My Expert Opinion on Wanted and The Magic Girlfriend Stock Character

SOURCE: 'Wanted's' effect debated

I got to be the voice of dissent/angry comic book guy in an article about the new movie (very loosely) based on the comic book Wanted.

The only reason I'm mentioning here (apart from shameless self-promotion, of course) is because of one very odd line that I'd like to explain.

"Even with the loose adaptation they seem to be going with, the base concept - a bunch of amoral killers secretly rule the world and a hapless newbie is brought into the fold - would suggest that this is not going to be a chick flick."

Why the chick flick comparison? Well, that line came from a separate part of the e-mail Q&A I had with Mister Maida. He had asked for my opinion on the fact that Fox - the character Angelina Jolie plays in the movie - was originally an African American woman in the comics (and indeed based on Halle Berry) and asked if I thought this had any relevance - for good or ill - on the movie's potential success.

I said, half-jokingly, that it probably meant that Hollywood had finally realized that Halle Berry + Superhero Movie = Bad Idea, and that given how the character was a Magic Girlfriend (that's my term for any action movie heroine who fulfills all the requirements of The Mentor and The Love Interest in one convenient package), it hardly mattered if she was Black or White given that the character was an exploitative cliche regardless of the color of her skin.

He replied back and asked me to defend the idea that the character of Fox was exploitative and how could I know - given how wildly different the comics and the movie are supposed to be - that the character of Fox in the movie would be as bad? How could I say that the character in a movie I hadn't seen and had no intention of seeing would be insulting to all women everywhere?

My answer? Angelina Jolie is playing her.

Now, I won't deny that Angeline Jolie is a talented actress when it comes to playing certain types of characters. If you need someone who can play the tough but sexy girl or the bad girl, then Angelina is your woman. I've known this since Hackers.

But let's not kid ourselves - the main reason that Angelina Jolie is popular has less to do her ability to convey all of the nuances of Lady MacBeth and more to do with her willingness to be eye-candy.

There's not a lot of people watching the Tomb Raider movies for the feminist subtext. That's all I'm saying.

And as I also said, Fox is a Magic Girlfriend. Like Valeria in Conan the Barbarian. Like Trinity in The Matrix. She is the perfect woman, whose main purpose in the movie is to...

a) discover the Hero while he is a hapless newbie and guide him down the path to destiny.
b) become the hero's love interest
c) be the token woman in "the team" (if the Magic Girlfriend is not the only woman on the team, she will be one of the few and will definitely be the most attractive)
d) sacrifice herself to save the hero or further the hero's cause.

And that is where and why I made the oddly out-of-place statement above. "Even with the loose adaptation they seem to be going with, the base concept - a bunch of amoral killers secretly rule the world and a hapless newbie is brought into the fold - would suggest that this is not going to be a chick flick."

So yeah. That's why. In case you wondered.