No matter how cool you think the Matrix-fu special effects were, no matter how hard you laughed hard when James McAvoy’s Wesley Gibson shouted, “I’mmmmm sorrrrrrrryyyyyy!” in slow motion, and especially no matter how much you’re looking forward to the DVD so you can freeze Angelina’s naked form in all its glory on your flat-screen TV, Wanted is really only just an OK movie. Now, before you fill our sacred comment boxes with vitriolic responses questioning my intelligence and all-around right to live for slurring your “favorite movie of the year,” hear me out because I’m willing to bet you don’t know what you missed out on since Universal and the filmmakers didn’t have the stones to make the kind of genre-flipping movie we’d still be talking about in twenty years.

Wanted began its life as a comic-book series, like most summer blockbusters do these days. Unlike characters like Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark, though, Wesley Gibson wasn’t born in distant decades past that sometimes struggle for relevance today. His debut came in 2003 as the star of creator and scribe Mark Millar’s six-issue eponymous limited series that, unlike this year’s big-screen adaptation, was not about a heroic assassin. Wanted the comic book was about a cold-hearted killer called, aptly enough, The Killer, who was, first and foremost, a super-villain.

Before you shout out, “But, but, but assassins are villains, too, Senor Haddon!” let me emphasize the super in super-villain. The comic Gibson was a super-villain like the Joker, like Lex Luther, like the Green Goblin. He killed because he hated his cubicle desk job. He killed because his best friend was "friendly" with his girlfriend. He killed because he had no purpose in life until he found out his dad was also a super-villain and, by virtue of genetics, he, too, was capable of killing with profound ease. Not only was he capable of it; Gibson excelled at it, embraced it, and reveled in it. At one point, he even rapes an A-list celebrity. Now raping an A-list celebrity sounds kind of darkly funny, but imagine McAvoy’s Gibson doing that? If you can’t, that’s because he wouldn’t. McAvoy’s Gibson is the touchy-feely version of the comic-book Gibson, the version Universal imagined the most number of Americans would be willing to embrace. The irony is, Americans love anti-heroes. Hell, just look at Pulp Fiction or, further back, The Godfather movies. Americans love killers, especially ones who have little conscience about it.

Here’s the other thing about the comic-book Wanted: super-villains rule the world in it because they’ve gotten rid of all super-heroes! They’ve actually won, and now keep the balance of evil rather than good, which makes a lot of sense considering the messed-up world we live in. Millar is willing to go wherever it takes to examine our fascination with super-villains and the tropes all comic books now follow when creating them. Gibson’s The Killer thus never questions what he does once he embraces his heritage; he kills and enjoys it. After a kick-ass twist ending that trounces the movie’s twist, The Killer goes so far as to screw with readers by telling The Fox (the character-in-name-only Angelina Jolie played) that he intends to quit the super-villain game since, “I learned you can’t solve every problem with a bullet.” Luckily, this is a lie.

The Killer is going to go right on killing. And raping. And pillaging. And whatever else he feels like doing. If Universal had actually made the comic book they bought, Wanted would have been as amazing as Millar’s creation. Instead, I just felt lied to like The Fox. If you knew any better, you would, too.

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