Wanted in Fifteen Minutes
Hey, because it was there and it called to me. It's just about the only way I can write these days--just letting it happen.
Note: This is very much an R-rated movie, with the sex and the expletives and the shootings of people in the brain. The language in the recap, parody, whatever you want to call it, is going to reflect that (and trust me, this is the mild version). Also, Wanted is the kind of movie where half the charm of it is in the novelty of the visuals and some really funny surprises, so I'm... actually going to leave several good moments out. Believe me, there's plenty left over. Just--go see it. It's outrageous and stupid and funny and knows it, unlike some movies I could name COUGH THEHAPPENINGCOUGH.
Very Serious Opening Text
A THOUSAND YEARS AGO
[What? I thought this was about Angelina Jolie shooting up hot cars and shit--]
AN ANCIENT SOCIETY OF WEAVERS
[Weavers? Seriously?]
BECAME ASSASSINS AND CALLED THEMSELVES... THE FRATERNITY.
[Weavers?]
Loserville, Population: Wesley
WESLEY: Hi. My name is Wesley Gibson, and I'm a pussy. I hate my job so much that I take pills for panic attacks and spend most of my day meebling at my ergonomic keyboard. I hate my bitchy girlfriend Cathy and I hate my jerkass best friend Barry, who is fucking her. Here, watch them go at it for a few minutes. And they know I know he's fucking her. And I know they know I know, and I'm still buying him condoms and energy drinks. That's what a pussy I am. And obviously my father already knew I was going to be a loser, because he walked out when I was seven days old.
Meanwhile, A Guy Who Is Obviously Wesley's Father
[There's this guy Mr. X at his high-rise office, and then these assassin dudes on top of the building across the street shoot his assistant through the bindi and Mr. X races down the hall of his building and jumps through the window glass and soars across the street to the other building and shoots all the construction assassins in the brain (including one where the bullet turns a frickin' corner and kills this guy Mr. X couldn't even see) except for this one dude, because Mr. X falls before he can reach the ledge except then he materializes right behind that guy and also shoots him in the brain, and then some guy named Cross calls Mr. X's cell phone and laughs at him for falling for decoys and shoots Mr. X in the brain himself from, like, ten miles away in the comfort of his own apartment, and my entire audience sat there going WHAT.]
Some Walgreen's
WESLEY: Yeah, I'm here to pick up my refill of AHHHH HOLY SHIT IT'S ANGELINA JOLIE.
[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. Well, this and the global philanthropy.]
FOX: I knew your father.
WESLEY: Yeah, see, I doubt that, what with the walking out and the seven days old and--
FOX: Your father died yesterday on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Building. He was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived. And the man who killed him is right behind you.
THE PHARMACIST: So... that'll be $25.59...?
[And then a gunfight breaks out in the cereal aisle.]
Police Barricade, An Hour Later
SOME POLICE OFFICER: So, sir, can you describe what you saw?
SOME WITNESS: Yeah... there was this hot tattoo chick on the hood of this crazy hot car shooting at a Tastee Kibble truck behind them, and, like, I don't know who was driving it--the Terminator, maybe, because he was not gonna give up until they were thoroughly kibbled, but then the crazy hot car flipped over the barricade and rode away on top of a bus and the Kibbler escaped. Of course, you saw that part.
SOME POLICE OFFICER: What about the driver of the crazy hot car?
SOME WITNESS: I didn't see much of him. I just heard him screaming OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOOOOOOOLY SHIIIIIIT WE'RE GOING TO DIEEEEEEEE the whole time.
SOME POLICE OFFICER: [writing]: Description: pussy.
Some Warehouse or Something, Who Knows
[Normally this is the kind of warehouse where they store action scenes, or maybe menacing interrogations, but when Wesley wakes up, it's just Common with a gun to his head and Morgan Freeman telling him to shoot the wings off flies.]
WESLEY: Wha...?
SLOAN: You're not a neglected orphan in a dead-end job! You're a born assassin! You're the bestest assassin of all and you had a rich assassin father who loved you so much he didn't want you to be like him (but he still left you all his money) and also, your panic attacks are actually episodes of grand mal badassery where your heart beats four times faster than normal and produces so much adrenaline that you can slow down time.
WESLEY: Does this mean I get to go to Hogwarts now?
SLOAN: ... If I say yes, will you stop being a pussy?
Wesley's Cubicle
[Short answer: No. Wesley returns to his bitchy girlfriend and his jerkass best friend and his soul-killing job and his anxiety meds, and hides his father's gun in the toilet tank because he is not ready to be hardcore, although the realization that he really does have three million dollars in the bank cheers him up considerably. And then his hosebeast of a boss starts harshing his buzz, so Wesley just snaps:]
WESLEY: You know, I want to feel sorry for you and your Stapler of Terror and your jelly donut fetish and your Manic Panic hair, but I'm finding it really hard so maybe you should just SUCK. MY. THREE. MILLION. DOLLARRRRRRRS.
BARRY: Woo! You tell her, pussy!
[And then Wesley belts his best friend across the face with his ergonomic keyboard, and the keys that break off and fly towards the camera spell out F-U-C-K Y-O. The second U is one of Barry's teeth. I'm not even making this up.]
The Closest Anyone Will Come to Facing Legal Consequences
[Wesley walks away from his job and his apartment and his life. Outside his office, Some Newspaper with vague police sketches of Fox and Wesley from the drugstore shootout bears the headline WANTED ON CHARGES OF AWESOMENESS.]
FOX: I stole another hot car. Get in.
THE POLICE: *are never seen again*
Textile Factory #17
[Somewhat surprisingly, the assassins actually make textiles at the factory and punch in every day and sit around eating sandwiches on their lunch break.]
WESLEY: So, is Fox gonna teach me gun-fu in a magic dojo now or something? 'Cause I'm ready to learn stuff, I really wanna learn stuff, can you download it straight into my head? That would be totally awesome--
SLOAN: Actually, you're going to start a rigorous training regimen of getting your face bashed in six times a day.
Wesley's Rigorous Training Regimen
THE REPAIRMAN: I will beat the pussy out of you!
WESLEY: OW MY PRETTY FACE!
THE BUTCHER: I will teach you how to fight with knives!
WESLEY: OW MY SOFT UNDERBELLY!
FOX: I will show you how to run on top of trains and slide under tunnels without getting your skull crushed!
WESLEY: OW MY TENDER BRAINMEATS!
The Giant Scary Mechanical Looms of Death
FOX: Stop time and grab the shuttle, Neo.
WESLEY: HOLY SHIT I JUST GOT WEAVED!
The Recovery Room
[But that's okay, because a paraffin bath from The Exterminator (not The Repairman, ironically) will fix everything! Because wax, it--it--stimulates the white blood cells and--stuff, you know, and it makes everything heal in like half an hour. IT DOES TOO! LOOK, CANDLEBATHS FIX EVERYTHING AND THAT'S JUST HOW IT IS, OKAY?]
WESLEY [encased in wax ]: MMMMF! MMNNGHGHHFFFF!
THE EXTERMINATOR: You know, sometimes I like to feed nitropeanutbutterglycerin to rats and watch them blow up.
WESLEY: ... Mmmf?
Fox Gets Impatient
FOX: Bitch, you are wasting my time with your unmotivated suckage! Why are you here? WHY ARE YOU HERE?
WESLEY: I don't know! I don't know! I--I just wanted to be awesome! Please stop hitting me, I can feel it in my cerebellum now!
FOX: WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE?
WESLEY [sobbing]: I don't know who I am!
Wesley's Textile Factory Dorm Room
[Apparently "I don't know who I am" is the right answer, because Sloan now reveals the truth about Wesley's accomodations:]
SLOAN: We assigned this room to you because it was your father's. All these books and guns and suits and photographs, they're not just here because we were too lazy to clean up. They belonged to him. And now they belong to you. So take all of his things and remake yourself in his image and discard the real you. Be your father instead. Because the person you really are? Sucks.
WESLEY: You know, you could have told me this a lot sooner and saved me, oh, about a hundred face-beatings.
SLOAN: Oh, like your candy ass didn't need it.
Shooting Lessons
[...now that Wesley actually cares about his training. Sides of beef, pig carcasses and dead people hang in front of the target, which makes accuracy a little bit hard.]
THE GUNSMITH: Okay. Shoot the bullseye.
WESLEY: Through the beef?
THE GUNSMITH: No, around the beef. We're much cooler than all the other movies we stole from, so when we shoot guns, it's more like throwing bullets.
WESLEY: If I make a joke about "gunslinging," will you hurt me?
FOX: *brassknuckles*
THE GUNSMITH: ...Yes.
[Sloan and Fox and the Gunsmith stand around and watch Wesley shoot beef for a while. Finally Fox stands in front of the target herself, and the power of his true lust omg teaches Wesley how to bend bullets.]
The Giant Magic Loom of Fate
[After a knife-fighting, Repairman-beating, train-jumping, shuttle-grabbing victory lap, Wesley learns What the Fraternity Is All About.]
SLOAN: I will show you the Loom Room once, and then you will never see it again. A thousand years ago, a secret fraternity of weavers invented a giant magic loom that weaves the names of Those Who Must Die in binary code. And we are the weapons of fate who interpret the magic weavings and carry out their orders.
WESLEY: Seriously?
SLOAN: Yes.
WESLEY: No, for real.
SLOAN: Yes.
WESLEY: And you want me to kill people, seriously, for real, because the Giant Magic Loom of Fate said so? In medieval binary?
SLOAN: Now you know why I never let anyone in here twice.
Wesley's First Job
[... is not to kill the man who killed his father. It's to ride on top of a train with Fox and shoot some guy through a fifth-story window. And of course Wesley punks out and can't do it, because he's Wesley.]
A Romantic Candlebath
WESLEY [covered in wax ]: So why, exactly, do you take orders from a magic loom?
FOX: Because we believe that if you kill one person, you can save a thousand.
WESLEY: But how do you know that person deserves it?
FOX: Let me tell you a story about a hardass federal judge who had a little girl.
[We see a flashback of a young girl with pillow lips and tiny little tattoos waiting at a window... with a knife to her back.]
FOX: One Christmas, a mobster wanted to send a message to the judge to go easier on criminals, so he hired a thug named Max Petridge to go to his house and burn the judge alive in front of his daughter and then brand the thug's initials on her with a red-hot wire hanger. When I became an assassin, I found out that Max Petridge was supposed to have been killed the week before by the Fraternity, but someone punked out and didn't pull the trigger. So I live by the code: Kill one. Save a thousand.
[In case that story was too subtle for you, we see initials MP branded into Fox's shoulder.]
WESLEY: You know, that seems like a really ineffective way to send a message to people. I mean, the judge can't be lenient now, he's crispy.
FOX: *bitchslap*
A Scene in Which I Merely Attempt to Transcribe the Awesomeness
[Having successfully finished his first job, Wesley goes on his second, which is to shoot Some Rich Guy in a bulletproof limousine who is dumb enough to keep the sunroof open so he can smoke his capitalist pig cigars, so Wesley ramps his car off Fox's and flips it over the limousine:]
WESLEY [upside-down]: HOOOOOOLYYYY SHIIIIIT YOU'RE GOING TO DIEEEEEEEE!
THE KISS THAT MADE BRAD PITT JEALOUS OMG
[ Trufax. After they finish that job, Wesley and Fox go back to his Loserville apartment to retrieve his father's gun. Barry is a little too happy to see him--]
BARRY: Wesley! You look good! Omg send help she's crazy--
WESLEY: Lick it up, bitch.
[--and his (their?) girlfriend starts shrieking about Wesley being a pussy and Barry being a big big man who satisfies her like whoa, in which case I have wonder why Cathy cares whether Wesley's fishing his personal belongings out of her toilet or not, when Fox decides to be a pal and give Wesley a little mouth-to-mouth to impress Cathy and emasculate Barry, which kind of doesn't work because Barry just becomes Wesley's #1 fan instead. And... that's it? Seriously? Brad Pitt's supposed to be jealous because Angelina Jolie slipped Mr. Tumnus a little tongue? I am starting to think that maybe tabloids don't always tell us the truth, you guys.]
WESLEY: Wow... it's a good thing that kiss was totally for real and not at all for show! I look forward to more in the future!
FOX: *friendly beatdown*
[And then Cross shows up in the alley outside and he and Wesley are both such good shots that their bullets just collide and they chase each other around a parking deck and then Wesley shoots the Exterminator by accident, and not even Fox or the Gunsmith have any idea how the Exterminator got there.]
Sloan's Office
WESLEY: This is the first traceable bullet Cross has used, and I've traced it to some bulletmaker in East Budafuck in a monastery! Cross is taunting me! Come on, let me go kill him!
FOX: I don't know that you're ready for this.
WESLEY: Look, I feel really bad about killing that guy who had no business being there!
SOME EXPLOSIVE RAT: *tear*
SLOAN: Fine, here's the Magic Loom kill order. Happy assassing!
Some Monastery, East Budafuck
[Pekwarsky the elderly bulletmaker is weaving quietly (of course he is), so Wesley tries to sneak up on him through the shadows of the looms all noir-like. Too bad Pekwarsky immediately gets the drop on him.]
WESLEY: I WANT CROSS!
PEKWARSKY: I have a gun in your face?
WESLEY: ... Please?
FOX: *stealth ninja gun-cocking*
PEKWARSKY: ... I can set up a meeting?
The Little Assassin Who Could
[Pekwarsky takes Wesley and Fox to a train station for the meeting. But no! It is a trap! Pekwarsky runs away, which makes Fox run after him, which leaves Wesley alone to spy Cross and follow him onto a train! Which was exactly what Cross and Pekwarsky planned! Fox hijacks a car and tries to catch up with the train! But Wesley and Cross are already shooting at each other ON A MOVING TRAIN while DUMBASS PASSENGERS KEEP GETTING IN THEIR WAY and their bullets do nothing but collide so Fox gets tired of this fuckwittery and DRIVES HER CAR INTO THE TRAIN, and then a conductor or someone decides to stop the train, STOP THE TRAIN, while it is passing over a GIANT BOTTOMLESS RAVINE AND THE TRAIN IS FALLING OFF THE BRIDGE AND SLAMMING INTO THE MOUNTAIN and Wesley is going to fall to his death but no! Cross reaches out and grabs his hand! Cross, his mortal enemy! So Wesley shoots him. Mmm, gratitude.]
CROSS [dying]: Wesley! Everything you know... is a lie!
WESLEY: STFU! PRESIDENT GOD WOULDN'T LIE TO ME!
CROSS: You are... my son.
WESLEY: YOU'RE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY FATHER!
CROSS: Check... the... IMDB. [*death nod*]
[O hai, Fox, thnx for rejoining us.]
WESLEY: Is it true?
FOX: Yeah, actually. Too bad Sloan says the loom wants you dead now.
[Yeah, well maybe you should have done it before he got AN ENTIRE TRAIN KILLED, Fox. And she still doesn't kill him, because Wesley shoots out the train window beneath him and falls with his dead father's body dowwwwwwn the ravine into the water...]
Some Apartment
[And... somehow... he gets out. Let's say... Pekwarsky comes and gets him.]
PEKWARSKY: This was your real father's apartment, Wesley. See? It's right across the train tracks from where you lived with your evil bitch girlfriend. He took pictures of you all the time, all your life!
WESLEY: AND TRIED TO KILL ME!
PEKWARSKY: No! He was trying to kill all your assassin friends and rescue you! He wanted a better life for you. You know... that life across the street with the... cheating girlfriend and the... soul-sucking... job...
WESLEY: ...
PEKWARSKY: I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.
[So it turns out that Sloan was making up target names all along and Cross found out and that's why Sloan wants him dead. So now Wesley's going to make himself over in the image of his real father, and conveniently Cross has an apartment full of sweet-ass leather jackets and guns and guns and more guns and... rat explosives?
Textile Factory #17
WESLEY: SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS!
THE GUNSMITH: What, your guns? We all have--
SOME GARBAGE TRUCK IN REVERSE: BEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
5000 NITROPEANUTBUTTERGLYCERRATS: *BOOM!*
[Wesley leaps through the window of the blown-up factory and matrixes through the looms killing all his assassin friends, with a special poetic-justice detour to knife the Butcher. He may also weave a couple of guys to death, I'm not sure. If you imagined Wesley shouting "FOR NARRRRRNIAAAAA!" in slo-mo through all this, you and I have a lot in common.]
One of the Great Moments in Modern Cinema
[Wesley makes it to Sloan's office, but he's surrounded by Fox, the Gunsmith, and... whoever else hasn't gotten dead yet but isn't important enough to have a name.]
WESLEY: THE LOOM IS A LIE! SLOAN MADE UP TARGETS FOR PROFIT AND MADE ME KILL MY REAL FATHER! HE'S THE ONE WHOSE NAME REALLY CAME UP!
SLOAN: So did everyone else's. Look, I have the paperwork. All of you should be dead, just like me. Either we can listen to the Magic Loom of Whatthefuckever that I was so big on fifteen minutes ago, or we can take destiny into our own hands and be gods among men. So if any of you feel the need to follow the code of the Fraternity to the letter, you can all put those guns in your mouths and pull the trigger. Otherwise, SHOOT THIS MOTHERFUCKER.
[I think we should all just bask in the incandescence of this moment here for a while.]
THE GUNSMITH: ... I'm totally okay with shooting Wesley.
[But Fox will live by the code and she will die by the code, so she pulls out her gun and whips off a shot and it circles around the room killing everyone through the head including her NO NOT FOX NOOOOOO FOOOOOOOX WHY DID YOU BELIEVE SLOAN? HE TOTALLY COULD HAVE MADE THOSE WEAVINGS UP TOO! *sob*]
Some ATM
[So Sloan got away, he took Wesley's badass not-girlfriend, he took the only not-home Wesley had, and now he's taken all of Wesley's not-father's money.]
WESLEY [sobbing]: Come back, three million dollars! Come baaaaaaack.
Wesley's Cubicle
WESLEY: And so I went back to my soul-sucking job and my horrible girlfriend and my douchebag best friend and resigned myself to a life of quiet, sadsack desperation. Oh, and then Sloan came up behind me at my desk and shot me through the head. The end.
SOME GUY WHO IS TOTALLY NOT WESLEY: SUCKAAAAAAAH.
SLOAN: *presidential-godly facepalm*
[Wesley caps Sloan with one of Pekwarsky's bullets through his boss's jelly donut and Barry's energy drink and the five o'clock train. He shoots him with his real father's magic scope rifle from the comforts of Cross's apartment all the way across town, and Sloan walked right into it.]
WESLEY: Pussy.
FIN.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Brief quotations and journal icons are considered fair use; you are welcome to make or use them.
Note: This is very much an R-rated movie, with the sex and the expletives and the shootings of people in the brain. The language in the recap, parody, whatever you want to call it, is going to reflect that (and trust me, this is the mild version). Also, Wanted is the kind of movie where half the charm of it is in the novelty of the visuals and some really funny surprises, so I'm... actually going to leave several good moments out. Believe me, there's plenty left over. Just--go see it. It's outrageous and stupid and funny and knows it, unlike some movies I could name COUGH THEHAPPENINGCOUGH.
Very Serious Opening Text
A THOUSAND YEARS AGO
[What? I thought this was about Angelina Jolie shooting up hot cars and shit--]
AN ANCIENT SOCIETY OF WEAVERS
[Weavers? Seriously?]
BECAME ASSASSINS AND CALLED THEMSELVES... THE FRATERNITY.
[Weavers?]
Loserville, Population: Wesley
WESLEY: Hi. My name is Wesley Gibson, and I'm a pussy. I hate my job so much that I take pills for panic attacks and spend most of my day meebling at my ergonomic keyboard. I hate my bitchy girlfriend Cathy and I hate my jerkass best friend Barry, who is fucking her. Here, watch them go at it for a few minutes. And they know I know he's fucking her. And I know they know I know, and I'm still buying him condoms and energy drinks. That's what a pussy I am. And obviously my father already knew I was going to be a loser, because he walked out when I was seven days old.
Meanwhile, A Guy Who Is Obviously Wesley's Father
[There's this guy Mr. X at his high-rise office, and then these assassin dudes on top of the building across the street shoot his assistant through the bindi and Mr. X races down the hall of his building and jumps through the window glass and soars across the street to the other building and shoots all the construction assassins in the brain (including one where the bullet turns a frickin' corner and kills this guy Mr. X couldn't even see) except for this one dude, because Mr. X falls before he can reach the ledge except then he materializes right behind that guy and also shoots him in the brain, and then some guy named Cross calls Mr. X's cell phone and laughs at him for falling for decoys and shoots Mr. X in the brain himself from, like, ten miles away in the comfort of his own apartment, and my entire audience sat there going WHAT.]
Some Walgreen's
WESLEY: Yeah, I'm here to pick up my refill of AHHHH HOLY SHIT IT'S ANGELINA JOLIE.
[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. Well, this and the global philanthropy.]
FOX: I knew your father.
WESLEY: Yeah, see, I doubt that, what with the walking out and the seven days old and--
FOX: Your father died yesterday on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Building. He was one of the greatest assassins who ever lived. And the man who killed him is right behind you.
THE PHARMACIST: So... that'll be $25.59...?
[And then a gunfight breaks out in the cereal aisle.]
Police Barricade, An Hour Later
SOME POLICE OFFICER: So, sir, can you describe what you saw?
SOME WITNESS: Yeah... there was this hot tattoo chick on the hood of this crazy hot car shooting at a Tastee Kibble truck behind them, and, like, I don't know who was driving it--the Terminator, maybe, because he was not gonna give up until they were thoroughly kibbled, but then the crazy hot car flipped over the barricade and rode away on top of a bus and the Kibbler escaped. Of course, you saw that part.
SOME POLICE OFFICER: What about the driver of the crazy hot car?
SOME WITNESS: I didn't see much of him. I just heard him screaming OH MY GOD OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOOOOOOOLY SHIIIIIIT WE'RE GOING TO DIEEEEEEEE the whole time.
SOME POLICE OFFICER: [writing]: Description: pussy.
Some Warehouse or Something, Who Knows
[Normally this is the kind of warehouse where they store action scenes, or maybe menacing interrogations, but when Wesley wakes up, it's just Common with a gun to his head and Morgan Freeman telling him to shoot the wings off flies.]
WESLEY: Wha...?
SLOAN: You're not a neglected orphan in a dead-end job! You're a born assassin! You're the bestest assassin of all and you had a rich assassin father who loved you so much he didn't want you to be like him (but he still left you all his money) and also, your panic attacks are actually episodes of grand mal badassery where your heart beats four times faster than normal and produces so much adrenaline that you can slow down time.
WESLEY: Does this mean I get to go to Hogwarts now?
SLOAN: ... If I say yes, will you stop being a pussy?
Wesley's Cubicle
[Short answer: No. Wesley returns to his bitchy girlfriend and his jerkass best friend and his soul-killing job and his anxiety meds, and hides his father's gun in the toilet tank because he is not ready to be hardcore, although the realization that he really does have three million dollars in the bank cheers him up considerably. And then his hosebeast of a boss starts harshing his buzz, so Wesley just snaps:]
WESLEY: You know, I want to feel sorry for you and your Stapler of Terror and your jelly donut fetish and your Manic Panic hair, but I'm finding it really hard so maybe you should just SUCK. MY. THREE. MILLION. DOLLARRRRRRRS.
BARRY: Woo! You tell her, pussy!
[And then Wesley belts his best friend across the face with his ergonomic keyboard, and the keys that break off and fly towards the camera spell out F-U-C-K Y-O. The second U is one of Barry's teeth. I'm not even making this up.]
The Closest Anyone Will Come to Facing Legal Consequences
[Wesley walks away from his job and his apartment and his life. Outside his office, Some Newspaper with vague police sketches of Fox and Wesley from the drugstore shootout bears the headline WANTED ON CHARGES OF AWESOMENESS.]
FOX: I stole another hot car. Get in.
THE POLICE: *are never seen again*
Textile Factory #17
[Somewhat surprisingly, the assassins actually make textiles at the factory and punch in every day and sit around eating sandwiches on their lunch break.]
WESLEY: So, is Fox gonna teach me gun-fu in a magic dojo now or something? 'Cause I'm ready to learn stuff, I really wanna learn stuff, can you download it straight into my head? That would be totally awesome--
SLOAN: Actually, you're going to start a rigorous training regimen of getting your face bashed in six times a day.
Wesley's Rigorous Training Regimen
THE REPAIRMAN: I will beat the pussy out of you!
WESLEY: OW MY PRETTY FACE!
THE BUTCHER: I will teach you how to fight with knives!
WESLEY: OW MY SOFT UNDERBELLY!
FOX: I will show you how to run on top of trains and slide under tunnels without getting your skull crushed!
WESLEY: OW MY TENDER BRAINMEATS!
The Giant Scary Mechanical Looms of Death
FOX: Stop time and grab the shuttle, Neo.
WESLEY: HOLY SHIT I JUST GOT WEAVED!
The Recovery Room
[But that's okay, because a paraffin bath from The Exterminator (not The Repairman, ironically) will fix everything! Because wax, it--it--stimulates the white blood cells and--stuff, you know, and it makes everything heal in like half an hour. IT DOES TOO! LOOK, CANDLEBATHS FIX EVERYTHING AND THAT'S JUST HOW IT IS, OKAY?]
WESLEY [encased in wax ]: MMMMF! MMNNGHGHHFFFF!
THE EXTERMINATOR: You know, sometimes I like to feed nitropeanutbutterglycerin to rats and watch them blow up.
WESLEY: ... Mmmf?
Fox Gets Impatient
FOX: Bitch, you are wasting my time with your unmotivated suckage! Why are you here? WHY ARE YOU HERE?
WESLEY: I don't know! I don't know! I--I just wanted to be awesome! Please stop hitting me, I can feel it in my cerebellum now!
FOX: WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHY ARE YOU HERE?
WESLEY [sobbing]: I don't know who I am!
Wesley's Textile Factory Dorm Room
[Apparently "I don't know who I am" is the right answer, because Sloan now reveals the truth about Wesley's accomodations:]
SLOAN: We assigned this room to you because it was your father's. All these books and guns and suits and photographs, they're not just here because we were too lazy to clean up. They belonged to him. And now they belong to you. So take all of his things and remake yourself in his image and discard the real you. Be your father instead. Because the person you really are? Sucks.
WESLEY: You know, you could have told me this a lot sooner and saved me, oh, about a hundred face-beatings.
SLOAN: Oh, like your candy ass didn't need it.
Shooting Lessons
[...now that Wesley actually cares about his training. Sides of beef, pig carcasses and dead people hang in front of the target, which makes accuracy a little bit hard.]
THE GUNSMITH: Okay. Shoot the bullseye.
WESLEY: Through the beef?
THE GUNSMITH: No, around the beef. We're much cooler than all the other movies we stole from, so when we shoot guns, it's more like throwing bullets.
WESLEY: If I make a joke about "gunslinging," will you hurt me?
FOX: *brassknuckles*
THE GUNSMITH: ...Yes.
[Sloan and Fox and the Gunsmith stand around and watch Wesley shoot beef for a while. Finally Fox stands in front of the target herself, and the power of his true lust omg teaches Wesley how to bend bullets.]
The Giant Magic Loom of Fate
[After a knife-fighting, Repairman-beating, train-jumping, shuttle-grabbing victory lap, Wesley learns What the Fraternity Is All About.]
SLOAN: I will show you the Loom Room once, and then you will never see it again. A thousand years ago, a secret fraternity of weavers invented a giant magic loom that weaves the names of Those Who Must Die in binary code. And we are the weapons of fate who interpret the magic weavings and carry out their orders.
WESLEY: Seriously?
SLOAN: Yes.
WESLEY: No, for real.
SLOAN: Yes.
WESLEY: And you want me to kill people, seriously, for real, because the Giant Magic Loom of Fate said so? In medieval binary?
SLOAN: Now you know why I never let anyone in here twice.
Wesley's First Job
[... is not to kill the man who killed his father. It's to ride on top of a train with Fox and shoot some guy through a fifth-story window. And of course Wesley punks out and can't do it, because he's Wesley.]
A Romantic Candlebath
WESLEY [covered in wax ]: So why, exactly, do you take orders from a magic loom?
FOX: Because we believe that if you kill one person, you can save a thousand.
WESLEY: But how do you know that person deserves it?
FOX: Let me tell you a story about a hardass federal judge who had a little girl.
[We see a flashback of a young girl with pillow lips and tiny little tattoos waiting at a window... with a knife to her back.]
FOX: One Christmas, a mobster wanted to send a message to the judge to go easier on criminals, so he hired a thug named Max Petridge to go to his house and burn the judge alive in front of his daughter and then brand the thug's initials on her with a red-hot wire hanger. When I became an assassin, I found out that Max Petridge was supposed to have been killed the week before by the Fraternity, but someone punked out and didn't pull the trigger. So I live by the code: Kill one. Save a thousand.
[In case that story was too subtle for you, we see initials MP branded into Fox's shoulder.]
WESLEY: You know, that seems like a really ineffective way to send a message to people. I mean, the judge can't be lenient now, he's crispy.
FOX: *bitchslap*
A Scene in Which I Merely Attempt to Transcribe the Awesomeness
[Having successfully finished his first job, Wesley goes on his second, which is to shoot Some Rich Guy in a bulletproof limousine who is dumb enough to keep the sunroof open so he can smoke his capitalist pig cigars, so Wesley ramps his car off Fox's and flips it over the limousine:]
WESLEY [upside-down]: HOOOOOOLYYYY SHIIIIIT YOU'RE GOING TO DIEEEEEEEE!
THE KISS THAT MADE BRAD PITT JEALOUS OMG
[ Trufax. After they finish that job, Wesley and Fox go back to his Loserville apartment to retrieve his father's gun. Barry is a little too happy to see him--]
BARRY: Wesley! You look good! Omg send help she's crazy--
WESLEY: Lick it up, bitch.
[--and his (their?) girlfriend starts shrieking about Wesley being a pussy and Barry being a big big man who satisfies her like whoa, in which case I have wonder why Cathy cares whether Wesley's fishing his personal belongings out of her toilet or not, when Fox decides to be a pal and give Wesley a little mouth-to-mouth to impress Cathy and emasculate Barry, which kind of doesn't work because Barry just becomes Wesley's #1 fan instead. And... that's it? Seriously? Brad Pitt's supposed to be jealous because Angelina Jolie slipped Mr. Tumnus a little tongue? I am starting to think that maybe tabloids don't always tell us the truth, you guys.]
WESLEY: Wow... it's a good thing that kiss was totally for real and not at all for show! I look forward to more in the future!
FOX: *friendly beatdown*
[And then Cross shows up in the alley outside and he and Wesley are both such good shots that their bullets just collide and they chase each other around a parking deck and then Wesley shoots the Exterminator by accident, and not even Fox or the Gunsmith have any idea how the Exterminator got there.]
Sloan's Office
WESLEY: This is the first traceable bullet Cross has used, and I've traced it to some bulletmaker in East Budafuck in a monastery! Cross is taunting me! Come on, let me go kill him!
FOX: I don't know that you're ready for this.
WESLEY: Look, I feel really bad about killing that guy who had no business being there!
SOME EXPLOSIVE RAT: *tear*
SLOAN: Fine, here's the Magic Loom kill order. Happy assassing!
Some Monastery, East Budafuck
[Pekwarsky the elderly bulletmaker is weaving quietly (of course he is), so Wesley tries to sneak up on him through the shadows of the looms all noir-like. Too bad Pekwarsky immediately gets the drop on him.]
WESLEY: I WANT CROSS!
PEKWARSKY: I have a gun in your face?
WESLEY: ... Please?
FOX: *stealth ninja gun-cocking*
PEKWARSKY: ... I can set up a meeting?
The Little Assassin Who Could
[Pekwarsky takes Wesley and Fox to a train station for the meeting. But no! It is a trap! Pekwarsky runs away, which makes Fox run after him, which leaves Wesley alone to spy Cross and follow him onto a train! Which was exactly what Cross and Pekwarsky planned! Fox hijacks a car and tries to catch up with the train! But Wesley and Cross are already shooting at each other ON A MOVING TRAIN while DUMBASS PASSENGERS KEEP GETTING IN THEIR WAY and their bullets do nothing but collide so Fox gets tired of this fuckwittery and DRIVES HER CAR INTO THE TRAIN, and then a conductor or someone decides to stop the train, STOP THE TRAIN, while it is passing over a GIANT BOTTOMLESS RAVINE AND THE TRAIN IS FALLING OFF THE BRIDGE AND SLAMMING INTO THE MOUNTAIN and Wesley is going to fall to his death but no! Cross reaches out and grabs his hand! Cross, his mortal enemy! So Wesley shoots him. Mmm, gratitude.]
CROSS [dying]: Wesley! Everything you know... is a lie!
WESLEY: STFU! PRESIDENT GOD WOULDN'T LIE TO ME!
CROSS: You are... my son.
WESLEY: YOU'RE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY FATHER!
CROSS: Check... the... IMDB. [*death nod*]
[O hai, Fox, thnx for rejoining us.]
WESLEY: Is it true?
FOX: Yeah, actually. Too bad Sloan says the loom wants you dead now.
[Yeah, well maybe you should have done it before he got AN ENTIRE TRAIN KILLED, Fox. And she still doesn't kill him, because Wesley shoots out the train window beneath him and falls with his dead father's body dowwwwwwn the ravine into the water...]
Some Apartment
[And... somehow... he gets out. Let's say... Pekwarsky comes and gets him.]
PEKWARSKY: This was your real father's apartment, Wesley. See? It's right across the train tracks from where you lived with your evil bitch girlfriend. He took pictures of you all the time, all your life!
WESLEY: AND TRIED TO KILL ME!
PEKWARSKY: No! He was trying to kill all your assassin friends and rescue you! He wanted a better life for you. You know... that life across the street with the... cheating girlfriend and the... soul-sucking... job...
WESLEY: ...
PEKWARSKY: I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.
[So it turns out that Sloan was making up target names all along and Cross found out and that's why Sloan wants him dead. So now Wesley's going to make himself over in the image of his real father, and conveniently Cross has an apartment full of sweet-ass leather jackets and guns and guns and more guns and... rat explosives?
Textile Factory #17
WESLEY: SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS!
THE GUNSMITH: What, your guns? We all have--
SOME GARBAGE TRUCK IN REVERSE: BEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
5000 NITROPEANUTBUTTERGLYCERRATS: *BOOM!*
[Wesley leaps through the window of the blown-up factory and matrixes through the looms killing all his assassin friends, with a special poetic-justice detour to knife the Butcher. He may also weave a couple of guys to death, I'm not sure. If you imagined Wesley shouting "FOR NARRRRRNIAAAAA!" in slo-mo through all this, you and I have a lot in common.]
One of the Great Moments in Modern Cinema
[Wesley makes it to Sloan's office, but he's surrounded by Fox, the Gunsmith, and... whoever else hasn't gotten dead yet but isn't important enough to have a name.]
WESLEY: THE LOOM IS A LIE! SLOAN MADE UP TARGETS FOR PROFIT AND MADE ME KILL MY REAL FATHER! HE'S THE ONE WHOSE NAME REALLY CAME UP!
SLOAN: So did everyone else's. Look, I have the paperwork. All of you should be dead, just like me. Either we can listen to the Magic Loom of Whatthefuckever that I was so big on fifteen minutes ago, or we can take destiny into our own hands and be gods among men. So if any of you feel the need to follow the code of the Fraternity to the letter, you can all put those guns in your mouths and pull the trigger. Otherwise, SHOOT THIS MOTHERFUCKER.
[I think we should all just bask in the incandescence of this moment here for a while.]
THE GUNSMITH: ... I'm totally okay with shooting Wesley.
[But Fox will live by the code and she will die by the code, so she pulls out her gun and whips off a shot and it circles around the room killing everyone through the head including her NO NOT FOX NOOOOOO FOOOOOOOX WHY DID YOU BELIEVE SLOAN? HE TOTALLY COULD HAVE MADE THOSE WEAVINGS UP TOO! *sob*]
Some ATM
[So Sloan got away, he took Wesley's badass not-girlfriend, he took the only not-home Wesley had, and now he's taken all of Wesley's not-father's money.]
WESLEY [sobbing]: Come back, three million dollars! Come baaaaaaack.
Wesley's Cubicle
WESLEY: And so I went back to my soul-sucking job and my horrible girlfriend and my douchebag best friend and resigned myself to a life of quiet, sadsack desperation. Oh, and then Sloan came up behind me at my desk and shot me through the head. The end.
SOME GUY WHO IS TOTALLY NOT WESLEY: SUCKAAAAAAAH.
SLOAN: *presidential-godly facepalm*
[Wesley caps Sloan with one of Pekwarsky's bullets through his boss's jelly donut and Barry's energy drink and the five o'clock train. He shoots him with his real father's magic scope rifle from the comforts of Cross's apartment all the way across town, and Sloan walked right into it.]
WESLEY: Pussy.
FIN.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Brief quotations and journal icons are considered fair use; you are welcome to make or use them.