SOMEONE MAKE THIS INTO A MOVIE - WANTED BY MARK MILLAR & J.G. JONES
 

Needless to say, Wesley goes with The Fox and discovers the truth about our world in the process: superheroes are actually all real. Or make that, were real. In 1986 all the supervillains banded together and in a long stretched-out battle lasting a year killed every single superhero there was. However it wasn’t enough for the supervillains to have simply massacred all the superheroes, but they decided to wipe all memory of them — except for the comic books and occasional movies – using alien technology and supercomputers. Today the entire world is in fact run by the Fraternity, a secret organisation consisting of all the victorious supervillains back then. (That supervillains in fact run the world would explain a lot, let’s be honest here.)

Of course governments, the cops, corporations, you name it — are all being controlled by the Fraternity. Problem is that the Fraternity doesn’t seem that secret. Even your average beat cop seems to know of them. Wesley learns that his father who deserted him and his mother when he was still a baby was “The Killer”, a supervillain who also belonged to the Fraternity. Wesley’s dad was probably the best assassin that ever lived and it seems that Wesley inherited some of his dad’s abilities as well. Soon Wesley finds himself undergoing some training and initiation practices in which he brutally kills everyone who has ever wronged him. It is a looong list: “my old geography teacher, the girl next door, that guy across the street who kicked my ass for scratching his Mustang, the chick who said no when I asked her to a movie, that guy who set his dog on me, that shit-head in science class who ruined my best sweater with his stupid fountain refill pen . . .” And so on.

Wanted is Fight Club meets Hellboy with a lot of Natural Born Killers thrown into the mix. But the main “inspiration” behind Millar’s book is Fight Club: Wesley is Edward Norton’s “Narrator” and The Fox is his Tyler Durden who reveals the “truth” hiding behind the façade of everyday reality. Here the material spins off into an uncomfortable mix of social satire and revenge fantasy fulfillment. Who wouldn’t like to get back at everyone who has pissed them off? Problem is that the satire is half-baked and there is an absence of original ideas. One villain for instance is named “Shit-face” and is, yup, made of shit — just like Kevin Smith’s “shit demon” in his 1999 movie, Dogma.

The book’s adolescent tone will also alienate some readers. Millar tries hard to throw in all kinds of “shocking” stuff such as the villains actually ending up as the heroes, gory violence, racist jokes and lots of profanity. (Expect all of this to land on the cutting floor when it comes to the movie version.) But none of it really either shocks or upsets because it all feels so phony — Millar simply seems to be trying too hard, like a teenaged boy wearing black T-shirts and displaying Marilyn Manson posters on his walls while cranking heavy metal music hard all day long to annoy his parents. Another weakness is that the book spends a long time setting up a showdown with a bad ass villain named Mister Rictus, but the final climactic battle is anything but. Four pages at the most and Wesley simply shoots the guy — come on!

On the plus side, the plot idea of the supervillains actually having been killed off by supervillains is a good one. Unfortunately judging from the trailers for Wanted this seems to be the first element thrown out by the movie. Wanted (the movie) seems to be stripped of all its fantasy and science fiction elements. There are no grotesque Hellboy-type monsters and the like. Rather the screenplay has turned the league of supervillains into the league of assassins, or something like that. Wanted is an action movie, and not the fantasy/superhero movie its source graphic novel is.

All of this is a pity. Director Timur Bekmambetov has a wild imagination and a fantastic visual sense — some of which is on display in the trailers for Wanted. He is an obvious choice for director of an adaptation of the Wanted graphic novel. That is, if they bothered sticking to the graphic novel in the first place though. Stripped of the fantastical monsters and creatures found in Millar’s graphic novel, Wanted seems to be a bog-standard action flick rather than Hellboy III meets Pulp Fiction, which science fiction and comics fans would be interested in.

Still, we’re hopeful. McAvoy is an OK choice even though he’s Scottish and will probably have a tough time affecting an American accent. But he’s got the right nerd / hero balance to make a believable Wesley Gibson. Angelina Jolie is also inspired casting. However the IMDb.com describing the movie as an “action thriller” means that fans of Millar’s comic will be disappointed.
 

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