No, Really, I Am an American

I heart Toni for inadvertently helping me with the title of this post.

SPOILER WARNING!!! — this post may contain spoilers for the movie Wanted

There had been talk of seeing Wanted at the midnight showing. I’d been really reluctant to go ‘cuz my memories of midnight showing usually included being around a lot of obnoxious teenagers, but today seemed to be the day where I lacked any kind of will power, so I caved and went along anyway.

Rich came and picked me up around 8:30 and we passed some time at the Settlement before the movie. Initially, it was just going to be Yoss Mike, Rich, and me, but we managed to persuade Toni into joining us. Bert was gonna come along as well, but backed out as we were about to leave for fear of falling asleep during the movie.

Purchasing tickets was mildly amusing in that the guy was like, “Are you a student?”

I wasn’t looking at him when he asked the question, so I told him I wasn’t. “Yeah, you’re a student. That’ll be $6.75.”

It turns out we all got in at the student rate. Mike thought perhaps it was because of the new policy the theaters implemented recently — the ticket people were probably catching a lot of crap for it and the two people working just didn’t want to deal with it.

I was surprised they actually carded at the door to the theater. Some part of me just sighed when the person who ripped my ticket told me to have my ID ready, but the ticket-ripper everyone else went to didn’t say as much. I thought it was because I looked fourteen, but no, they really were checking everyone’s ID. I can’t imagine they did much when they found someone “underage”, but good effort on the theater’s part.

The movie itself was not exactly what I expected. For me personally, I thought it would be something different, dare I say better than what I actually saw. To be fair, the movie had its moments, but there seemed to be a lot of the Matrix-y stuff that just seemed excessive at some points.

The Loom thing made me laugh a little inside. When Sloan explained the Loom, I couldn’t help but think of the Fates. I realize that that was probably the point, but it seemed out of place given the constructs of the movie, or perhaps the world I expected the movie to be in.

I liked that the movie was in Chicago.

One of the parts that pissed me off the most was the story Fox tells about her childhood. She explained that the killer in the story carves his initials into his victims, and then as she turns to leave, there is a slow shot of initial scars on her neck.

Seriously? They had to spell that out for people? When I griped about it afterwards, Toni said the title of this post.

There were just a lot of predictable moments for me. And I know that the same can be said in a lot of movies…I guess I just expected more out of this one. I couldn’t help but wonder if the voice over at the end was a kind of parody or homage to Spider-Man.

I was surprised to discover that Danny Elfman was the composer; I can usually tell right away just hearing the music, but it took the credit to point out that it was Elfman. ‘Twas quite unlike his usual stuff it seemed.

I liked the nod to the creators in the nameplate, although, I wonder if they spelled “Millar” incorrectly on purpose.

I like the fact that it’s affiliated with Top Cow. I generally enjoy Top Cow’s stuff.

But, at this particular moment in time, I have to say that this is the first movie that I was actually disappointed by this summer.

I do want to read the mini-series now, however.