Jean-Luc Godard - "Every movie needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order"
The first criterion in a film in order to fulfill the three act structure, is the need for a protagonist. Act one is complete when the protagonist makes a commitment that will eventually lead to the main action of the movie. In the film 'Hancock', the character John Hancock is the protagonist, his commitment in the film is when he agrees to let the character Ray Embrey change Hancock's public image for the better. To narrow this down even more it is when Hancock agrees to go to prison, the thought behind this deal is that once Hancock is locked up and therefore not able to stop crime, the crime rate will soar and therefore Hancock will be needed once more.
Criterion two is that the characters start off in a state of equilibrium, something then happens to disturb this state and it starts a sequence of events. By the end of the film the characters come to rest in a new, different state of equilibrium. In the chosen film, this happens when Hancock meets Mary, Ray's wife. It eventually turns out that Mary, too, is a superhero and that they are, in their world, practically married. This threw cogs in the works of Mary and Ray's marriage for a while. To complicate things more, when Hancock and Mary are nearer to each other they become mortal. When Hancock gets shot, he finds this out. In order to keep both of them alive, Hancock musters every last bit of strength to get as far away as possible from Mary, which leads into the other equilibrium as Ray and Mary carry on with their marriage and Hancock is busy stopping crime, which is the way it was before.
The third criterion is that the 'outer story' is usually accompanied by an 'inner story', in which the protagonist changes or grows emotionally, these changes are often formed from some form of romance. I would say that in this case it is when he finds out about Mary and him being together previously. When Hancock gets shot, I believe his feelings for Mary, and maybe even his respect for Ray, are what gives Hancock the strength to get as far away from them as possible, I also believe that this is when Hancock truly changed and became the person who Ray moulded him into.
Pre-production - Character Design
In any film, there is always a lot of thought gone into the designing aspects of the characters. The main 4 aspects of a character are as follows:
- Protagonist
- Antagonist
- Dialogue
- Stereotype
The character I have chosen to analyse is John Hancock, from the film 'Hancock'. In this particular film, Hancock is the protagonist as he experiences the conflict, in this instance the protagonist is viewed by the audience as a mix between good and bad.
In this instance I find it hard to differentiate between what/who the antagonist is. I would say it to be the public/law enforcement of Los Angeles as they give Hancock a hard time for stopping crime as he routinely damages millions of dollars in the city and keep giving him subpoenas and lawsuits.
Hancock has been designed as an alcoholic and somebody who could care less about various damages caused along the way between each rescue mission; as long as he gets the job done. The dialogue represents this theme by using 'slang' and not talking the 'proper' way.
Hancock is also, by large, a stereotype, this derives from the alcoholic theme in the film. With being an alcoholic comes the generalisation that you don't care about anything but your addiction and that the addiction comes first. In this film it is true, however towards the end of the film, Ray Embrey decides to help Hancock and to change his public image, which is when he stops drinking alcohol and is moulded into what the public want from a 'superhero'.
3 more important features when designing characters are:
- appearance
- action
- interaction
This image is taken from the beginning of the film, as you can see Hancock looks trampy; he's just spent the night drinking and ended up passing out on a bench, the little boy confronts him and basically says that he's a rubbish superhero.
The above image depicts Hancock as 'changed', he now has a particular image, he no longer looks trampy or alcohol abused, he is made in the image of the public.
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