Wanted (film)

Count the tropes.

"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."

—Cleolinda Jones, Wanted in 15 Minutes

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.

Tropes used in Wanted (film) include:

• Abnormal Ammo: Wesley kills The Butcher by shooting a butcher's steel that jammed into his gun into him.
• Action Survivor: Wesley at first, before he Took a Level in Badass.
• 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.
• Ancient Tradition: The Fraternity
• Anti-Hero: Wesley is mostly a Villain Protagonist, and doesn't really benefit from Sympathetic POV. He does, however, qualify for the "fights people who are even worse" part of Anti-Hero Type V.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version uses a song by Breakerz as its ending theme.
• Apologizes a Lot: Wesley. Lampshaded, and later Subverted.

Fox: You apologize too much.
Wesley: I'm sorry about that too.

• 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.
• Beyond the Impossible: Multi-stage bullets! Curving the bullets. And practically everything.
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: If the phrase "bullet curving" doesn't say it all, what would?
• Blood From the Mouth
• Book Ends: Using a decoy to get the target onto an "X" marked on the floor.
• Bullet Time
• The Butcher: One of the Fraternity agents has this as his codename (Pussy, pussy!).
• Car Fu:
  • Fox boards a moving train from the side via car.
  • 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.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The exploding rats. Which are probably a Shout-Out to Ninja Scroll, considering the same trick is used to down a villain in that movie.
  • The sniper rifle from the beginning of the movie.
  • The El train.
• Click. "Hello."
• Cluster F-Bomb
• Conservation of Ninjutsu
  • 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.
• Contract on the Hitman
• Corrupt Politician: At least one target.
• Dark Action Girl: Fox.
• Dare to Be Badass: Pretty much the message of the movie.
• Deadpan Snarker: Wesley does this a lot in Weapons of Fate, and it's often Casual Danger Dialog as well.
• Dissimile
• Don't 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.

• Expecting Someone Taller: Sloan to Wesley when they first meet.
• Fan Service:
  • Hell, the Exterminator explodes a rat to wake Fox's sexy ass up and get her out of the bath nude for your viewing pleasure. How courteous.
  • That and the sex scenes where the protagonist's "girlfriend" is cheating on him with his "best friend".
  • James McAvoy. James McAvoy, shirtless. James McAvoy, shirtless and dripping wet. James McAvoy, shirtless, dripping wet, and wearing a leather jacket.
• Failed a Spot Check: To be fair, how often do you check the floor for big X's?
• Gun Kata: And Knife Kata, and how.
• Healing Factor: Induced by the pools of wax.
• How We Got Here
• 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.
• Ironic Echo:
  • "I'm sorry!"
  • "I'm the man!"/"He's the man"
• 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.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Cross
• Madden Into Misanthropy
• The Movie
• Mundane Made Awesome: Fox and Wesley kissing, to keep on mundane things.
• Oh Crap:
  • "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.
• Playing Gertrude: Thomas Kretschmann, as Cross, is only 16 years older than James McAvoy, making this a borderline example.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Janice abuses, intimidates, and belittles her staff so she feels better about herself.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Sloan memorably combines it with an Oh Crap moment for the linked trope's page quote.
  • "Shoot this motherfucker..." (you'd never expect Morgan Freeman to say this)
• Pretty Little Headshots - Particularly in the finale. But averts the "minor bleeding" considering the bullet holes bleed copiously.
• Race Lift: In the comic, Fox was modeled upon Halle Berry. In the film, she's portrayed by Angelina Jolie.
• Redemption Equals Death: Fox follows the code. (A variation since she was just serving an evil man, not evil herself -- the same moment contains shades of Heroic Sacrifice and Driven to Suicide.)
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Basically the last twenty minutes. And all of Wesley's levels in Weapons of Fate, too.
• Rule of Cool: Pretty much the whole freaking thing. It basically takes refuge in audacity.
• Say My Name: Wesley shouts Sloan's name not once, not twice, but three full times near the climax of the movie.
• Shirtless Scene
• Shout-Out:
  • Top Gun.
  • Charlotte's Web.
  • Of course, the whole thing could practically be a Matrix Shout-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.
• 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".
  • Wesley is this to the player in Weapons of Fate.
• Storming the Castle
• Take My Hand - Wesley's father to Wesley... and then Wesley shoots him, triggering another train collapse.
• 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".
• Theme Music Power-Up: The moment you hear the Epic Riff from "The Little Things", either shit just went down, or it's about to.
• This Loser Was You: "What the fuck have you done lately?"
• "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.
• Throw-Away Guns: Wesley, during his major assault on the bad guy headquarters. Why reload your gun when you can take the guns from your dead enemies?
• Took a Level in Badass: The entire movie is basically this for Wesley.
• Toplessness From the Back: Fox's back coming out of the bath, covered in elaborate tattoos? Oh yes...
• Training from Hell
• Training Montage
• Verbed Title
• 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 quilts 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.
• Villain Protagonist
• 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!
• When You Snatch the Pebble
• X Meets Y: Fight Club meets The Matrix.