Assignment 5-1: Weekly Written Analysis

Hancock – The movie

This weekend I had the opportunity to watch Hancock. It is a superhero movie released on July 2, 2008. Before I watched this movie I thought that it would be another classical superhero movie, which Stereotypes superheroes as popular and are admired by a society because of his/her courage and actions to protect the people. According to Ray Browne (2005), “Historically the hero has been a servant of the people, has tried to wrest privilege from the powerful and give it to the powerless” (pp. 47). However, the superhero in this movie is hated by a society because of his destructive manner in saving the city.



According to ray Browne (2005), “Heroes serves as models and leaders of people and nation because they reflect the projection of the consensus of the dreams, fantasies, self evaluation, and needs of individuals and of society itself.” (p.16). In this movie, John Hancock was not the superhero model that children and other people would like to be and dream about. It is because when he lands, breaks up the street, destroys walls and cars. This is making Angelinos upset because it is costing the city and people money to fix them. Also, he is an alcoholic and sometimes he is in a bad mood. Moreover, Ray Embrey (Hancock saved his life) helped Hancock to change his image in order to make him a real superhero, and to be popular and admired by society.



In general, Hancock is a parody of superhero films that changed the traditional image that people have of superheroes, that they are popular and loved by the people. Thus, this movie shows that a superhero is not only a person who is popular and admired by society but also a superhero is someone that risks or sacrifices his/her life.



References:



Ray Browne. (2005). Hero with 2000 faces. In R. Browne. In Profiles of popular culture (pp. 16- 23) Madison, Wisconsin



Ray Browne. (2005). The concept of hero against democracy. In Profiles of popular culture (pp. 47-53) Madison, Wisconsin



Serena Whitney. (2008). Hancock – movie review. Movies online. Retrieved on December 8, 2008, from, http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie_review_ detail.php?id=