Hollywood has drawn inspiration from a lot of comic books in recent years: Spider-man x 3, X-Men x 4, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil, Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Electra, Daredevil, Fantastic Four x 2, 300, Sin City, Watchman, Wanted to name a few. There are also several coming up, including Green Lantern, Avengers, and various sequels. Comic books are pervasive in Hollywood now, but Hancock is special in that it is a super hero movie about a super hero that was not sourced from comic books (the only other one I can think of is My Super Ex-Girlfriend).

I thought this was a great movie. Like Children of Men, this allowed me to watch an interesting environment evolve. I liked it more because I can relate more to comic book heroes (I mean, I read comic books more often) and because Will Smith’s character was more compelling than the character drawn by Clive Owen. For a long time I associated Will Smith with comedic one liners, and while there are a few of those in this movie, his acting made me believe that Hancock was a disinterested superhero.

I was a bit let down by how they decided the movie needed an ending instead of more exposition and character development on the part of John Hancock but I’m going to give this movie four stars out of five. Was it as good as Iron Man? I think so, because this story was fresh and the plot twist in the middle was pretty good. I didn’t see it coming at all!

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: comics, moviereview