Universal Pictures’ new film Wanted is based on the acclaimed six-issue comic book mini-series by writer Mark Millar and artist J.G. Jones, released by Image/Top Cow from 2003 to 2004. In a Summer dominated by Silver-Age comic book retreads, Wanted offers a breath of the modern. And like Road To Perdition (Tom Hanks, Paul Newman), most folks don’t know that Wanted is based on a comic book!
The premise of the comic book, which is retained in the movie, is that super-villains, sick of being defeated piecemeal by the heroes in a way that one can spot in any monthly comic, may eventually team up and wage an all-out war on the superheroes. Slinging magic, mad science, and a dollop of mind control, the villains have long since achieved the “Crime Syndicate dream”: a world without superheroes.
In such a world villains reign supreme, villains such as the super-intelligent megalomaniac Professor Solomon Seltzer, whose character represents something of a blend of Lex Luthor and Dr. Sivana; Mr. Rictus, a sadistic murderer; the Future, a time-traveling Nazi somewhat in the vein of Kang the Conqueror; the Emperor, a nod to “yellow peril” villains such as Fu Manchu and the Mandarin; and a primeval immortal aptly named Adam-One. And in such a world lives Wesley Gibson, a regular guy who’s inherited an uncanny skill with any weapon and perfect aim from his murdered father.
Wesley has spent most of his life in a cubicle, bludgeoned into a stupor by the meaninglessness of his existence. His ennui is shattered one day by the appearance of a sexy gun moll named Fox, sent by his father’s old partner Sloan and a secret society called the Fraternity. Fox offers him the opportunity to develop his latent powers as well as to avenge the murder of his father.
The film, set for a June 2008 release, features a star-studded cast with Angelina Jolie as Fox and Morgan Freeman as Sloan, while future Bilbo Baggins himself, James McAvoy, is protagonist Wesley Gibson. How closely the film will hew to the comic is something of a matter of debate, but we can expect it to highlight Gibson’s transformation from an apathetic nobody to a fighter of class, style, and unparalleled heroism.
Many have sought to draw parallels between the Wesley of Wanted and the Neo of the Matrix movies: two office drones who find redemption from their humdrum lives in a mission sparked by the arrival of a strange woman–not to mention new bullet-swerving powers. The Trinity/Fox and Morpheus/Sloan connection is almost unavoidable, and Wesley is even named for cyberpunk grandmaster William Gibson, to whose dark futuristic visions The Matrix owed so much.
But director Timur Bekmambetov is clearly hoping that he can overcome such concerns with a blend of non-stop action, sultry Jolie-posing, and memories of a comic mini-series whose lush art and intelligent scripting, as well as its bleakness and ambition, have been recognized by no less than the Sunday Times with the oft-quoted sobriquet “Watchmen for super-villains.