Little Heroes: Why Hancock is a Good Movie and No One Wants to Admit It

The headline is: Hancock is a lot of fun. It's not what you expect. Go see the movie.

I'm going to talk about the released version of the movie. I'm not guaranteeing I won't be mentioning spoilers.

I admit it. Stories that break the mold are meat and drink to me. I couldn't get through Lord of the Rings until I'd read Bored of the Rings first and needed LOTR to make sense of the jokes.

I also admit, freely, I will go see almost any superhero movie and am almost always disappointed with the results.

The problem with superheroes is this: the heroes are super.

Let's look at the problem. First you have a "hero"-- someone by definition outside the norm. Few of us are heroes under any circumstance. Fewer still take on the role for a career. Those that do-- policemen, firemen, etc.-- are often extremely flawed human beings. When did you last see a drama about a heroic cop that was well adjusted?

Now we add the "super" part.

We've all seen exceptional human beings: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Eliot Spitzer, John F Kennedy. We've also seen that these human beings are flawed in their own right. Superman, Batman or anyother-name-man have powers above those of moral men. Remember the Greek Gods? And what a fine and functional bunch they were, too.

So we take what is in effect divine power and weld it to mortal man and we get hypermorality. "With great power comes great responsibility." Heck. Why should we believe in divine hypermorality when the regular garden variety morality is so hard to come by?

Why have a super hero?

The comics-- the origin of the genre-- tackle it in a couple of ways. The most obvious, and most common, method is to create villains of such a caliber and scope that it takes a superhero to handle them. It didn't take long for the Joker to show up in Batman. It didn't take long for Lex Luthor to build things to take on Superman.

But this puts the whole superhero construction into an arms race between the hero and the villain. SuperGuy is just strong enough to defeat BadDude. Then BadDude gets stronger by the eating bad plums. It's curtains for SuperGuy until he figures out by eating raisins he not only gets more regular but is able to counter BadDude's bad plum power. And so forth and so on. Until we have gods, and goddesses, universes contained by vaguely humanoid beings, guys who eat planets, living planets that eat gods and badass women who will eat both, burp politely and go on looking in a different spiral arm for their next meal.

Enter the movie Hancock.

First, and most obvious from the movie trailers, Hancock isn't about a hypermoral hero. He's sort of a hero but the morality is questionable.

Second, not obvious until you've seen the movie, there is no super villain. Hancock is super. With one exception, and she's no villain, nobody else is. So all the villains are human being.The only super that Hancock fights against is Hancock.

Third, there is redemption of a sort but it's not the "with great powers comes great responsibility". It's more, "This is the thing I do. It's better if I do it and people like me than if they don't."

You can sum all this up into this theme: Play the hand you're dealt.

If you read the reviews (with the possible exception of the New York Times review) there are two things that stand out: 1) the reviewers did not have any idea of what to expect and 2) they're pissed off about it.

Me? I'll take an honest ambitious failure over a pretentious success any day.

The reviewers wanted an adventure story. A superhero story. They wanted something they could wrap their fat arms around and indulge in a little popcorn french kiss. Superhero porn.

Hancock doesn't do that. It's funny. It's rough. It's what might happen if the guy down the street you don't like because his motorcycle's too loud suddenly got super powers. Hancock is scarey. Reviewers like things to be edgey in a way they can analyze so they don't get frightened. Hancock's not interested in taking prisoners.

There are flaws in Hancock.

All hero stories (super or otherwise) have a creation myth of the hero attached. Apparently, in the screenings of Hancock there was a lot more information presented. That's largely been cut and the movie has been improved. I would have had even more mystery attached. Why should a super really understand what or how they created them? It's a trait of a lot of this sort of fiction that we know more about what's going on in the fiction than we were ever know if that fiction were to happen in real life. Hancock leans in the direction of the characters knowing no more than we would expect if the story were real-- something I'm fond of. But in my opinion they didn't go far enough.

Some of the "physics" how things work between the Will Smith and Charlize Theron could have been made more clear. I figured it out but I write science fiction. It's easy for me to make up rubber science for such things.

There are a couple of clumsy points. Charlize Theron presents herself as a housewife of sorts but when she meets Smith later as one super to another she's wearing a Black Leather Babe outfit. Bateman's character is a PR guy who's trying to save the world and failing. Theron doesn't seem to have a job. How are they managing the mortgage on that sweet California house?

But these are nits.

Hancock is to superhero films what Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and Alan Moore's "Watchmen" is to comics. What Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" is to science fiction. It takes the trope and punches a big super hole in it so we can breathe.

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Links of Interest
Hallucinogenic Heresy
Phoenix may die.
More on Mercury. And here.
HydroCars? Naah.
Reseveratrol: Not just for Breakfast Anymore
U.S. Not Prepared for Asteroid Strike: Duh.
SIDS mechanism suggested
Man (of sorts) gives birth to baby girl
Punk Robots Pogo for Science
The Art of Extinction
Jesse Helms Dead at 86
Is Fundamentalism Bad for your Health?
Thomas Disch Dead at 68