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Knowing that the production of movies are generally planned years in advance, my thoughts regarding the acute timeliness of the recent abundance of interracial movies emerging from Hollywood in the recent months has not been deterred. Aside from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner with Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher and Something New with Sanaa Hamri and Simon Baker, we had Hancock this past summer and Lakeview Terrace plus The Secret Life of Bees and Tyler Perry’s The Family that Preys this fall.

             With the possibility of a multiracial president looming, leave it to Hollywood to play upon what is already in front of us.

             It’s not the timing that surprises me, however, as I am a big believer in the timing of everything. I am more surprised by the subtlety.

             This past summer, I went to see Hancock, because the idea of Will Smith playing a jacked-up superhero gave me the giggles and for that and the special effects, the movie did not disappoint. However, what did surprise me was the undercurrent of Sci-fi or supernaturalism that runs through a lot of Will Smith’s movies. Many of his movies deal with aliens, the future or the world’s last days. Of course, there would be some sci-fi in Hancock as we are dealing with a superhero, but what I didn’t expect was the interracial story line.

             The trailers for the film just suggest that Charlize Theron’s character did not find Hancock redeemable. What they fail to mention is that these two characters had been lovers throughout the centuries. In this current carnation, Charlize’s character is married to a floundering do-good PR executive played by Jason Bateman who is set out to improve Hancock’s image after Hancock saves him from an otherwise certain demise. When Hancock discovers why he is the way he is and who Charlize is to him, a sense of sadness emerges at least for me because they cannot be together. Of course, the movie being an Overbrook production, an entertainment production company co-owned by Will Smith, the Hancock characters cannot be together not because they are too dissimilar…i.e. race. They cannot be together because they are too similar thus draining each other’s strengths which interferes with Hancock’s life calling. We never really figure out what Charlize’s calling is since she too has superpowers. Apparently, being a wife and mother is calling enough.

Had I not went to see the movie, I would have never known about this angle. It wasn’t really publicized. Of course with the wonder of marketing a movie, you never want to give too much away, so there’s no conspiracy here, but it is interesting that this tidbit which really doesn’t spoil the movie was not publicized.

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