Wanted

Funny story. In 2003, there was this comic series called Wanted by Mark Millar
and J.G. Jones. And it was pretty brilliant, actually.


So, by the end of issue 2, someone or other has decided they've got to film it.
So scriptwriters are hired, treatments are done, etc, and the project gets
greenlit. Unfortunately, Mark Millar's day job is to manage the Ultimate line at
Marvel, and so Wanted got put on the back burner for a while. Long story short,
the script for this movie got written without the writer having read 2/3 of the
story. So when the movie diverges from the book 1/3 of the way in, that's why.

So, Wanted, the comic book, is this mean-spirited riff on superheroes and
supervillains; sometime in the mid eighties, the supervillians won, setting off
a device that altered reality, such that no-one remembers that superheroes ever
existed, including the superheroes. The supervillains then go underground, rule
the world, and make the world the shitty place you see around you today.

The scriptwriter didn't know any of that, it seems. All he knew was the
protagonist, Wesley Gibson, is plucked out of his depressing life, and inducted
into a shadowy organisation called The Fraternity, on the basis of his having
super-abilities like his father's. Now, in the book, these abilities are
basically Matrix style gun-fu, as they are in the film. However, in the book,
there's the whole range of supervillains you see in the comics, whereas the
film takes the view that everyone is a Matrix-gun-fu assassin, working for this
order of assassins called The Fraternity, and the plot takes a left into the
video game Assassin's Creed.

Is it any good? No, sadly. It's got its moments, of course, most films do, most
of which come in the first half hour. After that, it's just portentous gabble.
At one point, I suddenly realised that they'd managed to make shooting people,
driving fast cars and snogging Angelina Jolie boring. How do you do that? The
plot then drives relentlessly though the basic revenge, betrayal and blah blah
blah.

Flat direction, flat performances, and a pretty limp script add up to an
only-just watchable movie, with a couple of scenes that manage to buck the
trend and be genuinely entertaining.

Buy the book, though, that's really funny, and warped.

The Incredible Hulk

Two things you must know about The Incredible Hulk. First - he is Incredible.
Second - he is a Hulk.

I really enjoyed The Incredible Hulk. Here's how to build this movie. Start
with the TV Series. I was as surprised as anyone that this was the case, and
confidently predicted otherwise, but it's at its heart quite a lot like the
show, in that it focuses on Banner, on the run from the authorities, trying to
keep a low profile. Also, he's attempting to find a cure on the internet.
Presumably he gets a lot of spam about the size of his hulk that way.

Anyway, long story short, the military go after him, Tim Roth tries to even the
odds by injecting himself with the same Super Soldier Serum that made Captain
America; this proves to be not enough, he injects himself with Banner's blood,
and turns into something utterly huger than The Hulk. Carnage ensues.

This is where it diverges from the TV series, and in a serious way. The TV
Hulk, well, god bless Lou Feringo (who cameos. Stan Lee also cameos. Robert
Downey Jr cameos too. By 2011, Marvel hope to release an film solely consisting
of cameos) - god bless him, but he was only a big muscly guy painted green.
This is proper comic book hulk - eight foot tall, fists bigger than his head,
immune to small arms fire, mildly annoyed by anti-tank weapons, who casually
throws cars at people.

And this is all great stuff, to be honest. It's smart enough for a summer
superhero blockbuster, doesn't spend too much time waffling, and finishes on a
bloody good street brawl between The Hulk and The Abomination. Marvel have
essentially done what they did with Iron Man, which is present a fun, by the
numbers film which delivers what you *want* it to deliver, without making any
great attempt at great art.

Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan

Or Mongol: The Unremittingly Unpleasant Childhood of Genghis Khan, in some
territories.

Basically, we follow the early life of Genghis Khan as he is serially captured,
enslaved, betrayed, has his wife kidnapped, betrayed again, enslaved again,
etc, etc. All of which seems to come to a head at the point where he realises
just how much it sucks to be a mongol, and decides to take over the entire
country and impose some laws. Which he does, in the last five minutes, in
spectacularly little detail. One minute he's one lone man saying "goodbye wife
I'm going to go unite the Mongols" and the next he's at the head of a thousands
strong army. Essentially, if you're interested in the early campaigns of
Genghis Khan, or how he united the tribes into a shiny big horde, you're out of
luck. The film is basically not about that, it's about the crap in his life
that led him to believe that was necessary.

So, how's that side of the film? Well, it's pretty good. It's very well shot -
beautifully so. If you've got any interest in seeing someone ride a horse
across the strange, varied and beautiful landscape of the steppes, then you're
in luck, because there's a lot of that. The leads, playing Temudjin, his wife,
his father, his brother, all give very powerful performances. It's very well
written; when all these betrayals come in, it's very sympathetic; no-one's seen
as particularly evil, it's just how life is when you live in primitive society
of lawless warriors.

There's a big "but", however, and that is, I am afraid to say, that the life of
a Mongol is not that interesting. They didn't have a lot of culture to speak
of, so really, we see a lot of sitting in yurts drinking out of wooden bowls.
That's what they did. That and riding horses around and nicking stuff off each
other. Whilst Temudjin's early life was undoubtedly tumultuous, it wasn't
actually very varied. His life isn't a story with a beginning, middle and end,
it's more a series of unfortunate events, where he's regularly knocked back
down into the mud.

So, in all, beautiful, well-performed, but not a little repetitious, and often
lacking in drama.