Trailers Undone

The bumbling superhero is a metaphor for the viewer’s unfulfilled potential. Most of us feel that, just below the surface, we have a set of simmering abilities that could change the world for the better, if only we knew how to properly unleash them.

Also, characters like this reflect our society’s cynicism toward authority and power, particularly when cloaked in glamour and tradition. We’re no longer looking for a Superman, neither in the DC Comics sense nor the Nietzschean sense, and if one came along, we would assume he was here to conquer and rule, not to reinforce some pre-existing moral coda. What we can hope for is someone sincere and flawed, transparent in his mistakes, imperfect because he can’t get his act together, not because we have to worry that he doesn’t really have our best interests at heart.

Hancock is also a metaphor for today’s America: powerful beyond measure, meaning well at some
abstract level, but ultimately destroying more than it saves, hurting more than it helps. The newscaster’s recitation “…Hancock’s latest act of so-called heroism…” doubtless reflects the way that many of America’s decisions and deeds are recounted overseas.

Nearly all movies have a ’second act tension,’ i.e. the question that the viewer asks herself about how the story will resolve. The question here is ‘Will Hancock get his act together?’ And of course, the answer is yes. But the more interesting question is: What will that mean? What does it actually take to a be a credible superhero these days, without turning into the thing that’s so sickly sweet, nobody can believe in it anymore?

Hancock Trailer