josh's hella late hancock commentary

i'm just gonna say it:

they should've let hancock die at the end of the movie.

this would've made it such a better movie in my opinion. i'm starting to think that it's almost always better for movies to have either sad endings, or endings that stop short of letting you see what really happens at the end, a la "no country for old men" or "lock, stock, and two smoking barrels", because these type of endings force the viewer to think about the movie more, or at least for me they do. if i leave the theater feeling happy about the movie, i just think about my favorite parts of the movie, or stop thinking about the movie altogether, because it's over and i feel good about the ending. but if i leave a movie and i feel sad or confused about the ending, then i'm forced to think about the movie more, forced to relive scenes, and think about why the movie had to end that way, and what the movie is trying to say.

but i think it's easier to make my point with hancock, because i would think that more people have seen hancock and not the previous two that i mentioned.

the beginning of the movie is spent trying to give you a sense of what it feels like to be hancock: lonely, unappreciated, misunderstood. and then you find he's immortal and then who mary is and that they've been living in a tragic love cycle for decades. at this point, in my opinion, you should feel sorry for hancock, because his woman is happy with another man, because he's almost immortal, and because a lot of other things that i can't remember right now. anyways, more stuff happens, blah blah blah, and boom, he and she are almost gonna be killed because they're too close together and the bad guys finally have them vulnerable. and he's almost gonna die.... but no. the fierce lion in him says "no die" and he storms out of the hospital, yay all is fixed and the humans have a superhero for all of eternity.

but why not let him die? if he dies, then i am forced to think about why he dies. i think about what it must feel like to be him, how sad that must be: forced into isolation from my wife (who's with another man, anyway) to be a superhero for people who a couple days/weeks/months ago said they didn't even need me. really forced to live like the only of my kind... foreverrrrrrrrrrr. then i understand why he would want to die. then it becomes a better movie.