So, like I promised I would (see below), I’ve been ignoring the movie critics lately as we seem to have a differing opinion on what good cinema entails. To summarize; they call boring movies brilliant and entertaining movies crap. Once again, we are at odds with one another (I’m sure they care) with the movie Hancock, which for some of its faults, I still enjoyed rather thoroughly.
I’m not going to summarize the plot; read Wikipedia if you want that. Just be alerted; major spoilers ahead.
First of all, I loved the concept of taking the consequences of super-heroics and making them so bad that the public would rather loose a few lives than have this bumbling alcoholic burden the taxpayers with literally millions of dollars in damage. Its just funny to me; we never see that in a superhero movie/show/comic etc. Sure the Man of Steel and the Caped Crusader save the day, but if you actually pay attention from now on, you’ll notice they wreak a lot of shit while they’re doing it. Ooops, sorry to completely trash your city’s infrastructure; but little Timmy is safe! The movies have a tendency to focus on what looks cool without ever having to focus on the fact that someone has to clean it up afterwards. I doubt even the board members of Wayne Enterprises ignore that they loose millions a month to public repair costs with no solid explanation as to why. But Hancock takes this to the extreme and makes it one of the movies central themes; good for it. I love it.
And I liked Jason Bateman’s character of Ray; just a good guy trying to do a good thing. You see this alot in Superhero movies, but its usually the hero, not their publicist, who is the moral center of the flick. Whereas Will Smith’s Hancock is also greatly played; he’s not the wisecracking but flashy star you see in most of his movies (don’t get me wrong, I like those roles), I really believed him as an asshole who’s just doing what he feels obligated to do because of his powers. Although, let me get this out of the way now as one of the things I didn’t like about this movie; the whole “don’t call me asshole” thing got on my nerves the same way the “don’t call me chicken” thing annoyed me in Back to the Future 2. It’s just so corny, in a bad way.
But the thing that I’ve noticed when reading reviews of both critics and the wonderfully articulate people on message boards (loooolz fo realz) is that even if people liked the first half of the movie, involving rehabilitating Hancock into a superhero the people can get behind, many people lost love for this movie at the twist halfway through. Well, I’m here to say to all of those people … fuck you, I loved it and it did make sense.
Now understand that two of my favourite TV shows in the history of forever are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. The two of them taking place within the same universe (or as the super-cool call it, the Buffyverse), over time you are treated to stories of superstrength that has been passed on from one girl to the next over thousands of years and a two-hundred year love-quartet between four incredibly detailed vampire characters which is told in pieces over the run of the show. So the revelation in this movie? Not so far outside the box for a Joss Whedon fan. In fact, the idea that the superheroes in this movie are helpers of the gods is about as believable as being bitten by a radioactive spider or “evolving” and getting superpowers out of the deal. The reality for the last two; cancer. Become a scientist like me and you’ll realize that all those fun mutations you read the heroes getting in the comic books are lies and you’re really just going to end up with lots of dead people. Plus, how “scientific” is Superman’s origin? Just because he has a spaceship? Please. You lost your ability to criticize the reality of their superpowers origin when you accepted they had superpowers in the first place.
So, back to how awesome the Hancock origin is (remember the spoilers ahead? we are in fact here). To summarize for the people who didn’t get it; the gods made heroes, or protectors, or whatever you want to call it. They sent them to earth to protect people thousands of years ago. There were many of them. However, they made them in pairs; each half of the pair was the other’s counterpart and they were inevitably attracted to each other. This meant that a sacrifice had to be made on the part of the heroes; they could either retain their powers and help mankind, or they could be with the one they were destined for in exchange for their immortality. This meant that whenever the pairs were in close proximity to each other, they start to become mortal, and if they stayed together, they would eventually die a normal death. Well after thousands of years of being apart and doing what they could for humanity, most of the pairs decided they’d done enough and deserved some loving; or “paired up and died out” as Charlize Theron’s character puts it. This looses some people, but as I said, being a Whedon fan means that this kind of story is one you’d accept and probably love. It makes about as much sense as the “perfect happiness” clause in Angel’s curse, anyway, and thats a damn good storyline.
So, as super-Charlize eventually explains, her and Hancock, being each other’s counterpart, spent many years together and then apart and then together again throughout the millenia. They’d pair up, enjoy some grown up time during a few mortal years, then they’d split up to do their superhero thang. Problem is, when you’re a hero, you tend to piss people off and so when they went all couple-y and became vulnerable, their enemies would attack them. They always scraped by and split up, bu 80 years ago, Mr. Smith got himself a nice case of amnesia from a skull fracture. No doubt, when he says it cleared up in an hour, it was during that hour that superchick decided that it would be better for both of them and they people they were meant to save if he had no memory of her and she disappeared from his life. She goes away, and presto, he’s healed and a superhero without a memory or a purpose. Hence the drinking
Its so sad when he contemplates how much an asshole he had to be in order to have noone to claim him in the hospital; when really the one person who could have claimed him didn’t because she loved him too much. Maybe more people would have believed it if they’d seen the flashbacks, of the two of them and of him waking up in the hospital. Why would people want a standard story of memory loss and superpowers due to government experimentation? Doesn’t his suit look enough like Wolverine’s? Why’d you want him to copy Wolverine’s backstory too? I couldn’t imagine it; not when this is so much more rich.
Maybe its the Whedon fan in me, maybe its the ficcer, or maybe a bit of both, but I can just see so many untold tales of them, the other pairs that died out, their quests, their romances of the past, and even more recently, her disappointment in him when her sacrifice only makes him a drunken slob hated by the public. I’m not necessarily a romantic person persay, but I love a good story, and I wish they’d spent a little more time fleshing their’s out instead of making it unaccessible heresay. Oh wells.
On a final note, I will point out the other flaw in this otherwise enjoyable film, and that’s the lack of a good villain. For a superhero like Hancock, it would have been smart to include a villain that gets notorious enough to drive Hancock to straighten himself out for the fight. His getting shot in a liquor store is a bit anticlimactic, and when the final fight goes down, you’re not even the least bit concerned about Captain Hook.
I’d like to see a comic book or even better a television show chronicling the tales of God’s Angels or whatever they are called. Overall, 4/5. Good ride and even better twist.
