MovieChat Forums > Space Cowboys (2000) Discussion > Hawk's cancer a cop out

Hawk's cancer a cop out

posted 15 years ago by Barbara-4
11 replies | jump to latest

In order for the rest of the men to get back safely, one of the men had to sacrifice his life.

Fortuntely, Hawk had cancer, so he was the obvious choice...and his death wasn't really that heroic.

Now, if he hadn't had cancer, and was giving up his life solely that the rest of his friends might live, that would have been heroic.

But it's a cliche. Whenever a character in an adventure film has a disease, you just know that later on in the movie, they'll sacrifice themselves for their friends.

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[–] mufasakitty101 15 years ago

Please ... don't be such a kill joy. You're the only one who sees this as a cop out.

And come on yes this was heroic. Those were Nuclear *beep* Warheads. If they slammed into earth then all of mankind would have been wiped out.

Oh and Pancreatic cancer is extremely painful and the survival rate is quite low with the majority of people not making it past their first year.

[–] oldsalt61 15 years ago

And the other main characters had all mentioned earlier in the movie that they had families to return too; Hawk didn't - and he was the "hard charger" amongst that group throughout the whole film.

[–] mufasakitty101 15 years ago

and yet Hawk had wanted to go to moon since he started training to become an astronaut, also Hawk had Sara, you didn't see the connections he had with her during the film?

[–] ervty 15 years ago

"If they slammed into earth then all of mankind would have been wiped out."

Six warheads detonating in the Earth's atmosphere at random locations? At most, Pandas or Siberian Tiger might go extinct from that, not humans.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] glpatton 15 years ago

But it made for a good script, huh?

As for the nukes. I was under the impression that the launch platform was slowly degrading in orbit and NOT about to launch the missiles. If so, then what Hawk did was unnecessary. The platform would have disintegrated on reentry and nothing would have happened. Now if there was a worry they were going to launch, different story, but I didn't get that impression.

Hawk would not have made it to the moon, anyway.

[–] mufasakitty101 15 years ago

Go back and watch the movie again, I'm pretty sure that Ethan (i think) stupidly realigned the satellite so that the nukes would be operational. And even if they would have disintegrated on reentry it would have probably have thrown off earths orbit. And since when does the moon's gravity have no bearing? Besides it's only a movie, anything can happen.

[–] Dan0525 15 years ago

The Russian colonel said if the satellite goes offline, then it will think there has been a catastrophe and automatically launch the missiles at the U.S.

[–] sloanrules 14 years ago

ty 4 the massive UNMARKED SPOILER and RUINING the movie 4 me!

I never end my IMDB posts with stupid idiotic unnecessary quotes.

[–] Etherdave 11 years ago

Age is a major factor in the development of pancreatic cancer, with most cases appearing after the age of 60. As this film is partially a meditation on old age, it is a perfectly appropriate plot complicator here.

[–] Hippo9 9 years ago

I have to agree. Not much was at stake for Hawk.