“Hancock” And The ‘Bad Hero’ Trope: A Retrospective

Someone asked me recently if I’d been keeping up with The Boys, the Amazon series based on the Garth Ennis comic series. The truth is I haven’t been in a hurry to watch it. I feel genuinely burned out on the “superheroes are terrible people too” subgenre within the increasingly substantial compendium of comic-based TV and film projects. Ask anyone who has read enough comic books and I’ll wager you have a 50/50 chance of hearing about this very same fatigue. However, the fact that this variation on the superhero myth is currently so popular has led me to reconsider content that went down this path before it was fashionable. For some reason (aside from the fact that it came on MTV recently), Hancock comes to mind. As a refresher, Hancock is about a drunken and destitute superhero, hated and resented by most of the city for the Man of Steel magnitude of damage he does while sloppily saving the day. One day, he saves the life of an optimistic yet down-on-his-luck PR consultant who decides to take a chance and help him revamp his image. Hancock (Will Smith), saving PR consultant (Jason Bateman); Image courtesy of Sony Pictures There were a few reasons I suspect that Hancock didn’t quite take off with audiences. For one thing, it debuted in theaters a month after Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man assaulted the box offices for the 2008 Summer. Also, I would speculate that fans of the genre weren’t quite ready to embrace a superhero with no comic source material within pop culture. Althoug…