette (here literally called “The Fox”, as if the prominent advertising of Angelina Jolie’s bare back wasn’t clear enough that Jolie was hired more for her increasingly skeletal good looks rather than acting chops. Although I will give them this; as promised, her backside does make an appearance for all of those in the audience who want to see Angelina Jolie naked and can’t rent Gia, in which she’s naked for longer, and with a woman. This is a lengthy aside) shows up to rescue him from the forces of darkness and takes them to a multiethnic bunch of “off the grid”ers, who loan him authenticity much like Dr. Dre appearing in an Eminem video.
From there on, it’s a second act in which Wesley is repeatedly told to take control of his own destiny by shutting up and doing as he told. Reminiscent of Speed Racer’s multimillion-dollar message to shun commercialism, Wanted tells you to be yourself… all the other nonconformists are doing it. Like a low-rent Full Metal Jacket, Wesley is broken down and then built back up to the point where he can take orders from a quasi-religious mentor. Orders like “kill these guys who we don’t know have done anything wrong, but could at some point in the future stop the world from being a better place.” Presumably, in the sequel he’ll get to burn down the Reichstag or fly a plane into the WTC.
As it turns out, these assignments comes from a magical loom (representing Fate, which you’d think could kill its own Fatedamned victims; c.u. Final Destination) which was discovered a thousand years ago to write down the names of these targets by binary code (a strand out of place means 1, another strand means 0). When Dan Browned to a alphanumeric code, these then spell out who has to be killed. No word yet on how the loom tells who to kill when a target shares a name with other people. Will Paul Thomas Anderson take a bullet for Paul W.S. Anderson? Because that would be a sha… okay, I admit it, I enjoyed the Resident Evil movies more than The Royal Tenenbaums! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!
It makes you wonder how these monks first discerned that a loom could determine the right targets to keep the world on track. Did they just get really high one night, find a name, then kill that guy and when the world didn’t explode they concluded that it was a job well done? Lord knows what they would make of my screensaver.
My enjoyment of Paul W.S. Anderson movies should prove I have no problem with gobstopping amounts of stupidity in my action. All I ask is a modicum of thought, an iota of heart, a quantum of solace... sorry... to hang the rest of the movie on. A theme, if you will. But in the translation from comic to movie, Wanted remains heartless. It doesn't even give you the kind of gloriously mockable stupidity of Bruce Willis surfing on a jet fighter until Wesley busts into the baddies' headquarters and shoots up countless henchmen before making an impassioned plea for the survivors to turn to the light side. Gee, maybe if you'd said that before you shot up their friends...
What redeems the story, much like the original comic’s plot was redeemed by J.G. Jones’s art and Mark Millar’s admittedly clever writing (which was good right until it tried to wash its hands of six issues’ worth of irony-free sociopathy by criticizing the reader for picking up what was being laid down), is Timur Bekmambetov’s mad Russian directing. There’s usually somethingimaginative shiny enough to make you forget that the movie you’re watching is more or less evil, and a pretentious sort of evil at that. Despite losing the wonderful J.G. Jones costumes, the characters are still superhuman and they bounce around to the best of CGI’s ability, pausing to exude smug odiousness every now and then to the camera’s fawning eye.
If only the plot could dip a little deeper into that whole “choose your destiny” tagline. Take Angelina Jolie’s character. Despite the vapid sexuality she radiates, all the personality she has is a (you guessed it) traumatic childhood backstory. Her actions in the third act could have some pathos, even for a zealot, if more thought were put into the plot than as a blueprint to get to the action sequences. Ditto the villain’s evil and the hero’s dumbfuckery (he seems to bounce around from mentor to mentor like a child starved for affection and gobbling up whatever crumbs he can find, then acting as smug as he can for getting patted on the head). In a world where the answer to illegal immigration is to join the Minutemen, and women and children strap on bombs in the name of a better world, surely the hero joining a fascist suicide cult could be handled with some irony, some satire, some subversion. Instead, it’s as if Fight Club ended with Edward Norton high-fiving Tyler Durden as the buildings fell. Up top! Down low! Too slow!
Now, I don’t know if the movie would be more worthwhile if the hero were a minority or a woman or (and this would render Angelina Jolie’s casting moot, as her character’s love story with the hero is more or less her shoving her crotch in his face) a gay man. But at least it would give it something to say, some vestige of meaning for the audience to grab at. Wanted is full of hot air, with an overly long training montage that leaves the audience lots of room to poke holes in the gloriously stupid “Fate’s assassins” idea… possibly the most cockamamie concept to hit the screen since Indiana Jones’s crystal skulls. Much like Ang Lee’s Hulk, it fancies that it has something to say about seizing your own destiny, but by the end Wesley is still taking dictates from a loom. Which is still pretty fucking stupid.
And how does he find out who he is? By reconnecting with the memory of dear old dad, which will help him rediscover his masculinity. No mention is made of his mother, who presumably raised him after his dad skipped out. Indeed, she may even be responsible for his momma’s boy status. Wesley has ninety-nine problems and a bitch is ninety.
From there on, it becomes The Matrix-by-way-of-the-Matrix-sequels. A foxy brunette (here literally called “The Fox”, as if the prominent advertising of Angelina Jolie’s bare back wasn’t clear enough that Jolie was hired more for her increasingly skeletal good looks rather than acting chops. Although I will give them this; as promised, her backside does make an appearance for all of those in the audience who want to see Angelina Jolie naked and can’t rent Gia, in which she’s naked for longer, and with a woman. This is a lengthy aside) shows up to rescue him from the forces of darkness and takes them to a multiethnic bunch of “off the grid”ers, who loan him authenticity much like Dr. Dre appearing in an Eminem video.
From there on, it’s a second act in which Wesley is repeatedly told to take control of his own destiny by shutting up and doing as he told. Reminiscent of Speed Racer’s multimillion-dollar message to shun commercialism, Wanted tells you to be yourself… all the other nonconformists are doing it. Like a low-rent Full Metal Jacket, Wesley is broken down and then built back up to the point where he can take orders from a quasi-religious mentor. Orders like “kill these guys who we don’t know have done anything wrong, but could at some point in the future stop the world from being a better place.” Presumably, in the sequel he’ll get to burn down the Reichstag or fly a plane into the WTC.
As it turns out, these assignments comes from a magical loom (representing Fate, which you’d think could kill its own Fatedamned victims; c.u. Final Destination) which was discovered a thousand years ago to write down the names of these targets by binary code (a strand out of place means 1, another strand means 0). When Dan Browned to a alphanumeric code, these then spell out who has to be killed. No word yet on how the loom tells who to kill when a target shares a name with other people. Will Paul Thomas Anderson take a bullet for Paul W.S. Anderson? Because that would be a sha… okay, I admit it, I enjoyed the Resident Evil movies more than The Royal Tenenbaums! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!
It makes you wonder how these monks first discerned that a loom could determine the right targets to keep the world on track. Did they just get really high one night, find a name, then kill that guy and when the world didn’t explode they concluded that it was a job well done? Lord knows what they would make of my screensaver.
My enjoyment of Paul W.S. Anderson movies should prove I have no problem with gobstopping amounts of stupidity in my action. All I ask is a modicum of thought, an iota of heart, a quantum of solace... sorry... to hang the rest of the movie on. A theme, if you will. But in the translation from comic to movie, Wanted remains heartless. It doesn't even give you the kind of gloriously mockable stupidity of Bruce Willis surfing on a jet fighter until Wesley busts into the baddies' headquarters and shoots up countless henchmen before making an impassioned plea for the survivors to turn to the light side. Gee, maybe if you'd said that before you shot up their friends...
What redeems the story, much like the original comic’s plot was redeemed by J.G. Jones’s art and Mark Millar’s admittedly clever writing (which was good right until it tried to wash its hands of six issues’ worth of irony-free sociopathy by criticizing the reader for picking up what was being laid down), is Timur Bekmambetov’s mad Russian directing. There’s usually something
If only the plot could dip a little deeper into that whole “choose your destiny” tagline. Take Angelina Jolie’s character. Despite the vapid sexuality she radiates, all the personality she has is a (you guessed it) traumatic childhood backstory. Her actions in the third act could have some pathos, even for a zealot, if more thought were put into the plot than as a blueprint to get to the action sequences. Ditto the villain’s evil and the hero’s dumbfuckery (he seems to bounce around from mentor to mentor like a child starved for affection and gobbling up whatever crumbs he can find, then acting as smug as he can for getting patted on the head). In a world where the answer to illegal immigration is to join the Minutemen, and women and children strap on bombs in the name of a better world, surely the hero joining a fascist suicide cult could be handled with some irony, some satire, some subversion. Instead, it’s as if Fight Club ended with Edward Norton high-fiving Tyler Durden as the buildings fell. Up top! Down low! Too slow!
Now, I don’t know if the movie would be more worthwhile if the hero were a minority or a woman or (and this would render Angelina Jolie’s casting moot, as her character’s love story with the hero is more or less her shoving her crotch in his face) a gay man. But at least it would give it something to say, some vestige of meaning for the audience to grab at. Wanted is full of hot air, with an overly long training montage that leaves the audience lots of room to poke holes in the gloriously stupid “Fate’s assassins” idea… possibly the most cockamamie concept to hit the screen since Indiana Jones’s crystal skulls. Much like Ang Lee’s Hulk, it fancies that it has something to say about seizing your own destiny, but by the end Wesley is still taking dictates from a loom. Which is still pretty fucking stupid.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 08:55 pm (UTC)Aside from the money, that is.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 09:08 pm (UTC)If you plan on getting RILLLLLY drunk.
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Date: 2008-06-27 09:14 pm (UTC)Still, your review is a pleasure to read. You could be 100% wrong about all of it and ts could turn out to be the next Apocalypse Now (it won't...), and it still doesn't matter, for good writing is good writing regardless of subject or opinion, and this is some damn fine writing.