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Wanted (Movie vs Comic)
Jun. 3rd, 2008 02:55 pm
The movie Wanted, starring (among others) Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, will be coming out on June 27, 2008, and people are already excited about it. I'll readily admit to being one of them - I love Morgan Freeman, I love guns, and Angelina may be riding on her sex appeal, but she's also one of the few actresses in Hollywood who regularly plays strong females in action roles.
But looking at all the babble on the web, I have to wonder: How many people know that the movie is based off of a comic book? And even more importantly, how many of them have actually read it?
Mark Millar, JG Jones, and Paul Mounts created the Wanted series, which spans some six issues and a supplementary Dossier addition that gives background information on the main characters, as well as containing some neat page-sized posters with pithy quotes on them. It tells the story of Wesley Gibson, cubicle-lifeform and all around loser, and his rise to fortune - though not fame! - as a member of the Fraternity. And unlike what we've been given to understand about the movie, the comic has nothing at all to do with being the assassins of Fate, or "killing one to save a thousand," as Angelina's version of the Fox spouts off in one of the preview clips.
In the comic, Wesley's character steps into his father's shoes as the Killer - not the world's greatest assassin, but a seriously fucked-up piece of work who's a member of a group of people bent solely on self gratification. They are Super Villains, and in a world where the Super Heroes were all eradicated some time ago by a sudden spurt of villainous cooperation, they reign supreme. In fact, Super Man's cape (though of course it's never specifically referred to as such, the implication is most certainly there) even makes an appearance, kept hanging, tattered and torn, as a trophy by one of the leaders of the Fraternity.
Moving past the major differences between the two, such as the fact that Wesley spends his time learning how to be an asshole and over-using the word "fuck" rather than discovering the way of truth and emerging as a paragon of justice, and that in the comic book things like brutal rape and the seemingly random murder of everyone who ever annoyed him are rites-of-passage for the newly minted Super Villain, we come up against some much more basic issues. Such as the fact that Angelina's character, the Fox, is supposed to be black. Wait a minute. Did I miss something? Angie? And Morgan Freeman's character, as far as I can tell, doesn't even exist (at least, not in the incarnation he seems to be taking on in the movie).
The changes to the movie - well, aside from casting Angelina as a black woman - are doubtless due to Hollywood's reluctance to create something that stands as a testament to some of the darker impulses in human nature. Which is totally understandable! I mean, I enjoyed the Wanted comic for the most part, and yet even I found some points pretty damned disturbing. Nonetheless, I'm intrigued to see how Hollywood will navigate the differences between the original story and the film product, and in the end, I have a feeling that this will be one of those movies I'll have to ignore the roots of to enjoy. Because otherwise, those differences will drive me nuts.
For those interested, a full collection of the Wanted comic issues, including the Dossier, is available from www.topcow.com under the ISBN 13# 978-1-58240-497-4.
But looking at all the babble on the web, I have to wonder: How many people know that the movie is based off of a comic book? And even more importantly, how many of them have actually read it?
Mark Millar, JG Jones, and Paul Mounts created the Wanted series, which spans some six issues and a supplementary Dossier addition that gives background information on the main characters, as well as containing some neat page-sized posters with pithy quotes on them. It tells the story of Wesley Gibson, cubicle-lifeform and all around loser, and his rise to fortune - though not fame! - as a member of the Fraternity. And unlike what we've been given to understand about the movie, the comic has nothing at all to do with being the assassins of Fate, or "killing one to save a thousand," as Angelina's version of the Fox spouts off in one of the preview clips.
In the comic, Wesley's character steps into his father's shoes as the Killer - not the world's greatest assassin, but a seriously fucked-up piece of work who's a member of a group of people bent solely on self gratification. They are Super Villains, and in a world where the Super Heroes were all eradicated some time ago by a sudden spurt of villainous cooperation, they reign supreme. In fact, Super Man's cape (though of course it's never specifically referred to as such, the implication is most certainly there) even makes an appearance, kept hanging, tattered and torn, as a trophy by one of the leaders of the Fraternity.
Moving past the major differences between the two, such as the fact that Wesley spends his time learning how to be an asshole and over-using the word "fuck" rather than discovering the way of truth and emerging as a paragon of justice, and that in the comic book things like brutal rape and the seemingly random murder of everyone who ever annoyed him are rites-of-passage for the newly minted Super Villain, we come up against some much more basic issues. Such as the fact that Angelina's character, the Fox, is supposed to be black. Wait a minute. Did I miss something? Angie? And Morgan Freeman's character, as far as I can tell, doesn't even exist (at least, not in the incarnation he seems to be taking on in the movie).
The changes to the movie - well, aside from casting Angelina as a black woman - are doubtless due to Hollywood's reluctance to create something that stands as a testament to some of the darker impulses in human nature. Which is totally understandable! I mean, I enjoyed the Wanted comic for the most part, and yet even I found some points pretty damned disturbing. Nonetheless, I'm intrigued to see how Hollywood will navigate the differences between the original story and the film product, and in the end, I have a feeling that this will be one of those movies I'll have to ignore the roots of to enjoy. Because otherwise, those differences will drive me nuts.
For those interested, a full collection of the Wanted comic issues, including the Dossier, is available from www.topcow.com under the ISBN 13# 978-1-58240-497-4.
