Like seemingly every third big studio movie this summer, Wanted is based on a superhero comic, a 2003 six-issue series of the same title.
In it, thinly-veiled versions of DC Comics supervillians have conquered the world and rule it from behind the scenes, lulling us into thinking that superheroes are just things in comics, movies and bad TV shows from decades ago. Perhaps due to legal reasons—I’m talking some thin, thin veils over those DC characters—the movie adaptation takes practically nothing from its comic source: The title, a couple of characters’ names, two lines of dialogue and…that’s about it, actually.
That in and of itself wouldn’t really be a problem, at least not as problematic as where director Timur “Night Watch” Bekmambetov gets his inspiration instead: The Matrix movies. You would think that Matrix Revolutions would have been the stake through the heart of Matrix mimicry, but here we have a guy with extraordinary superpowers in a business suit jumping through an office building, gun-fu, bullet time, a sleepy-eyed office drone recruited into a war he’s never heard of, and on and on. Continue reading
