"This is the role Angelina Jolie was born to play. She emerged from the womb already covered in tattoos and eyeliner for the express purpose of playing this character, who immediately entered my pantheon of Chicks I Want to Be Like When I Grow Up. Fox is the reason Angelina Jolie was put on this earth."
Meet Wesley Gibson. Wesley's father abandoned him when he was a week old, and things have gone steadily downhill since. He works for a disgusting boss at a job he hates before going home to a girlfriend who's sleeping with his best friend. But suddenly, Wesley is tapped to join The Fraternity, a league of elite international assassins. He is trained specifically to kill Cross (the rogue Fraternity member who killed his father), mostly by getting the shit kicked out of him by the rest of the team.Wes learns many plot-relevant skills, including the pretty sweet ability to bend bullets. No, they don't really explain how, and no, they don't really need to. He uses these abilities to take down several nefarious do-badders, until it's finally time to confront Cross. Cue the giant showdown on a moving train... and on a crashing train... and on a falling train. But hey, at least Wesley finally gets his man — or does he?Of course he doesn't. He just runs headlong into The Reveal, which sets up the real finale. A sequel for the movie is currently in Development Hell according to an official Q&A.Originally a comic-book miniseries by Mark Millar with little to nothing in common with the movie.There is a game, Weapons of Fate, that draws plot elements from both the comic book and the film (most notably, Wesley in his original costume and the Russian assassin that serves as a Plot Point in the movie). The game starts shortly after the movie ends, and is notable both for being a sequel instead of a recreation, and for taking a year after the movie's release for development with the explicit goal of not falling into the "rushed product to match the movie's release date and hype" trap. Naturally, opinions vary on the success.
The Wanted movie and game provides examples of the following tropes:
Abnormal Ammo: Wesley kills The Butcher by shooting a butcher's steel that jammed into his gun into him.
Adaptational Villainy: Inverted. The Fraternity in the film adaptation are much less villainous than the Fraternity in the original comic book.
Adrenaline Makeover: A rare male, delayed action case in Wesley. He meets Fox, then goes back to his own mundane life. But one snarky remark too many from his Bad Boss sets the makeover in motion.
Artificial Intelligence: Inverted. The equivalent of The Machine in Person of Interest is an ancient loom.
Because Destiny Says So: Played straight, subverted, then played straight. In Weapons of Fate, played heartbreakingly straight with Wesley's mother, and Wesley discusses how absurd he thinks this trope is after defeating the Immortal.
Better Living Through Evil: Wesley does this even though he is unaware that the guy he is working for is evil.
Wesley is assisted by Fox in flipping of his car to somersault over that of an open-topped limousine that was bulletproof on the sides in order to shoot through the top.
In Weapons of Fate, Cross evacuates a crashing airliner by driving a car out the back as it skims a hill.
Even more obvious in Weapons of Fate, where the enemies, ostensibly members of the French Fraternity, don't seem to know how to curve bullets unless it's one or two Elite Mooks in a quicktime event. It's more glaring than in the movie, as the player will be doing it themselves for the entire game.
Concealment Equals Cover: During the grocery store shootout, Fox and Wesley hide behind a grocery store shelf full of cereal while Fox trades gunfire with Cross. Of course, In this case, Concealment was more than enough, as Cross did not want to risk shooting his own son.
Dont Think Feel: When Sloan teaches Wesley how to curve bullets.
Sloan: If no one told you that bullets flew straight, and I gave you a gun and told you to hit the target, what would you do? Let your instincts guide you.
Improbable Aiming Skills: Played straight with the crazy sniping. Played to an extreme straight with bullet-curving. Weapons of Fate even takes it one step further; bullet curving with submachine guns sets multiple bullets on course to collide with each other when they reach the target, thus producing a frag-grenade effect. The game also has fun with this trope in one cutscene; Cross' Improbable Aiming Skills aren't quite good enough to hit the Immortal, so he shoots his gun down the barrel, blowing it up in his face instead.
It's A Small Net After All: apparently no pages on the in-film Internet contain either the words "Wesley" or "Gibson". It's possible this is one of Wesley's self-deprecating daydreams, like when he imagines the ATM is telling him he's a loser. Also, if you do a search for the name "Wesley Gibson" the only pages that show are those related to the movie or appeared after its release.
Lost In Imitation: The movie more closely resembles The Matrix than the source material. Which is unsurprising when you consider how hard it would be to adapt the source material into a movie without it being declared unwatchable.
The ending of the movie. Last words spoken by Sloan: "Oh, fuck." * splat*
And done in Weapons of Fate, when Wesley realizes his own nightmare fuel has been turned against him.
One of the thugs shooting at Mr. X has a moment after Mr. X completes his jump between the buildings. He knows he's about to get his brains blown out of his face before it even happens.
Although, What You Are in the Dark may trump this. Since Fox had explained that she serves the the loom, her choice was to kill everyone Sloan just said the loom named as a target, including herself. If you never went evil, you can't be redeemed, and she had the chance. She just didn't take it.
Road Block: The film version has a scene that pretty much exemplifies this trope.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Basically the last twenty minutes. And all of Wesley's levels in Weapons of Fate, too.
Of course, the whole thing could practically be a MatrixShout Out.
All names that come up for assassinations are encoded on quilts, just like how Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities knitted codes on her quilt for her fellow revolutionaries so they would know which of the French nobility was to be executed.
Madame Defarge knits, and the Fraternity uses woven cloth from a loom.(Quilting◊knitting◊ and weaving◊ produce three radically different textiles.) But the principal is certainly similar.
Shoot the Dog: Actually invoked with Fox almost going to get a puppy when Wesley wouldn't shoot the corpse of an old woman.
Sink or Swim Mentor: Multiple. More like "Swim or get the dogshit beaten out of you".
Teeth Flying: When the main character snaps, quits his job and smacks his backstabbing "best friend" on the way out with his keyboard, we're treated to a Bullet Time shot of a series of broken keys spelling out "F.U.C.K.Y.O." with his bloody tooth forming the final "U".
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Wesley gives an absolutely epic one to his Mean Boss just before he quits, and to top it off slugs his former best friend in the face with a keyboard on his way out.
Villains Never Lie: When Sloan tells the Fraternity that the Loom of Fate chose each of them to die, they believe him even though Wesley just told them that Sloan has been manipulating the Loom for his own purposes. Justified; the villain is legitimately in the more trustworthy position. Who would you be more likely to believe, the boss who you've got no actual reason to distrust, or the guy who just shot up half your fortress and killed dozens of your friends, after blowing up the other half?
A little more thinking by them, and they may have realized that it meant that Sloan had been lying to them all along before so they would be justified in not believing him then either. He only showed his decoded papers not the original weavings after all.
Fox probably did all that thinking, and realized that because Sloan lied so many times, there was no way to be sure who the Loom chose to die. But since one of her friends bought it and said "Fuck the Code", she decided that killing everyone in the room would at least end all the bullshit - and that Wesley would finish the job afterward.
Weaponized Animal: The Exterminator makes bombs which he straps to the backs of rats.
Wham Line: This is not me following in my father's footsteps. This is not me saving the world. This is not me... This is just the mother-fucking decoy!
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