Wanted

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Occido

Go cut your self.

Honestly, sir, if you couldn't understand the satire meant for that post....Well, God help you sir, because even Mr. Blackstone is unable to do anything for you now.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Bo Jackson

The closest thing this movie resembles is Shoot Em Up, but at least that movie knew it was retarded and embraced the cheesiness and you can take it at face value. This movie was actually trying to be serious and it slaps itself in the face. The main character was a giant douchebag. The plot was awful. A guild of weavers starts a fraternal order of assassination? There's a giant fucking loom that has embedded binary codes of people who need to be killed? They don't even tell you were the orders come from, they just come from the magic loom? Really? Maybe that is explained in the comic or something but jesus christ, they literally explained nothing about the entire thing. I must have laughed out loud like 15 times at least. What does he say at the end, "What have you done lately"? That might have been the gayest thing I have seen in my entire life.

Where did you get the crazy idea that Wanted was trying to be serious? It was just as over-the-top and intentionally absurd as Shoot 'Em Up and Crank, and that's why it was a great movie.

And there was no loom in the comic, they added that to the movie because someone felt the need to make the Fraternity a bunch of good guys instead of being entirely evil as they were in the comic. I wish they'd left that much alone, but oh well. I guess the loom didn't really bother me because it reminded me of Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, and the tapestry of life that the three aspects of Fate weave.

[Bo Jackson]

I thought crank and shoot em up were more enjoyable because even though the plots were stupid they made more sense. I think I was just angry yesterday because I wasted 9 bucks on that turd. Can we at least agree that the loom was a terrible idea? The weird thing is I usually love pointless action movies like this. I don't know why but this movie just rubbed me the wrong way.

[spronk]

I just saw this today after Indiana Jones (im slow). It was ok, I was actually expecting more action but it did deliver some nice scenes. Morgan Freeman really phoned it in. It was nice seeing the guy from the British heist TV show, the blonde who was always beating people up.

Could have done more with the movie to make it more interesting, but I think they pulled it off ok. Not really worth a watch at the movie theater or even buying on DVD, but worth a DVD rental. I was a huge Jolie fan back in the Tomb Raider days but she didn't really do much for me in this movie, the tats made her a bit unappealing (I recently saw Eastern Promises) and she was kinda too laid back the whole movie. The last scene with her was awesome however.

I'd rank Hitman, War and Shoot Em Up as better action movies than this for 2007/2008. I'd love to see a Prince of Persia (Assassins Creed) type movie, that would kick some ass.

[AladainAF]

Saw it last weekend. Thought it was good considering. Now, if they took out the retarded stuff, it could have been better.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The whole curving bullets thing was cool, and the ending was very fitting, but the whole im gonna slam on my breaks while you hit the gas, do a flip, shoot out of my moonroof inside of your moonroof at you, while saying "I'm sorry", is just epic fail of crap I've seen in a movie in a long time. And not only that, that kind of thing happened twice

3/5 star

[Big W Powah!]

Originally Posted by Bo Jackson

I thought crank and shoot em up were more enjoyable because even though the plots were stupid they made more sense. I think I was just angry yesterday because I wasted 9 bucks on that turd. Can we at least agree that the loom was a terrible idea? The weird thing is I usually love pointless action movies like this. I don't know why but this movie just rubbed me the wrong way.

So rub yourself the right way to the still shot of Mrs. Pitt's ass and counter act that.

ZING! MORE NEG INTERNETS PLZ

[Korioni]

I hate the lead role actor in this so much. He was terrible on an "Alexander" level. And that's a terrible feat to accomplish. If it happens once more in film history, the earth will suck the souls out of all living beings to fill the void of awful directing, casting, and acting.

Angelina Jolie was the single saving grace of this movie. And she is getting older. No she's not "old" but you can tell, even after make-up and editing, that her skin is turning to leather. Her performance was on par with all of her films(besides Alexander, of course), although not as good as Mr/mrs Smith.

Morgan Freeman apparently didn't find his character as he didn't actually act in this movie. After seeing this, I can't help but think they paid him 2 million to read lines off the teleprompter. The only movement he ever actually did was curving the bullet. Otherwise, he stood there with his hands behind his back the entire fucking time. More proof that he read his lines.

This wasn't a mindless action movie either. Shit, there's not even any good action scenes. In fact, the only good scene in the entire damn movie was the 4 frames of Jolie's ass. Too much fucking slow-mo(an excuse for filming action sequences because your lead's so untalented he can't even tape at a semi-normal speed and make it look good), music changes and the movie's pace were extremely infrequent and often, making the movie's rhythm jump around so that you walk out thinking the entire thing took 35 minutes.


The plot was dumb and suffered from a serious case of Star Wars mimicry syndrome(which doubtless was a copy itself, knowing George Lucas). Inconsistencies threw me off constantly... He can apparently hit a bullet out of mid air, but can't hit a large target, in the open, at 100 ft and unloaded an entire clip at a guy from 20 ft away without touching him... Right. And the rats? In the apparent span of 20 seconds, a bunch of rats manage to scale a castle and insert themselves into every crevice. And what, because he released a bunch of rats, everyone stopped shooting? Oh noes, we're doomed! Add to the fact that his big ass rat plan amounted to jack shit as it didn't seem to actually kill anyone or destroy anything at all...

I could go on, but I'll end my review. You get the point.

Writing - 6

Performance - 5

Technical - 6

[Draegan]

I like Jolie's tats. Mmmmmm.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

Angelina Jolie was the single saving grace of this movie. And she is getting older. No she's not "old" but you can tell, even after make-up and editing, that her skin is turning to leather. Her performance was on par with all of her films(besides Alexander, of course), although not as good as Mr/mrs Smith.

Sharp kneeeeeeees!

[Agraza]

I thought it was rather middle of the road. The high point was Morgan Freeman cursing near the end. The mind over matter stuff really wasn't necessary. They could have saved themselves a lot of money on special effects and just made the script an ounce more plausible. This could have been a classic instead of action bin clutter. With all these spy films making a comeback a chaotic neutral perspective could have been great. Wouldn't you love to see films from the perspective of Bond's Spectre, without the maniacal evil bent?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I'm left with the question of whether the loom kill order for sloane predates the kill orders for the assassins, and it offered those up merely as a way to have him cut off his own tools to weaken him since it couldn't kill him. Furthermore, did the loom really even send kill orders for the assassins or did he make that up? It seems like anyone could make this shit up if the code is that simple. How would this have first happened in the modern era? There are too many unanswered questions for the film to be taken seriously even if we did give the bullet curve a free pass.

[Hatorade]

No animated GIF yet of her naked scene? Slackers, the bunch of ya.

[Flesseck]

Wow, her ass...was so good...

[Ronne]

Finally got around to seeing this, loved it pretty much throughout. Hitting the guy with the keyboard made me lol so hard, but the best was after he decks him a second time and the "now that is a man".

[spoiler]Did the mass gun battle in the textile mill toward the end remind anyone else of the end of Equilibrium? I couldn't stop seeing similarities.]

[Faille]

Re: Ask Derek Haas
Originally Posted by jendecott View Post

Mr. Haas,

A few hours after seeing "Wanted" I ordered the graphic novel from Amazon which I read last night. The story is quite a bit different than the one I enjoyed on screen. I have a few specific questions that I would love the hear the answers too when you have the time.

How did you go about the process of taking the theme from the graphic novel and grounding it in reality, removing the costumes and super heroes and villains?

How did you arrive at the bending bullets?

How did you arrive at the weaver backstory?

*************** MINOR SPOILER *****************
Wesley gets the money, the power and remains a super villain in the novel. What prompted you to switch it up and make Wesley the avenging hero for the movie?

Once again, I enjoyed it very much and thank you for your time.

-Jim

Jim,

Hi... sorry I missed this. The idea to remove the super-villain backstory came early in the process. We actually started writing the movie when only the first two issues of the comic had come out... and only the last panel of the second comic hinted at the supervillain plot. At that point, we decided that if we were going to keep a Hard-R tone for the movie, then we couldn't have men in tights and capes with names like "shithead" and "Mr. Rictus." It just would be incongruous, in our opinion, with the themes of the movie.

The bending bullets was something we talked about in the very first pitch. We wanted to have something visual that no one had seen before that screwed with physics and announced that our world was just a little different than the everyday world in which you live. We had a version of the train sequence in our pitch -- though it was on an L train -- where we had Wesley and Cross curving bullets and shooting each other's bullets out of the air and it seemed to work within the tone of this movie. Now we have to come up with something different for the sequel!

The weavers were added in by Timur and the other writer Chris Morgan, who did a great job of making all of that work. When we were brought back on to the project after Chris finished his work on the film, we reduced the weavers as much as possible. Those words at the beginning of the movie were the last things added to the film and I didn't know they were going to be on there until I was sitting at the premiere... even though I'd seen a cut three weeks before. Oh, well.
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