Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Hancock


I recently watched the movie ,Hancock (Peter Berg, 2008). I watched it over the Thanksgiving holiday and was very disappointed and disgusted with the movie and its plot. It veered away from the original Marvel or DC Comics type movies like Spiderman or Ironman. I encourage the individuality of the movie but Hancock couldn't pull it off.

One part that i disliked was the quickness of the hero's growth. In traditional movies, the hero has to go under a change of morals or views in order to defeat the bad guy. This usually takes up the majority of the movie. In Hancock, after twenty minutes of meeting him, he already changes and is in ship-shape. This design of plot lacks drama and suspense. Another part of the movie that was not clearly thought out was Hancock's villain. During the first half of the movie, all he does is fight petty criminals. He of course whoops their butts but as a viewer of many other super hero movies, i know that this is nothing special. After the majority of the film, the audience finally finds out the he has a wife which tries to live a normal life. They fight but nothing special happens. No dramatic last man standing or to-the-death battle happens. This is a main factor to my disliking of the movie as a whole.

One factor that i really liked was the underlying moral value that Peter Berg used. He showed that anyone can turn around their lives and start to feel special. He did this by portraying Hancock as a clumsy drunk who could care less about human safety and consequences. This is all changed by the end of the film because one optimistic man cared about Hancock. I thought that this display of high moral values and determination to change was one of the only good aspects of the film.