In 2003 the comic mini-series Wanted from creators Mark Millar and JG Jones debuted. The series detailed what happened when the super-villains wiped out all the heroes. Wesley Gibson is the son a super-criminal called The Killer and he has inherited his father's perfect aim and uncanny weapon skills. The Fraternity is a group of villains looking to induct Wesley after his father is assassinated. In the mini-series Wesley is approached by The Fox — another member of The Fraternity — and goes through training to become a super-assassin. The series was one of the biggest successes for an independent mini-series in recent years. It ran for six issues and never intended to have a sequel.
When Wanted was announced as a movie, I thought if done right it could be really cool; the character of Wesley was patterned after Eminem and The Fox was modeled after Halle Berry. Instead though, the movie stars James McAvoy as Wesley and Angelina Jolie as The Fox. While the first half of the movie follows the book fairly closely — Wesley is a drone in an office with a dead-end job, a cheating girlfriend, and no life — after he meets The Fox it takes off in a different direction.
The film is filled with high octane, shoot-em up, testosterone-laden fun. Wesley learns how to become a master assassin and overcome his squeamishness about killing by practicing on corpses. He can now shoot the wings off flies, and learns how to take pain. The Fraternity even has a process that allows severe wounds to be healed in hours instead of days and weeks which is pretty cool. Eventually Wesley learns The Fraternity has ulterior motives and he must turn against them and fight for his life.
The movie loses a lot of the fun that was in the comic along with the super-villains as well. The Fraternity is now a team of super-assassins who get their assignments from a mystical loom that foretells destinies! That being said, it's still an enjoyable shoot-em-up flick and McAvoy does a great job as Wesley, progressing from a bland nobody to a master assassin through the course of the film and Jolie is excellent as always. However those looking for a faithful adaptation of the comic will be disappointed, but if they can get past that should still enjoy themselves.
Wanted 2 has been announced and maybe that film will try to regain some of the fun of the source material. Creator Mark Millar has said there will be no Wanted comic sequels, but it looks now like Wesley will have more adventures, they’ll just be on the big screen.Extras:
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