2. Hancock (2008)
How, exactly, did this one turn out as badly as it did?
Hancock had all the right ingredients to become a classic akin to something like
Men In Black - instead it'll be remembered as a tone-confused, borderline mad and utterly depressing slice of cinematic failure. I mean, it's kind of baffling that the studio let the script for this one go into production, because surely somebody thought there was a better movie to be made from the concept alone? And that concept is a golden one: a down-on-his-luck, drunk and apathetic superhero must be rehabilitated. That's it. It's great. That's the kind of assignment that absolutely any aspiring screenwriting would love to set their sights upon, because there's so much opportunity to have fun. In this case, too, we've got Will Smith as the superhero, and Jason Bateman as his publicist. It's a match made in movie heaven, no? So what happened? For some reason, the writers decided to take the movie down a seriously bizarre road. They added in a complicated, unnecessary backstory, and evoked to make Hancock far more seriously than it ever needed to be. I mean, c'mon, it's Will Smith and Jason Bateman - we don't want to see
Hancock falling in love with Bateman's wife with serious dramatic weight. We want to see those guys getting drunk and doing funny montages. Ultimately, it's the batshit crazy tone shifts and awful plot twists that destroys everything that might've ever been good about
Hancock (and the opening act is pretty good, as it stands). I'm confused as to why Will Smith let this movie go the way it did, because I'm sure he's much smarter than that.
Hancock's biggest crime, though, is that it just isn't funny enough... and the potential for comedy hi-jinks was seriously high. Smith! Bateman! Remake it.