Super Movies! The one with a homeless superhero

 

Title: Hancock

What Year?: 2008

Classification: Parody

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

With this review, I’m skipping ahead of what I’ve done or planned to do for this feature. At the same time, I will be covering one of the first movies that made me think of this feature, to the point that I mentioned it in my Space 1979 reviews. Even with my usual flexibility for that feature, I knew there was no way a movie from the present millennium was going to fit. Still, I definitely wanted to do this one, and now that I have a place it will fit, I decided to cover it sooner rather than later.

Our story begins in the middle of a running gun battle between a gang and the police. A kid wakes up what looks like a homeless man sleeping on a bench, calling out the clearly familiar name “Hancock!” The hobo takes to the air, and we know this is a superhero movie that’s not quite like anything we’ve seen before. As the story progresses, it’s revealed that our super sort-of hero has been hanging around without appreciably aging for most of the last century, after being found injured and unable to remember his real name. Along the way, he has sunken into substance abuse, depression and general misanthropy, accompanied by semi-random battles with evildoers that tend to do more harm than good. Things change when he rescues a public-relations professional who urges him to improve his image and clean himself up. That leads to him voluntarily going to jail, followed by a work-release to fight a clever and manipulative villain. Then the story takes another turn when he meets the wife of his friend, whom he soon realizes is the one person who might know who and what he is. The finale unfolds between the trio, with the villain in the mix, and it all builds up to a choice between being a hero and being human.

Hancock was a 2008 release by Columbia Pictures, starring Will Smith, with Jason Bateman as the publicist and Charlize Theron as his wife Mary. The film was made and marketed as a superhero comedy/ parody, following a wave of “straight” genre films including Columbia’s own Spider Man series. However, it effectively preceded the modern “Marvel Cinematic Universe”, which was launched with Iron Man the same year. Initially, the film received an R rating, resulting in significant cuts and changes before release. The film received mixed to hostile reviews, though it made $629 million box office against a $150M budget. Subsequent commentators have focused on the film as a factor in the arguable decline of Smith’s career. It has remained available on disk and from digital platforms. The Blu Ray release includes an “unrated” cut with material previously removed.

For my experiences, I saw this one in a dollar theater. What stands out to me is that I have at least as many memories of the advertisements for the movie, as well as reviews complaining about it. At the time, I thought it fairly interesting, and definitely odd. I also distinctly recall getting the impression that it had been a box office failure, which certainly hasn’t been corrected by later critics. After that, I suppose even I forgot about it. What really brought it back to my mind was getting involved in self-advocacy for the homeless and disabled. In the course of that, I had a random idea for a homeless superhero, which somebody else pointed out was pretty close to Hancock. Even then, I didn’t seek out the movie. However, I eventually bought a used Blu Ray that turned up, and watched it again. My immediate conclusion, based on the hindsight of a decade of Marvel movies, was that this is one of the best superhero movies of the “modern” era.

For why I say that, I will admit it’s hard to point to anything in particular. The casting and performances are certainly a major factor. Smith is in good form, benefiting from a time when he was seen as both an action-star box office draw and a good actor. (If there’s blame to pass around for changing that, I Am Legend is the real place to start.) Theron fairs at least as well, despite surprisingly limited screen time, while the real standout is Bateman, the one cast member who has arguably improved his standing since. The production values and effects are also obviously good, as they certainly ought to be for the price. What is less tangible yet clearly evident is that it succeeds at being both an action movie and a comedy, in the process managing a difficult shift to a more serious tone in the final act.

All of that is still not getting to the crucial reality: The main character was and still is one of the most genuinely original superheroes to appear in any medium. His flaws are obvious, but he remains likable, at times almost in spite of the actual story. Just as importantly, the character’s arc does not rely on heavy-handed melodrama to be “dark”, a path that had been trampled flat even then. If anything, the character’s tragic side is understated up to the very end. That brings me to something else I considered as a closing comment; this is not the kind of “parody” that settles for mocking the superhero concept, one more thing that has been done to death by now if it wasn’t back then. Instead, it is almost subversive in its respect for the source material. We are not told that Superman is really the bad guy, or that Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen should know he’s Clark Kent. Instead, the movie simply asks the question what the existence of such a being would be like, invulnerable, possibly immortal, able to defy or simply outlive all human ties and all rules and norms outside of his own vague desire to help those in need. If the answers are in many ways grim, it’s because the lens of comedy has shown what was there all along.

Unfortunately, it will be clear from the rating that this is going to come with a hefty side of criticism. What may seem counterintuitive is that the “’real” problems rise not from Hancock but the world around him. For the most part, the setting is made to seem indistinguishable from our own; the hero’s battles are with mundane robbers and gang members, not cackling supervillains or rampaging monsters. Yet, there are not too many things not quite right, and the cumulative effects are very much on the “uncanny valley” order. On close examination, the ordinary people of this universe are either lazy, indifferent or actively mean. Railroad crossings don’t come with simple safety precautions, nor do drivers panic at the sound of an oncoming train. Children casually swear without any sign of guilt or fear of repercussions. And at the heart of it, at least two superhumans have wandered the US for a good part of its history, yet the only people who seem to care what they are and how they might be killed are petty criminals. (What a black superhero was up to during the Civil War is at least an intriguing tangent.) The troubling part is that the movie is clearly intelligent enough to answer these questions, but more attention is applied to a weak “political correctness” joke than to any of them.

For the “one scene”, I will be going with the first that I truly consider a “spoiler”. After Hancock has discovered that Mary is a superhuman, she voluntarily follows him back to his trailer. (It’s really only clear that it is his home in the unrated cut.) Things are tense as they both go inside. Hancock immediately presses her about their own history together, but she remains evasive. Instead, she gives a fascinating account of the larger story of the superhumans, wandering in and out of history and prehistory as gods and heroes seemingly remembered only in myth. She remarks, “Different cultures call us by different names, now all of a sudden it’s superheroes.” When asked if other superhumans exist, she insists that all others have died, something that is explained later and never unambiguously confirmed. The trailer literally heats up as Hancock asks again about their own history, and things go downhill quickly from there. All in all, it’s the kind of world-building that could have been loopy even by comic-book standards. But Theron’s delivery and the story’s setup, it’s convincing enough for the viewer to wonder at least a little about the tales handed down from our own past.

With the full benefit of hindsight, Hancock is an egregious example of a movie that could have been better received and flat-out better-made either ten years earlier or ten years later. In the 1990s, it would probably have ended up as a relatively low-budget film, with the creative freedom that usually entails.   Perhaps even more importantly, it might have escaped the intensive and in many ways misleading star-centered ad campaign that was all but required for high-profile studio releases.(Unfortunately, we have Mystery Men as a cautionary tale how studios handled such material at the time.) Looking at things from the other direction, it’s hard to say whether Hancock would or could be made in circa 2020. Perhaps it would be trampled underfoot in the much denser environment, by so-called “satires” as well as straight material. Perhaps it would have been pushed in other, equally questionable directions, making Hancock even more of a lout if not an outright villain. But if it did get made, it would stand out all the more. In that, at least, we can still go back and better appreciate what we already have.