The official Talksox.com movie thread - Page 49 - Talksox

MANNYHOF24 · 07-01-2008, 06:28 PM

I saw the happening last night. My one word review: Awful.

easily the worst movie I have seen in a long time.

Soxfan#1 · 07-08-2008, 04:55 PM

Toss up. Hancock or Get Smart? I love Will Smith, but I'm more in the mood for a Comedy.

**yeszir** · 07-08-2008, 04:58 PM

Get Smart. Hancock has been getting awful reviews. Get Smart was actually funny.

Soxfan#1 · 07-08-2008, 05:00 PM

I heard Hancock was a disappointment, but it had good action scenes. Will Smith is a plus too.

I'll go with Get Smart. I haven't heard one person choose Hancock online yet.

Coco's Disciples · 07-08-2008, 05:53 PM

Hancock sucked, a LOT of things were left unexplained and pretty dumb.

**CalvnHobs6** · 07-08-2008, 06:02 PM

I actually read an article (well, a half article, I stopped when it said spoilers) about Hancock yesterday. It made me sick to my stomach that Hollywood ruined a movie like this:

Quote:

Hancock isn’t the first movie to suffer from the deteriorating hand of Hollywood’s ass-backwards marketability-over-quality system. Hell, it’s not even the first Will Smith movie. Just last year, the equally bastardized I Am Legend met a startlingly similar fate. It was one half of a good movie, with the rest of it being unable to overcome the onslaught of script rewrites, studio interference, and the deadly touch of writer/producer Akiva Goldsman. This is even more true of Hancock, and the resulting film is nothing short of puzzling. I’d even go as far as to say the movie is practically unreleasable in its current state. But before I get into why exactly that is, let us examine the movie that could have been.

Hancock - Pic 1
In 1996, screenwriter Vincent Ngo wrote a spec script titled Tonight, He Comes. (And yes, the sexual implications of that title are very much intentional.) The script was a Hollywood favorite, floating to numerous potential directors, such as Tony Scott (True Romance, Déjà Vu) and Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral). After sitting on the table for five years and hopping between studios, one thing became clear: as much as everyone loved the script, the only way to get the movie made was to completely butcher everything that made it unique. (I believe the Hollywood term for this is “to make it more marketable.”) The script suffered massive rewrites, with even producer Akiva Goldsman at one point getting a chance to put his uncredited but very noticeable stamp on it.

Eventually, production finally got underway, with Jonathan Mostow (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) in the director chair. Had all the problems been finally taken care of? Nope. Mostow later dropped out of the project due to creative differences. Then Italian director Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) got on board. Now? Still no. Muccino also dropped out with regards to creative differences.

Hancock - Pic 2
The burden of directing would later fall to Peter Berg, who along with the studio agreed that the film still needed to be “lightened up.” To again refer back to my mastery of Hollywood terminology, this can be translated to, “Will Smith attracts teen audiences, so we wanted to go with a comfortable PG-13 rating, regardless of there being R-rated elements in the film that were pivotal to the storyline.”

So, anyway, that’s what it took to get the movie made, but what about the script itself? How similar is Ngo’s spec script compared to what we actually saw in Hancock? Well, having read the original script (you can too, thanks to Hollywood Elsewhere, or just get the gist of it over at Latino Review), I can safely say: not a whole fucking lot.

Literally the only semblance of Ngo’s draft to be found in the final film is the fact that there’s a drunken superhero named Hancock and a family (man, wife, son). That’s it. The characters act and talk entirely different, and just about every plot point has been altered significantly. What was once a harsh, bitter, intelligent, and thought-provoking character study of a washed-up, borderline-psychotic superhero became something else entirely. It became two halves of two very different films. And while that first half of Hancock proves that not all of the changes made by the studio-hired writers were necessarily bad, the second shows the obvious effects of having way too many cooks in the kitchen. Particularly when those cooks are fucking idiots.

In order to elaborate on that, I need to venture into spoiler territory, so if you’re not interested in having an already ruined movie ruined for you, don’t read any further.

That was where I stopped reading.

YanksHater213 · 07-08-2008, 06:05 PM

I actually really enjoyed Hancock...

Coco's Disciples · 07-08-2008, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CalvnHobs6

I actually read an article (well, a half article, I stopped when it said spoilers) about Hancock yesterday. It made me sick to my stomach that Hollywood ruined a movie like this:

That was where I stopped reading.

Can you link to it please?

EDIT- http://www.alwayswatching.org/featur...-about-hancock

CrespoBlows · 07-08-2008, 11:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soxfan#1

I heard Hancock was a disappointment, but it had good action scenes. Will Smith is a plus too.

I'll go with Get Smart. I haven't heard one person choose Hancock online yet.

Will Smith is a Scientologist. Go see Zohan, instead.

Did anyone actually like that piece of shit?

CrespoBlows · 07-08-2008, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soxfan#1

Just saw Zohan. Movie is great. The only cons I could find were the dialect was hard to understand at some points and it was easy to tell there was a stunt double at some times, but the action, comedy and plot were all likable. Sandler is so good.

Wait.....

Go see Hancock, you'd probably love it.

Soxfan#1 · 07-09-2008, 12:21 AM

Yeah it didn't get amazing reviews. I liked it because of the randomness I guess.

TheKilo · 07-10-2008, 08:30 PM

lol Zohan

Soxfan#1 · 07-10-2008, 09:32 PM

Every time I come here to ask whether I should see Get Smart or not my plans somehow get messed up.

TheKilo · 07-10-2008, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheKilo

The Rock is dead, homes.

Quote for Anne Hathaway goodness

See Red · 07-20-2008, 04:20 AM

Surprised this hasn't had any mentioning since the reviews and anticipation have been off the chart, but I saw the Dark Knight earlier this evening. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie garner this much hype, and I've never been more excited to see a movie, and it lived up to everything. Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker is mesmerizing -- he was incredible in that role. He truly nailed everything about the role. Great movie, highly recommended to anyone and everyone.

I, like everyone else I know who's seen it, will be seeing it again within the next few days.