Hancock: The Discussion Thread (Major Spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I know there are a couple threads out there already but they are a mess and were started a month ago to discuss the advertising for the film. I figure this movie is creating enough talk and has enough room for various interpretations to warrant a new focused thread.

Last night a friend and I went to see it and we both walked out completely disagreeing on the movie. I enjoyed it quite a bit while she thought the plot was retarded. This led to a pretty long debate on the merits of the movie, specifically the big plot twist and how well it stood up to scrutiny.

We agreed that the premise was excellent. We both loved the idea of a maladjusted, grumpy, foul-mouthed, boozing super hero that can’t seem to get out of his own way. We loved that they actually pointed out all the collateral damage that Superheroes cause and made it a plot point. We thought the casting was outstanding and we thought all the leads did a great job of giving the characters life. Will Smith was still Will Smith but he didn’t over do it like he sometimes can, though my friend was rattled by hearing him swear! Jason Bateman is always enjoyable and likable and he nailed it. Charlize Theron looked amazing and did a decent job in what was a somewhat poorly written role. The FX were first rate and there was a lot of genuinely funny dialog. All in all the movie had all the ingredients to be a great movie.

Our disagreement, it should come as no surprise, revolved around the big plot twist that the PR agents wife also has super powers exactly like Will Smith. For anyone who hasn’t seen it but is eager for some spoilers I’ll explain a little (skip this paragraph if you already saw the movie). Hancock has Super Powers and is basically immortal. 80 years before, he woke up in a hospital badly injured with amnesia and it’s assumed that the blow to the head is what caused him to gain his powers. A big reason for his bad behavior is that he’s lonely since he has no memory of his past and because no one came to the hospital to claim him. We learn later that Mary, Charlize Theron’s character, also has super powers and really wants Hancock out of her life completely. We learn a little later that Mary and Hancock are some unspecified type of beings who are immortal. These immortals are for some reason “created” in pairs and are destined to be together. When they are together their powers dwindle and they become mortal. Mary explains that she chose to abandon Hancock when his amnesia was apparent because she saw this as an opportunity to save themselves from the vulnerability. Supposedly some amorphous and unspecified “them” is always out hunting them and Mary believes that Hancock has some higher responsibility to defend humanity and therefore they must sacrifice their happiness and always stay apart to stay alive.

Now, much of the issue that my friend had with the movie is all the things that were unspecified or vague. There really isn’t an exposition that explains why they are created in pairs or why this would cause their powers to diminish. They don’t explain who the ominous “they” or “them” are that have hunted and killed all the others of their kind. It doesn’t say why Mary thinks Hancock is somehow special and why it’s his burden to defend humanity. And probably at the heart of it all is that the movie never really explains what Mary and Hancock actually are!

I agreed with all my friends points there. There’s a ton of stuff about the movie main conceit that is completely unexplained. She found that this fact made her not care at all what happened. She argued that it was “stupid” that whatever created them would do it in such a way where they are drawn together as pairs to become mortal, essentially arguing that it would undo whatever their purpose was in the first place. The big difference for me was that I just didn’t need it explained to me. Having a bunch of the back story left vague and unclear is part of the appeal. We are essentially just watching a relationship between two characters and the stuff that put them in this situation is less important than the feelings it causes in them. By avoiding too much fanwanking on the origin story they successfully separate this movie further from typical super hero stories. I think it’s also relevant that the explanation we do get is told by Mary’s character and we have no reason to believe that she is particularly omniscient or knowledgeable on the question of “why are we here” or “what are we”. Perhaps we know so little because the characters in the movie are in the dark too. Maybe it’s like asking a religious human why God made us and why there are bad people.

Anyways, I was able to enjoy the movie in spite of it’s unanswered questions. Based on reviews and commentary on the web it seems that I might be in the minority though. What do you all think?

I will concede that the director Peter Berg did seem to rush through the ending. It seemed that he decided that this was an action movie and that once the action started it had to keep coming at a brisk pace. All this action left little time for in-depth discussion and consideration of the purpose for the characters. As a result a lot of viewers were probably left scratching their heads. Perhaps there will be a Directors Cut version of the movie that restores some deleted scenes and expands the last 1/3rd of the movie into something a little more coherent and meaty.

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I liked it better than most of the reviewers, mostly because the actors were appealing and the action was unique and whimsical for a superhero movie. I called the plot twist as soon as I saw Charlize Theron’s reaction to seeing hancock for the first time.

This actually is specified. She tells Hancock they are literally “God’s angels.” The pairs that lose their powers when they get close makes no sense, but at least we get told that they’re guardian angels.

I thought the story got silly, but I basically liked the character of Hancock and the action scenes were amusing. Also, you get to see a guy shove a guy’s head up another guy’s ass.

3

I saw this last night, and quite enjoyed it. The plot was definitely different than I had expected - I was thinking it would ultimately follow the tried and true “superhero overcomes odds to defeat mighty supervillian” path, but instead, it is the tragic tail of two immortal creatures who are doomed to death if they are together, yet doomed to eternal yearning and emptiness if they are apart.

I agree with Omniscient that the unexplained elements are in fact a good thing and enhance the film as a whole. The only question I really wish they had answered is how Mary knows that she and Hancock are the only two of their kind still alive.

I do have one issue with the ending, though - Hancock found an immediate solution to their problem by getting far away from Mary so that they could regain their power and survive. However, this seems a little short sighted to me. To me, logic would dictate that they will ultimately be drawn back to one another (if nothing else, the film shows quite clearly that even amnesia didn’t counteract this).

I’m really hoping the ending wasn’t left this way as a convenient opening for a sequel…

4

I thought they were going to say that Hancock and her were former lovers, that much was fairly obvious, but I didn’t expect her to be a superhero.

I really think you missed this part. Mary says something close to “we are known by many names across the centuries…Gods, Angels or Superheroes.” This is in no way intended to explain what they are but just that people of the world have crafted different ways to define them and that it’s essentially irrelevant. And she does not say that “they are guardian angels” she says that Hancock is special and that he’s supposed to protect humanity, him specifically. She obviously in the movie has no responsibility or interest in guarding humans herself and the way she phrased it it seemed clear that the others of their kind who have been killed weren’t either. Basically because Hancock is special is why they are the last and resist simply becoming mortal together and dying like the others.

I liked that scene but I agreed with many of the reviewers who argued the scene would have been funnier if they wouldn’t have actually shown it and simply left it suggested off camera like the teasers did.

5

I liked it. It wasn’t a classic, and it certainly wasn’t the best film I’ve seen this year, but it was definitely worth watching.

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I just rationalized that she thinks she knows this, how much she knows and how much of what she assumes is true is one of the unexplained details. Perhaps she’s totally wrong and assumes that she’s the only one smart enough to have laid low and hid her powers while in fact there are others across the world hiding out.

I think you are looking at it with a little more finality than is necessary. Mary is building herself a happy little life with the family and Hancock is working on becoming content himself by embracing the role of hero and adopting his little pet. They are attempting to cope with the longing for each other by developing a long-distance friendship via Cell Phone, something that would not have been practical 80 years ago when Mary made the choice to abandon him.

All in all, I found that solution pretty practical and sounds like something a normal person might do, i.e. making the best of a hard situation.

7

I’m concurring with the above – she did not say that they were God’s angels, she said they were “gods, angels …”.

The movie was – well – fine, I suppose. Better than the critical consensus. My major beef was that the villain was given no personality, no great amount of screen time, no motive. I realize that he was incidental, really, but the film could have done just as well without him if that were the case.

Well, of course; I think that was implicitly embraced. They can postpone it, though, as they have for thousands of years. They’ll still be alive when Jason Bateman’s character is gone.

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Could be, could be. But, if true, this serves to further heighten my fear that a sequel is imminent.

I agree that the solution was the most practical one for the moment, and I would have probably done the same thing. I do wonder, though, what happens in another 80-100 years, when Ray and possibly even Aaron are long gone (as an aside, I guess the fact that I wondered this shows that I bought in to the characters pretty fully).

9

One more thing that I wonder about is if the critics and haters are biased because the typical superhero movies these days is just thick with history and back story. Every superhero is based on a decades old comic book, graphic novel or book that has taken the time to flesh out all the characters, good and bad, and give them a wealth of motivation and reasoned personality.

The fact that this is essentially a new story with new characters necessarily means that we have nothing except for what is shown in the movie to go on. Does that mean that the movies frequent vagueness is much less uncommon than we think? Are we expecting too much logic and exposition since it’s not a glorified cartoon?

FTR, I think a Hancock novelization and/or graphic novel could be really good stuff with the R-rated sensibilities.

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Heh, I find it a little ironic that we are talking about how much of the story is left unexplained and you’re wringing your hands over the idea of a sequel. Personally I think that a sequel would be welcome and that they’ve left themselves enough story to tell to make it worthwhile.

Most sequels suck because they are completely unnecessary…this seems like one that might actually be…um, necessary.

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I’d say that essentially the movie is about the best you can expect for what all story there was that was meant to be there. That is to say that ultimately it shouldn’t have been a movie, and would have been much better as a single season TV series or miniseries. But if one had to edit down such a TV series, this movie is about the best you could expect from that. You would need a larger cast to make it into a series, but it would give time to flesh out the characters’ histories and relationships, the whole angel angle, create a better bad guy, and provide a more gradual and emotional shift in Hancock’s personality.

Not to say that the story is necessarily interesting enough to deserve such a treatment, but it would definitely have been better for the story as it is.

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That is pretty funny, now that you mention it ;-). I guess my fear isn’t so much that they will make a sequel, but rather that when/if they make the sequel, it will suck donkey balls.

Actually, I don’t think they need a better bad guy. My take on that part is that Hancock is there to protect humanity from itself. That being the case, it makes more sense that there is not any crazy super villain. Instead, the cycle repeats itself - people thwarted by Hancock grow to resent them, and over time there become more and more resenters, until there are enough to cause the critical someone-attacks-Mary-and/or-Hancock-while-they-are-vulnerable event.

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Not necessarily better. I thought that the motivation and description they gave in the one news report was sufficient for what’s needed. It would just be nice to see the actual breakout of jail, more time on organization, a longer attack, etc. In the movie, the whole breakout to the final guy getting his second hand cut off was probably a sum total of ten minutes. You could spread that over two or three episodes without any differences, just more detail.

14

Well, I’m not necessarily on board with the idea of this story as a series rather than a movie. However, if in fact it had been a series, I would agree with this:

15

Saw it last night and liked it much more than I thought I would. Not as good as Iron Man, all in all, but a fun, funny film with some great action sequences and much more emotional depth than I expected. I agree that the ambiguity about Hancock’s background was fine. In this particular film, I actually preferred that to an elaborately-spelled-out backstory.

The cast was terrific all around. Favorite bits: the little kid nudging Hancock awake and dissing him at the beginning… H. getting a mouthful of feathers when he flies through the flock of birds… the prisoners disgustedly giving H. the finger when he shoots baskets from across the prison yard… H.'s reaction when Aaron gives him his favorite dinosaur… his little P.C. chat with the wounded female cop in the midst of a huge gunfight… trying to hurt the mom in the kitchen while her husband’s on the phone! Good stuff.

The scenes with H. in the prison’s Alcoholics Anonymous group were oddly affecting.

Nice to see a Hollywood film with bad guys across all racial groups: Asian, white, black, Latino, etc. Better, though, I agree, only to show the reaction of the other prisoners when Hancock responds to the two bullies who bar his way. Far more powerful in our imaginations and as reflected in the faces of the prisoners who see what he’s done.

BTW, don’t leave the moment the final credits begin to roll; you’ll miss a short scene of Hancock fighting crime in NYC. “Call me asshole one more time…”

Anyone else have the sense that the top bank robber, the one who lost his hands, might have been some kind of nemesis for H. and his kind? Some of the dialogue in the drenched hospital hallway gave me that impression.

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No, he’s just a criminal with an above average vocabulary. If he’d been any type of nemesis there’s no way he would have underestimated Hancock in the bank when he lost his hand.

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My understanding was not that any particular Them had hunted and killed the others, merely that the pairs are drawn to each other, and they become mortal when they are with their mate. So over the thousands of years, all the other ones have found their mates, become mortal, and died (whether due to superheroics or old age), except for these two.

18

That doesn’t add up. Mary and Hancock were a couple for centuries and centuries until Mary finally decided she’d had enough of the near death experiences. She said that all of his scars happened during moments when “they” tried to use her to get to him. All this pretty clearly illustrates that while they become mortal in the sense that they can be wounded and killed, the still do not age and would not die of old age unless there’s a serious caveat that was left out of the story.

It’s true that the “Them” that is referred to might not be any one particular group but instead could just be criminals and bad guys in the most general sense. Then again it could be some specific nemesis or it could be that the common baddies are drawn to kill the “heroes” by some esoteric malevolent force. The point was that it’s left unexplained in the movie. It could be something or it could be nothing but I think it’s made clear that all the others were killed, they didn’t just curl up and die happily ever after.

19

Building on that… when she’s explaining his scars in the hospital room, I got the impression that “they” had attacked Hancock and her over and over again over the years because it was a white woman and a black man obviously attracted to one another. A house burned down, a mob attack in (segregated) Miami c. 1920, etc.

20

Right, she said they attack you through me. I think that’s a big key to their relationship. That is her love for him, weakens him and allows him to get hurt. Whether it’s protecting her or other people, she weakens him. He’s the stronger one, he’s the good one, the selfless one, yet he’s the one always getting hurt; because of her.

They’ve been together for 3000 years, I think for most of that time, the racial aspect of their relationship was a non-issue; but i did like that they showed the reality of being together in the 20th century and how simply being together could get one or both of them killed; but it wasn’t preachy.

I think when she’s telling him she’s tired of his bullshit, is that because he’s a hero. He can’t stop helping people, so either he leaves her to regain his powers, or he leaves her to save her life, because he did something that caused her to get hurt…like in the hospital when she gets shot.

Part of leaving him without his memory was a. to protect him and b. to allow her a chance a having a life without drama; even if it would only last a century or two.

There is a lot of information in the movie, but I think you really have to listen to the dialogue.

I really think the film gets better having a couple of viewings and thinking about the subject matter.

It was a worth the dough.