Sunday, December 30, 2007

WILL SMITH IS HANCOCK.....BURP!

Will Smith is really starting to get into the "not saving the world" business -- I Am Legend positions him as the last man on Earth, and in this summer's Hancock, he plays an alcoholic superhero. And if you think that sounds weird, Smith's description is even more mysterious. "If you can imagine, it's the Michael Mann version of an alcoholic superhero," said Smith. "It is so bizarre. Michael Mann developed a script about an alcoholic superhero." The writer/director of films like Heat and Miami Vice surely has an unusual take. Jason Bateman, who plays a publicist trying to rehabilitate the superhero Hancock (Smith), described scenes that demonstrate the Michael Mann tone. "What's fun about that character is just that he's so appreciative that his life was saved by this underappreciated superhero that he wants to reciprocate," said Bateman. "He wants to kind of give back and he wants the public to see Will Smith as the hero that he really is. So that's his mission. That was a fun thing to play, a very idealistic guy that's trying to build up this suicidal, homeless alcoholic that then ends up hitting on my wife. It was a fun thing. To play the victim is funny." The confrontation between the publicist and the superhero perhaps sums it up best. "What Will and [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman and [director] Pete Berg wanted to do was to play this for the real. They're constantly bouncing tones back and forth. It's a really ambitious thing to do in the film, but they pull it off. That's played very much on the real, that I have an argument with a superhero about hitting on my wife and my feelings are hurt. It's like you kind of back into the comedy there, but there's definitely not winking

1 comment:

Pat R said...

Hancock looks like interesting spin on the latest superhero movie craze... if nothing else at least Will Smith tends to be pretty funny