W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

I saw HANCOCK two weeks ago -- took my brother Andrew to see it because he asked -- and have waited this long to post about it because it's so flawed. It's got a messed-up premise that's taken me awhile to puzzle out how wacky and messed up it is. And even now, I bet more stuff occurs to me. Now my brother said it wasn't a great movie, but it was fine entertainment. So there you go -- confirming that one of the downsides of writing and analyzing screenplays and story structure is that it makes you too picky of an audience.

The good stuff about Hancock: Some scenes and set-ups at the beginning about the premise "What if a superhero wasn't a hero? Not a super villian either -- just a drunken asshole?" Surely there have been many 3-panel comic strips, drawn by witty teenage boys I would assume, that have covered this territory. You can probably find them in school notebooks going back 50-60 years. With today's CGI, and Will Smith's undeniable charisma (Smith is Good Stuff No. 2, even with his cracked lips, stubble and gross tissue-less way of clearing his nose), this movie makes scenes of those that have action, reversals, false defeats and false victories. Those are fun! Hollow, but fun!

The problems with the movie are mostly two-fold: it starts with a tone and scenes that promise a different story so it has to do a major shift in the middle to a different movie, and then it manipulates us with a false tragedy. I'll cover these behind the break, but there really are not many reasons to see HANCOCK, and the blame for that lies with the lazy sceenwriting.

( Why is Hancock a drunken asshole...? SPOILERS AHEAD! )

Go now to this Website before 11:00 p.m. (EDT? maybe PDT?) tonight to see a SuperVillian musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillon and Felicia Day (who was an Austin person for awhile!).

For free! And it's cute! Much like, since Joss co-wrote it and the songs, the Buffy Musical episode that was so popular. And after tonight, it'll cost to download:

www.drhorrible.com

And for Joss's explanation of how it came to be:
www.drhorrible.com/plan.html