About this episode
Phil and Emily discuss the film Wanted with guest Elias Isquith, exploring its themes of toxic masculinity and its cultural impact.
Phil and Emily are joined by writer Elias Isquith (Necessary Fictions blog) to close out the Angelina Jolie Action Films of the 2000s miniseries with the loudest, messiest entry yet: Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted (2008). James McAvoy plays a cubicle drone recruited by Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman into a secret fraternity of assassins that takes its orders from a magical loom. Yes, a loom. The movie was a surprise hit the summer it opened alongside WALL-E, weeks before The Dark Knight blew everything away, and none of them had seen it since theaters. Rewatching it in 2026 was a very different experience. The conversation digs into how Wanted plays like a proto-incel power fantasy, a movie that negs its audience for 110 minutes and then stares into the camera asking "what the fuck have you done lately?" They trace the line from Fight Club and The Matrix to this film's confused politics, where the message is "be free and take charge of your life" but also "obey the magic loom or die." Emily breaks down the gendered self-loathing baked into so many films aimed at young men, and Elias connects the movie's hyper-individualism to the toxic masculinity pipeline that would migrate to…
People in this episode
Hosts: Phil, Emily
Guest: Elias Isquith
Topics covered
- Angelina Jolie films
- action movies
- toxic masculinity
- film analysis
- gender politics
- incel culture
Keywords
- Wanted
- Angelina Jolie
- James McAvoy
- toxic masculinity
- film analysis
- incel
- 2000s action films
- gender politics
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Necessary Fictions
Books & works: Wanted, WALL-E, The Dark Knight, Fight Club, The Matrix
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