Was Wanted the dumbest movie of 2008?

Cafe Society
1

I saw Wanted on HBO last night. I’m seriously not sure if I’ve ever seen a movie that has insulted my intelligence and the general laws of physics as greatly. Really, the whole movie was a schlock fest, but to cherrypick some of the stupidity:

 OK, it was mildly cool but implausible the first time that the antagonists fired at each other and their bullets collided in mid-air.   But I guess they liked that effect, so they had it happen 3 times during the same gun fight.    Um, no.     Not even in a fantasy about superhuman assassins can I buy that.

Shortly after that, the train containing our young protagonist falls off a bridge. (Side note: why does our guilt-stricken assassin not feel bad about killing hundreds of people on the train in pursuit of his little grudge match?) This isn’t just your ordinary bridge. It’s apparently spanning a thousand foot gorge. The railroad cars disappear, no…plunge, into the far distance, landing on a cliff wall. At which time the two remaining assassins shake themselves a bit and walk it off. Sorry, but if you can live through a trainwreck of that magnitude, why are you even * bothering * to dodge bullets?

Finally, in the climactic scene:

Our hero is literally surrounded by assassins. Morgan Freeman has just informed the assassins that Fate has decreed that they should die. Angelina Jolie (who has probably been wishing for this ever since the movie began) does the patented “Shoot the bullet in a curve move” and * kills every assassin including herself*. We even get the bullet’s eye view of the flawless and undamaged round as it heads towards Angelina. OK, I can sort of suspend my disbelief and accept that you can put a curve on a bullet and aim it accurately. But there just isn’t any aerodynamic principle that will let a bullet go through three or four skulls and maintain its original spin, much less let it go through a full circle with undiminished velocity. This just may be the single most implausible scene in cinematic history, slightly edging out the bus jump from Speed.

I know it’s possible to overthink a movie, particularly a fantasy. But with the exception of the whole “Fate” thing and the ability to speed up their metabolism, the movie didn’t give our protagonists any particular supernatural abilities. So what’s with the brain-damaged physics?

As an aside, how does our “hero” acquire superhuman assassin abilities in the course of six weeks? Couch to 5K takes longer than that.

How did this movie get to 70% in Rotten Tomatoes rating?

2

Mostly because it’s just really freaking awesome?

It’s a summer popcorn action flick. Leave brain at home.

3

The correct answer is: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

4

Good point. Refrigerator vs A-Bomb probably beats circular bullet in terms of sheer improbability.

5

Oh yeah. Have you seen the trailer for G.I. Joe? Action awesomeness.

6

It was just a fun, slick movie with a good soundtrack.

Don’t overthink it.

7

Because it is the greatest movie ever filmed, nay, handed down from heaven/Mt. Olympus/Valhalla/nirvana itself?

I mean, how can you hate a movie where our lead assassin flips his car over the car of a target and shoots him through the sunroof while mouthing “I’m sorry” in slow motion?

Or the part where he bashes his friend with a keyboard and makes the letters FUCK YOU fly towards the camera?

Pure awesome.

8

I haven’t seen this, but this made me wonder—did they have a keyboard with two letter "U"s on it?

9

One of the "U"s was the guys tooth.

10

I’m imagining the conversation that lead to this result:

Director: Crap. I want the letters F-U-C-K-Y-O-U to fly toward the camera after the guy gets swatted in the face wtih the keyboard, but that would require two 'U’s. Harrumph.

AD: Why not make the 2nd U the guy’s tooth?

Director: Brilliant!
and it makes me giggle.

11

That’s what bothered me the most about the movie. I had no problem with the film being about magical gun ninjas - the fact that they were all utterly amoral magical gun ninjas is what soured it for me.

12

About halfway through the movie, I started thinking “A bunch of well armed people who kill people on behalf of God with no regard to collateral damage or innocent bystanders. Did I just describe the Weavers or Al Queda?”

Of course, it turns out it wasn’t God telling them, Morgan freeman was just giving them names out of his ass, which makes it much better.

13

I thought Eagle Eye was pretty dumb, but also kind of fun.

14

Man, I’d hate to see your reaction if it had been true to the original comic.

(They were quite seriously supervillains…not even trying to claim that they’re good guys.)

15

My wife and I made a drinking game out of this movie… “Drink when the laws of physics are violated!”

We didn’t make it through the movie.

In fact, the car chase damn near killed me.

16

Though, if people thought that this version of Wanted was awesome, imagine how great the movie would be if it WAS faithful… Woooo…

17

This. Even I said “Woohoo!” when assassins shot their targets through windows from clear across town. Twice.

Plus dorsal nudity by Angelina is always welcome.

18

Sorry to remind everyone, but The Happening was released in 2008.

19

Tengu alluded to this, but in the comic that the movie was based on, the lead characters are all supervillains who have murdered every single superhero on the planet, and now rule it Illuminati style. I’ve only read one issue, but it featured the protagonist having a moral dilemma because after he walked into a police station and murdered every cop in the place, he decided not to rape the one hot police woman he didn’t kill.

20

Sorry, the correct answer is X-Files: I want to believe