A Usual Suspect Is Needed

While sitting in a dark theatre, my feet pressed firmly on the sticky floor while handling a large helping of overpriced popcorn; my mind started wandering to the next Wolverine film. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps I like torturing myself with idle plot points that have nothing to do with real life.

Anyway, I started researching the next film and I learned Christopher McQuarrie has been hired to write the next Wolverine movie. This is good, right? I mean he is Oscar-worthy and knows how to make good movies, right? I was excited. That was until my inner critic took over and dug deeper into McQuarrie’s success.

I loved The Usual Suspects. In fact, I can’t find a person who doesn’t love that movie. It was awesome, it was brilliant, and it was an original idea when we needed one most. It won McQuarrie an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. His life was set. He had his whole life in front of him. The world was his oyster. Then….we waited. And waited. And waited for his next project. Finally, six years later, we got Way of the Gun. It was a moderate success (I liked it a lot) and didn’t follow through with Usual very well.

The Usual Suspects turns 15 this year. That’s right, 15 years ago is when it was released and McQuarrie has two other films under his belt. It was hardly taking life by the horns and becoming the talk of Hollywood. His last venture was Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise movie about the assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler. It received mixed reviews, but did make over $200 million worldwide. If I were a betting man I would say this is the reason McQuarrie’s name is in the mix around Tinsel Town again.

I’m going to be kind to him. I’m going to say this film will rock my Marvel-loving socks off. I mean, think about it, it doesn’t have to be that good to be better than the first Wolverine movie. It was full of life and moderation. It was on the fence of being bad and brilliant. It dared to go somewhere, but just didn’t quite get there. So McQuarrie doesn’t have to make another Usual film in order to gain success.

Be that as it may, I think there was a reason for his long layoff. Maybe he had family problems. Perhaps he took his money and success and sailed the globe. Maybe he came out of the closet and needed time to explain it all to family and friends. Maybe he had a kid. (That alone will lose you three to four years tops among other adults). Whatever the reason, he’s back and he has been hired to write a much anticipated piece of comic book to film history. Wolverine is wildly popular. The movie about him made tons of money. The next movie will also make tons of money. The only thing I hope is that it will be as sharp and original as some of McQuarrie’s work.

Lost in all of this is a little bit of irony. I’m sure McQuarrie needs to work again. I’m also equally sure the makers of the next Wolverine know they have a lot to live up to given the summer of 2008 when every comic book movie blew us away. The irony is both writer and movie need each other. This needs to happen. McQuarrie needs to summon the ghosts of Keyser Soze and remember why the movie was so good. We hung on every word and the action scenes personified the story instead of making the story. Wolverine deserves to have a creator of this magnitude and compete with the next Batman and Iron Man movies.

The lights come back up and I shuffle out of the theater. I start to wonder why I have no life. Oh yeah, I’m a comic book fanatic. It kind of goes with the territory. I start crossing my fingers again that McQuarrie will save Wolverine and not do for the muscle-bound Prince of Adamantium what Ang Lee did for the Incredible Hulk. Gasp. Great, now I need a drink.