Beware Minor Spoilers 

As silly a concept as it looked, I was hopeful for Hancock because, as a comic film buff, I was delighted to see someone producing an original superhero film not based on any comics. There have been, of course, some other lame attempts at this– anybody remember Blank Man?– and some kid movies like Sharkboy and Lava Girl. Although Hancock looked like it might be going in a spoof direction, I thought there might be potential for taking it seriously, on the grounds that it was attempting to make Superman interesting. Instead of taking someone with incredible powers who can’t be killed and making him the most morally-driven man on the planet, wouldn’t it be more interesting to give that power to someone who didn’t know what to do with it, who might even abuse it, and then bring that person to a level of responsibility and maturity within the film?

 Well… that’s sort of what happened with Hancock.

 The film’s first mistake is that it begins to tell the story of a character (let’s even forget for a minute that he’s supposed to be a superhero) who isn’t just lazy, practically homeless, rude, and irresponsible… but always extremely drunk. Hancock is drunk for the first half of the movie. This isn’t interesting at all, and it only serves to bog down the story. He isn’t sober until after he meets Ray, who he reluctantly hires as his public relations manager, and decides to turn himself over to the authorities for all the public damage he’s caused in his “heroic” efforts. Before that happens, it’s impossible to get a good handle on the character because he’s incoherant and inhibited– no one can be “himself” while he’s drunk, so we don’t get to actually meet Hancock until he goes to jail. And saying, “well, Hancock’s always drunk, so that’s just who he is” would be an excuse to film a lot of scenes of Hancock breaking things, swearing, showing people swearing at him, and seeing how many times characters can say the word @$$hole in a half hour. Which is ultimately what the first part of the movie amounts to.

That first half is very disjointed and has nothing that resembles pacing. It can’t decide if it’s a parody of a superhero movie or if it’s a real one. In the opening scene, when Hancock flies like an out-of-control drunk driver to the scene of the crime with a bottle in his hand, it certainly feels like parody… and it’s almost funny. But then we’re supposed to feel simpathetic for Hancock along with Ray, who thinks that even though he’s reckless and inconsiderate, he still saves people and ultimately, the city needs him (an idea mostly based on the fact that Hancock just saved him from an oncoming train). That was difficult for me, because I couldn’t decide what kind of a movie I was watching. Both the comic beats and the drama beats were way off.

Then comes the second half. As soon as Hancock is called back from prison because the crime rate has gone way up and there’s a hostage situation the police can’t handle alone, Hancock instantly transforms into a good movie. He still doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he’s sobered up and he’s trying. Now he’s a lot more coherant, and actually a lot wordier, when he hardly said anything before. This may be a bit inconsistant, but at this point, he starts looking more like Will Smith than Hancock, and while I suppose I should have resisted, I like Will Smith more than I like Hancock. 

After Hancock actually does save the day, without hurting any innocent people or destroying public property, the city changes its mind about him, and we can get on with the story. The rest of the movie deals with Hancock’s background. I was worried until this point that we would never learn why he has powers or why he became a superhero, considering he doesn’t seem to really care about anyone but himself. I’ll admit, Hancock’s origin is a little contrived, but it’s also very comic book. I won’t give it away here because I would have to reveal the film’s really great twist in the middle (which also makes the second part better than the first), a twist that helps the film go from crude to clever in an instant. What I will say is this: just when it looks like it’s about to do the same contrived thing these movies always do, it goes in a completely different direction and I never would have called it in a thousand years.

Hancock’s best achievement is that it manages to effectively give us a great deal of background and mythology without a single flashback. Flashbacks very often bog down stories, and though this movie was a master at botching its own pace in the first half, the second barrelled straight through, transforming into a piece that was fast paced, hardly dull, and slightly more original than I expected from the trailers. I do think parts of the mythology are inconsistant (again, don’t want to spoil it here) but I was just impressed it was there at all.

The other thing the movie did well was comment on the whole concept of superheroes, from Hancock originally refusing to wear a costume and Ray’s explanation of why a costume is neccessary, to Ray’s encouraging Hancock to tell the police at whatever crime scene he’s at that they’ve done a good job. Hancock responds by saying, “If they’ve done a good job, what do they need me for?” Ray doesn’t have an answer, and I think that’s a great commentary on comics in general. I didn’t want the movie to go as far into parody as it sometimes did, but I was also happy it didn’t take itself so seriously that it coudn’t make fun of its own genre, as even the most serious superhero films historically have (Cyclops’ line to Wolverine in X-Men: “What were you expecting, yellow spandex?”)

Hancock really was a pretty good movie… for a first draft. I really think someone should have told the writers they weren’t finished yet. In fact, the two halves of the film sound like they were written by two different writers, and almost look like they were directed by two different directors. That disjointed feel in the first half is compounded by a sometimes reality-TV filming style that is missing from the second half. The last part has traditional film plot points, decisions for the characters to make, goals for them to achieve… regular story stuff that any writer should know about, but still seems to missing from the first part. The movie is only 90 minutes long, yet it feels like a bad movie followed by a better sequel.

It has the exact opposite problem I’ve had with a lot of films over the last few years. Usually you get a good first act or two, and then the writers couldn’t figure out how to end it so the last act feels like a different movie. This was exactly the problem with Will Smith’s last movie, I Am Legend. Never have I encountered a movie that knew exactly how to end but couldn’t figure out what it was doing at the beginning. Too bad they’re too late for a second draft– that’s all this movie really needs.

 LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

Tags: comic book, Hancock, Movie, Sci-Fi, superhero, Will Smith

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under Capt Logan, Movies, Sci-Fi, comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.