Myth & Millar Week: Wanted

Two of the year’s big movies come out this week, and we just can’t ignore that fact: Clash Of The Titans and Kick-Ass hit screens over the next few days, so to mark the occasion, it’s Myth & Millar week here on BurnAllZombies If we have to explain it to you, you don’t deserve to keep reading, but just in case you are…you know, Clash Of The Titans is based on Greek mythology, right? And that Kick-Ass is based on the comic written by Mark Millar? Got it? Good.)

We’ll have reviews for both movies coming up over the next few days, but also a few other reviews and articles: I’ll be reviewing God Of War III on PS3, Dan will be taking a look at the original 1981 version of Clash Of The Titans and in a Drastic change to writing staff, we’ve got Adam Murray coming aboard who’ll be taking a look at Millar’s new series which debuted last week, Nemesis.

To kick things off, though, there’s no better way of tying Myths and Millar together than through 2008′s Wanted, another film based on a Mark Millar property, and one that (on screen anyway) played with the possibility that Greek mythology could operate in modern world, and the results of having that kind of power.

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Day Watch and producer of the non-musical 9), Wanted puts the looms of Fate in the hands of The Fraternity, a league of assassins led by Sloan (the voice, and body, of Morgan Freeman.) In a story not-so-far away from the pre-crime of Minority Report, the loom shows Sloan people who will commit a crime, people who are then assassinated by killers with awesome-bullet spinning powers, hot bodies and no real care for car insurance. Yes, this describes the foxy Fox (Angelina Jolie) just as much as it describes protagonist Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) who inherits his father’s place in The Fraternity, despite being totally boring and unlikable.

It’s quite different from the comic, originally published in 2003/2004 and with art by J.G. Jones, the reason being that the rights for the movie were sold while the comic series was still being written. The comic, instead, posits a world where superheroes once existed, only to be wiped out by a cabal of villains. It’s a slightly different world that Wesley is thrust into, (and then there’s the fact that Jones’ art portrays Wesley as Eminem and Fox as Halle Berry) but the story progresses along similar lines.

The movie loses some of the political wrangling (and arch-fiending) inherent of the supervillain archetype, but doesn’t tone down any of the action. It takes a while to get really into things (so does the comic) but a lengthy exposition is tempered by allowing Jolie to take charge of the action, and by the time Gibson is welcomed into the fold of The Fraternity, James McAvoy has been transformed from a prissy romantic lead into a believable action hero.

McAvoy’s transformation works quite well: he’s the everyman whose life sucks, suffering from early-21st century ennui, panic attacks and an unhealthy obsession with his ergonomic keyboard, but he portrays just the right amount of tortured conscience and cocky swagger to pull off the assassin gig. If you’ve read much of Millar’s comics, it’s a quickly recognisable trope, and the word “prick” may come to mind in more than a few scenes that don’t even involve the loom, but it’s refreshing to see a leading man we’re not forced into liking in a film that isn’t afraid to showing him broken and bloodied, a style that hasn’t really been used on the big screen since Fight Club. Though we’re likely to see more of it in Kick-Ass.

Angelina Jolie, on the other hand, is her typical self, smouldering away every second she spends on screen and bringing the same cool attitude she does to her action roles. Great as she is, it comes across as a bit of a performance-by-numbers and by the film’s close, it’s hard not to feel that she and Fox have gotten a raw deal out of the plot and no real meat to chew on. Her chemistry with McAvoy is believable, but never quite followed through to its full extent. It has its pros, by refusing to let the film fall into the predictable action romance, but it also never really delivers on the promise.

Wanted provides some massive action sequences, and while these are amazingly choreographed, there’s not really the same sense of scope or scale as Millar’s globe-spanning comic portrays. It’s good pay-off for an action film (if somewhat lacking the epic feel of Bekmambetov’s other films) but things are kept so personal that, by the time the plot-twists kick in, the film turns into one man on a mission.

That’s the dangerous ground you’re playing on when trying to adapt Greek mythology, whether it’s for the big screen, the smaller screen or anything in between: any story featuring gods, titans and monsters needs a human element to make it accessible for audiences, but including this human element runs the risk of alienating readers and viewers. We’ll see more on this over the next few days, but even when Wanted doesn’t include such grand powers, it never quite addresses the bigger questions of fate that the presence of the loom suggests.

As an action film, Wanted has it all. Yes, all. But as a comic-book adaptation, or even a film that plays with mythological concepts, it never quite gets to that point where it needs to to engage with the concept. Not even when the tie-in video game is subtitled “Weapons Of Fate.” Maybe that’s the case with a film like this (let’s be fair, the loom is more of a plot device than anything else) but we’ll find out later in the week whether a film can really hit the action beats while still engaging with its myth.

Clash Of The Titans…we’ve got high hopes for you.

Wanted is available now on DVD & Blu-Ray and the graphic novel is available in all good comic shops.