Wanted

I watched this movie second on the marathon movie day at Universal Studios because I clearly had high hopes for something of value to emerge from this film. I was sorely disappointed and ended up enjoying both Get Smart and Hancock more than this film. (Obviously, Wall-E was ahead of it as well since it was my favorite of the day.) I knew it would be a krosh krosh action flick, but Angelina Jolie's ultra tough assassin character intrigued me and I thought for sure something of her strength in this "man's world" would prove redeeming.

The driving force behind this movie is the same as Jumper and really hits on why our society has become so obsessed with superhero movies. People no longer use their bodies for manual labor and computers have made the majority of our jobs sedentary. People literally sit in a cube all day and stare at a screen. That is where the main character Wesley starts at the beginning of the film, just your average guy. As Morgan Freeman's character puts it, he is a "sheep herded by fate" and it is time to take control of his own destiny. (Which, ironically, means blindly carrying out orders given by the "loom of fate." Yes you heard me correctly. An actual loom that weaves the names of assassination targets into the fabric in binary code. I laughed out loud during this explanation and the movie was all downhill from here.) So we are fascinated with superhero films because boys sitting in front of computers all day want to believe that one day a beautiful woman will come along and tell them that their body is magical and that they can use it physically in extraordinary ways to escape their humdrum life. People want control over their bodies again and superheroes represent the ultimate control and escape from monotony. So Wesley, the boy suffering from anxiety learns his anxiety is really a super human gift, tells off his crappy fat lady boss (not a stereotype at all) and becomes a super killer in 6 weeks. Not to mention he gets to make out with Angelina Jolie.

The one intriguing part of Jolie's character was that, although there was a make-out scene and her naked-ness was tossed around to make her the blatant sex object (as expected) she was not the love interest. The kiss was only to make Wesley's ex-girlfriend jealous. Jolie's character remained aloof and beyond caring almost the whole movie, indicated by her face which had practically the same expression plastered on to it in every scene. It was interesting to not make her the automatic love interest and to have the story not be about love. She was more of the mentor, but this also made her character fall flat for me and proved to be the downfall in the end. Her aloofness was a distance and disconnect for the audience and she refuses to question and examine why she is doing what she is doing. Wesley begins to question the loom, but she believes in it blindly, thinking that her family died because an assassin didn't do what the loom told her. The whole time I was like, how do you know that they weren't just telling you what you wanted to hear so you would be loyal? For a movie that touts taking control of your destiny it was strangely shrouded in blindly following fate. So much so that Jolie's character ends the film by killing herself and every other assassin supposedly put on the hit list by the loom. This was just absurdity to me and indicated no character arc for her at all. Because I found her character so shallow, the blatantness of her being the sex object and eye-candy seemed even more pronounced.

The movie derailed into explosions and killing and Wesley finding out he was lied to. He then takes down the whole operation single-handedly after only 6 weeks of training. I just got really bored during all the fighting and shooting in the end. What started out as cool, just got very tiring. One thing I did notice, was that in the car, right after Wesley gets picked up, he was appropriately scared for his situation. I know I was mentioning in the National Treasure 2 post that people in these films just aren't as scared as they should be for someone who is that close to dying. His fear was really just used for comic effect and although it seemed appropriate, used in this context of humor, it just didn't play. It made me question how it is possible to integrate real human psychology into these fantastical worlds and make it play. Can it be something besides comic relief? Is it necessary at all because these worlds are so clearly not real. This is something that can be learned and experimented with and why I must do my webseries!

One more item of note was that Bridget McManus was the checker in the store when Wesley was buying all the Peanut Butter. She was literally in the film for a split second, but I recognized her. After IMDBing her, I found out that she was also the Producer's Assistant. Apparently AfterEllen has enough connections to get its Vloggers decent work on big gigs. This encourages me even more to find my niche with in this market.