Hancock

                Hancock came out in 2008 starring Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, and Eddie Marson. This film was directed by Peter Borg and presented by Columbia Pictures. Hancock was originally written by Vincent Ngo in 1996 but didn’t go into production until 2007. It was rated PG-13 after they made changes to it to get it lowered from an R rating. This movie made more than $620 million in the box office.

                This movie is about a man named Hancock that has superhero powers such as the ability to fly, invulnerability, and super-strength. He is also an alcoholic and causes millions of dollars of damages to the city when he stops criminals because of his constant intoxication. Hancock once saves a public relations person named Ray Embrey. Embrey then tells Hancock that he is going to try and help improve Hancock’s image.

                Embrey convinces Hancock to turn himself in for all the damage he caused. However when the crime rate in the city goes up, the Chief of Police gets Hancock out of jail so he can help them stop a bank robbery. Hancock manages to stop the robbery without hurting anyone and gets applauded because of it. Hancock then becomes popular again and doesn’t have to go back to jail. Hancock soon learns that Embrey’s wife has the same powers as him and threatens to tell Embrey if she doesn’t tell him where she is from. She explains to Hancock that they have been alive for 3,000 years and he doesn’t remember this because he got knocked out in an alley 80 years ago.

                This movie is unique which is almost always a good thing. Most movies tell of superheroes who are perfect and that everyone looks up to. However Hancock tells the story of a superhero who no one likes even though he is just trying to help. Hancock is also an inspirational story of someone turning their life around. He starts out as an alcoholic and ends up being a much better man.

(Word Count: 338)

Interstellar

                Just a few days ago, a new movie called Interstellar came out. This film was directed by Christopher Nolan and written by Jonathon Nolan. Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. So far the film had made over $132 million.

                This movie takes place on Earth after billions of people had died because of lack of food.  Earth can no longer sustain humans and we are required to find a new planet to live on. Cooper and his daughter finds the secret NASA hideout and they ask Cooper pilot their spaceship to find a new planet to live on. Cooper decides to do it which makes his daughter Murph very mad at him. Cooper leaves Earth and goes through a wormhole to another solar system which supposedly has planets that would be suitable for humans. Ten years earlier NASA sent out a group of scientists that each landed on their own planets and reported back to NASA on whether or not the planet was livable. Cooper was sent to look at some of these planets and save the scientists there.

                This movie’s story was very original which is weird because most of the movies nowadays are remakes or sequels of old movies. There are many movies of humanity trying to survive after something bad happened but there aren’t really any like this. In those movies the people don’t really go into space to try and find a new home. Also there aren’t many movies that show space travel realistically like this movie did. The only other movie I can think of that did realistic space travel was Gravity (which I never saw but I heard was really good.) Another thing kind of freaky about the story in this movie is that it could someday actually happen. Someday the Earth might not be livable and we will need to figure out how to survive elsewhere.

                This film was long but still very good. It was about three hours long but still engaging throughout the whole thing. There were problems that arose that you never would have expected to arise. Some parts in this film were kind of depressing. Like the part when Cooper leaves and Murph gets really upset with him. And then later when he’s on the ship he gets messages from his kids which is also really depressing.

                Even though it is a science fiction movie, most of the science seems to be real. And the film producers do a really good job of explaining this science to the public. A lot of the science in the film is very advanced and complicated and most people in the general public wouldn’t understand it. However they do a good job of making it simple enough that someone who has never had experience with this type of science could understand it. For example, they use a really good analogy to explain wormholes. People who have never even heard of a wormhole before could understand how it works.

(Word Count: 498)