(not) Wanted

[alias_sqbr]

So Cam and I watched the trailer for Wanted and he was so taken he went out and bought the graphic novel from Quality.

I read it this morning and..blah. Not impressed. Before the cut I'll just say that the movie looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. So I may like it, who knows :)

It's trying to be a dark, somewhat shocking (yet engaging and seductive) depiction of life at the top in a world where the supervillains won and evil reigns. Except that Mark Millar appears to be a dull, rather unimaginative man so "evil" means having consensual sex with prostitutes who are..barely overage! OMG! (I'll admit, it's left open as to whether or not he leaves a tip) Randomly killing people is, yes, pretty evil, but there doesn't seem to be any malice in it. Hasn't he read Transmetropolitan or Sandman (or, god forbid, Preacher)? He apparently used to work at 2000 AD which certainly has a grip on Genuinely Unpleasant from what I've read of it.

I couldn't enjoy as cheerfully cartoonish "badness" (like "The Adams Family") thanks to a nasty undertone of racism and misogyny. The "slutty" female character is afaict 100% monogomous, while the male main character seems to have absolutely no qualms raping random women (off screen, wouldn't want to make him too unsympathetic) And there isn't a single reference to men being raped, of course. Part of me feels the "Feel sorry for the poor white guy who has mean nasty latinos be vaguely menacing on the train, while none of his non-white peers appear to have any race-related issues at all" thing had to be a parody, but if so it lacked make-the-audience-think sting.

I know, I know, whenever I do a rant about something like this it blows up in my face and I turn out to be 100% wrong, but the catharsis is enjoyable while it lasts :) And hey this (mildly spoilery) review I found seems to agree with me.

Comments

[greyreviews.livejournal.com]

Dang, you stole my thunder!

I was going to write a rant about how half-arsed the comic was and that the movie would almost certainly be better.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

That trailer certainly makes the movie look promising. The gun tricks they use are exactly the sort of thing I imagined when people described to me the gun-fu in Equilibrium, which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment in that regard.

[tedprior.livejournal.com]

I usually really like Mark Millar as a writer, but all of his "Millarworld" comics really left me cold. Wanted was average at best, the other two I read were just plain shite.

Still, his mainstream comics are really good.

[alias_sqbr]

I know, it's like he was trying for Frank Miller and flinched.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I liked Equilibrium but the gun thing was kind of silly :)

I'm curious to watch the film and see if it has anything more than the slightest resemblance to the comic.

[alias_sqbr]

I could see some flickerings of talent in there, I think he just chose a plot he wasn't up to doing properly. I've heard complaints that all his work is kind of sexist though.

[(Anonymous)]

Millar's "unfunnies"hit all the marks for shocking (for me) but they weren't worth reading otherwise. I don't know if you read many NA superhero comics normally, but Wanted had a lot of decent spoofs of mainstream villains, so there was entertainment value there.

I read the thing as critique/spoof of fanboy badboy fantasy lives, which is why the "badness" is bland, so I can see there wouldn't be much juice for someone not into that culture (I don't know if that's you or not). Anyway, I got kicks from it.

ETG

[alias_sqbr]

It occurs to me that you may not see this reply since you don't have an lj (you should get one :))

Bits of it did strike me a satire of wish fulfillment (the fact he's destined to be part of a group of villains, for example, when these stories usually have it be The Forces Of Good), but the cheerful racism and mysogyny still skeeved me out, and as satire it was lacking...something. More incisive bite, maybe, beyond just reproducing the fantasies in such a way that they could be enjoyed uncritically by unthinking fanboys (which, if you read the reviews, they obviously were). And it was all too unpleasant to enjoy reading.

Says the woman who failed her first ever english exam by interpreting feminist satire as mysogynistic trash :)