Hancock: Promising Premise, Great Talent, but ... | Sojourners

Hancock: Promising Premise, Great Talent, but ...

Hancock(Spoiler warning--some major plot details are revealed in this article. Stop reading now if you want to see the movie without knowing the outcome. However by the time you've read this article you may not want to see it anyway.)

"Hancock" (the current vehicle for the biggest star in the world, Will Smith) is a superhero story that, on the surface, seems to offer something different to the super-spider-xmen films of the recent past. "Hancock's" protagonist is a drink-sodden flying strongman with amnesia. So far, so not your average underwear-on-the-outside embodiment of truth, justice, etc. Sadly, beneath the surface of this blockbuster beats a hollow heart, that not only adds little or nothing to our vision of what a hero can be, but reinforces the notion that more often than not, popular cinema's vision of heroism begins and ends with whoever can overwhelm the bad guy with the most spectacular force.

The genesis of "Hancock" might have gone something like this: