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Good Will Hunting
1997 film by Gus Van Sant From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Good Will Hunting is a 1997 American drama film directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It stars Robin Williams, Damon, Affleck, Stellan Skarsgård and Minnie Driver. The film tells the story of janitor Will Hunting, whose mathematical genius is discovered by a professor at MIT.
The film received acclaim from critics and grossed over $225 million during its theatrical run against a $10 million budget. At the 70th Academy Awards, it received nominations in nine categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, and won in two: Best Supporting Actor for Williams and Best Original Screenplay for Affleck and Damon. In 2014, it was ranked at number 53 in The Hollywood Reporter's "100 Favorite Films" list.[4]
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Plot
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After being paroled, self-taught math genius Will Hunting of South Boston works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and spends his free time drinking with his friends Chuckie, Billy and Morgan. At work, he anonymously solves a complex graph theory problem posted on a blackboard by Professor Gerald Lambeau as a challenge for his graduate students. Later, Will and his friends start a fight with a gang that includes one of Will's childhood bullies. When police intervene, Will is charged with assaulting an officer. Lambeau posts a more difficult problem to test the mysterious stranger and later catches Will writing the solution. Mistaking Will for a vandal, Lambeau chases him off but quickly realizes that he was solving the problem. At a bar, Will meets and flirts with Skylar, a student about to graduate from Harvard University, with plans to attend medical school at Stanford.
Lambeau asks the campus maintenance staff about Will's whereabouts, but learns that he did not come to work. He discovers that Will was placed at MIT through a program for parolees and obtains his parole officer's details. At Will's court appearance, Lambeau watches as Will argues in favor of pro se legal representation and later arranges for him to avoid jail time, on the condition that he study math under Lambeau's supervision and participate in psychotherapy sessions. Will agrees but treats his therapists with mockery. A desperate Lambeau contacts Dr. Sean Maguire, his college roommate, who teaches psychology at Bunker Hill Community College. Unlike the previous therapists, Sean challenges Will's defense mechanisms. In the first session, Sean threatens Will after he insults his deceased wife. In the next sessions, Sean encourages Will to open up and Will invites Sean to move on from his wife's death. Will starts dating Skylar but lies to her about his background.
Sean recounts to Will his first meeting with his wife: he saw her at a bar and fell in love at first sight, giving up his ticket to the famous sixth game of the 1975 World Series to his friends by saying he had to go "see about a girl". Sean tells Will that he never regretted that decision, despite the hardships that followed. Will decides to introduce Skylar to his friends. Lambeau sets up several job interviews for Will, but he scorns them. In particular, he turns down a position at the National Security Agency (NSA) with a scathing critique of the agency's moral position. After Will refuses Skylar's offer to move to California with her, she calls him out for being scared, and he tells her about his past as an orphan and the abuse he suffered at the hands of his foster father. Will breaks up with Skylar and ridicules the research Lambeau had been doing. Sean confronts Will on his fear of abandonment and failure, and invites him to be honest about what he wants from life. Chuckie encourages Will to take the opportunities offered to him, telling him that everyday he hopes that Will will not answer the door, having gone away to pursue a better life.
Will hears Sean and Lambeau argue about his potential, with Sean saying that Lambeau risks ruining Will's future by pushing him too hard. Lambeau leaves, and Sean and Will talk about their shared experience as victims of child abuse. Sean helps Will accept that the abuse he received was not his fault by repeatedly stating, "It's not your fault", causing Will to break down in tears. Will accepts one of the job offers arranged by Lambeau. Sean reconciles with Lambeau and decides to take a sabbatical. For Will's birthday, his friends gift him a car to allow him to commute to work. Chuckie goes to Will's house to pick him up, but happily finds that he left. Will leaves a note for Sean, asking him to tell Lambeau that he had to go "see about a girl".
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Cast
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- Robin Williams as Dr. Sean Maguire: A therapist from South Boston, Sean teaches psychology at Bunker Hill Community College.[5]
- Matt Damon as Will Hunting: A 20-year-old self-taught math genius, Will works as a janitor at MIT after being paroled.[6]
- Ben Affleck as Chuckie Sullivan: Will's loyal childhood friend, Chuckie works in construction and spends his free time with Will and their other two friends.[6]
- Stellan Skarsgård as Professor Gerald Lambeau: A professor at MIT, Lambeau is an accomplished mathematician, having won a Fields Medal for his research.[6]
- Minnie Driver as Skylar: Will's love interest, Skylar is a wealthy British student at Harvard who plans to attend medical school at Stanford.[6]
The cast includes Casey Affleck and Cole Hauser as Will's friends Morgan O'Mally and Billy McBride, respectively; John Mighton as Lambeau's assistant Tom;[5] Scott William Winters as Clark, an Harvard student with whom Will has a debate;[5] George Plimpton as Will's court-ordered therapist Henry Lipkin;[5] Jimmy Flynn as Judge Malone;[7] Christopher Britton and David Eisner as two of the company executives that interview Will;[7] and Bruce Hunter as a National Security Agency (NSA) agent that interviews Will.[7] Film director Harmony Korine makes a cameo appearance as Herve, a prisoner Will sees in jail.[8]
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Production
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Development
Actors and screenwriters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon met in their hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, becoming friends at the age of eight and ten, respectively.[9] Years later, Damon started writing Good Will Hunting as a final assignment for a playwriting class that he attended in his fifth year at Harvard, turning in a script of around 40 pages instead of the one-act play requested by his professor.[10] Damon said that only the scene of Will and Sean's first meeting survived verbatim from the first script.[10] He wrote in the script his then-girlfriend, Skylar Satenstein, a medical student at Harvard that later married Lars Ulrich of Metallica.[11] Damon left university after getting a role in the 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend and joined Affleck in Los Angeles, bringing with him the script.[10] Damon asked for Affleck's input, leading to the beginning of their long-standing creative collaboration with Good Will Hunting.[9][10] In Los Angeles, the duo secured small roles in films and commercials while writing the script, sharing their earnings to sustain themselves.[12]
"In fact [Affleck's] girlfriend at the time was the janitor in my dorm in my freshman year, which made it even more bizarre. So when on Friday night the kids would get too drunk and throw up all over the place, I knew who was going to clear it up and it was someone I considered a friend. That kind of shift came out, I think, in the soup of Good Will."
Affleck and Damon were inspired by the resentful feelings that they experienced in their childhood toward students who came to Cambridge to attend Harvard and MIT, taking over the city uncaring of respecting its residents.[13] However, Damon became conflicted after attending Harvard himself, seeing that the students were good-willed and witnessing first-hand the dichotomy between local and college life in Cambridge.[13] In particular, the duo took inspiration from Affleck's father and his then-girlfriend, who both worked as janitors at Harvard.[13] They based aspects of Sean's background story on the lives of Affleck's father and Damon's mother.[10]
Initially, the script dealt with the life of a young self-taught physics genius from South Boston sought after by the NSA for his extraordinary abilities.[10][14] In scenes inspired by Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Midnight Run (1988), the young man and his friends lead the NSA agents in chases around the city,[10] as Affleck and Damon felt they had to include an action subplot to make the film commercially appealing.[13][15] The duo improvised some of the scenes and recorded them on tape while imitating Morgan Freeman and Robert De Niro, who they originally envisioned playing the roles of the professor and the therapist.[10] Affleck and Damon shared the script with film producer Chris Moore, whom they both knew: Affleck had been working with him on the 1995 film Glory Daze, while Damon had met him in Cambridge.[10] Moore liked Good Will Hunting and decided to help them find a studio to produce it.[10]
The duo completed the script in 1994 and brought it to their talent agent, Patrick Whitesell, who recalled: "I read it over the weekend and I was blown away."[10] However, Whitesell knew it would be "almost an impossible thing" to find a studio who would produce a movie written by and starring two unknown actors, with the only precedent known to him being the 1976 film Rocky, in which previously unknown actor Sylvester Stallone wrote the script and starred in the lead role.[10] Affleck and Damon had not yet agreed neither on the title nor on the main character's name, which Damon thought should be Nate.[16] The duo read a script named Good Will Hunting written by their high school friend Derrick Bridgeman, to whom they promised to give $10,000 in exchange for using the title if they managed to sell the script.[16] Bridgeman later appeared in the film as a student in one of Lambeau's classes.[16] Whitesell brought Good Will Hunting to the attention of several studio executives and information about the script spread to other Hollywood creative executives in the span of four days, initiating a bidding war.[10] Castle Rock Entertainment ended up buying the script for $600,000,[10] which Affleck and Damon split evenly, with $30,000 each going to their respective agents.[12] Both Affleck and Damon spent all of the money in six months, after paying $160,000 in taxes, buying a Jeep Cherokee for $55,000 and renting a party house by the Hollywood Bowl for $5,000 a month.[12]
Ben Affleck in 2008 (left) and Matt Damon (right) in 2007
Film director and Castle Rock founder Rob Reiner urged Affleck and Damon to focus on either the thriller aspect or the relationship between Will and Sean.[10] In one meeting set up by Castle Rock, screenwriter William Goldman read the script and agreed with Reiner, telling Affleck and Damon to focus on Will and Sean.[17][15] The duo picked the interpersonal relationship and removed 60 pages of the NSA storyline from the 120-to-130-page script, ending up rewriting it.[10] Affleck and Damon wanted to direct and star in the film, but Castle Rock disagreed.[10] The studio gave them limited time to find another company that would produce their version of Good Will Hunting and reimburse them the $600,000; if they failed, Castle Rock would oust Affleck and Damon from the production, going ahead to make the film with another creative team.[10] Meanwhile, Castle Rock had them rewrite the script several times, but Affleck and Damon suspected that studio executives had stopped reading it attentively; to test them, Affleck and Damon began inserting scenes of Will and Sean having oral sex incongruous to the script, which the executives never mentioned in meetings.[10]
Affleck and Damon went back to the studios that they had previously refused.[10] Several executives set up meetings just to tell them that they would not buy the film.[10] Affleck said that one such meeting with Interscope Communications founder Ted Field inspired him to write a scene of his 2012 film Argo.[10] Studio executives wanted to cast more established actors like Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, but Damon kept reminding them of Stallone's story, which inspired him not to give up.[18] Affleck asked Kevin Smith if he would direct the film, as Affleck, Damon and Smith had already been working together on the 1997 film Chasing Amy.[10] Smith said he "wouldn't dare direct" it given its beauty, but brought the script to the attention of Miramax Films founder Harvey Weinstein.[10] Weinstein liked it but asked them to remove scenes in which Will played chess and had sex with Sean.[10] In 1995, he bought Good Will Hunting from Castle Rock for one million dollars, sending the film into production with Affleck and Damon set to star.[10]
Pre-production
Smith recommended to Miramax to let Affleck and Damon direct Good Will Hunting, but the executives disagreed.[19] Weinstein set up meetings for Affleck and Damon with several potential directors,[10] including Michael Mann.[19] Having recently directed the successful 1994 film Reality Bites, Ben Stiller refused an offer to direct the film since he had not heard of Affleck and Damon.[20] The duo met with Braveheart (1995) director Mel Gibson and began developing the film with him for a few months.[10] However, Gibson's drawn-out production lead Damon to ask him to drop out, since he feared him and Affleck would become too old to play their roles.[10] After Gibson agreed, Miramax sent the script to director Gus Van Sant.[10] Van Sant said about his first reading of Good Will Hunting: "Usually when I read a script, after a few pages, I put it down—but this kept me going."[10] However, Weinstein hesitated to choose Van Sant, who was not as well-established as Gibson.[10] Van Sant himself contacted and set up a meeting with Affleck through his brother, Casey Affleck, with whom he had worked on his 1995 film To Die For.[10] Van Sant and Weinstein argued over final cut privilege, stopping production of the film.[10] Meanwhile, Affleck and Damon moved back to Boston.[10]
"An intelligent guy who admits he's not as brilliant as the kid but who is saying, You're brilliant but you don't know shit about certain things. That appealed to me deeply. What can you give a kid like that? The one thing you can give him is just saying, 'I can only offer you a certain point of view.' It's almost like going though rehab and just trying to say, I know who you are, I know who you think you are. Let's try to get down to who you are."
After a year, Weinstein assigned producer Lawrence Bender to the film, prompted to resume the production by Damon's casting in Francis Ford Coppola's 1997 film The Rainmaker, based on John Grisham's 1995 novel of the same name, and film star Robin Williams' interest in Good Will Hunting.[10] In an interview, Damon explained that his casting in an adaptation of a novel by the popular Grisham gave Weinstein confidence of his potential as a leading man, but Williams' interest and eventual casting in the film were pivotal to getting Good Will Hunting made.[10] Williams had first heard of the script from Coppola, with whom he had collaborated on the 1996 film Jack, and became fascinated with Sean's background and attitude towards Will.[10][21] At the time, Williams' fee was of around $20 million per movie, but he lowered it to $5 million and had it written in his contract with Miramax that he would get 20% of the earnings if the film's gross surpassed $60 million, with the percentage growing if the gross kept increasing.[22]
Bender officially hired Van Sant as the director.[10] Still unsure about the ending, Affleck and Damon talked about it with Van Sant.[23] The duo had originally ended the script with Will's death at the hands of the gang that Will fights at the start of the film, but Van Sant proposed to have Chuckie be killed in an accident on the construction site.[23] Affleck and Damon tried writing his idea of the ending, but scrapped that version after Van Sant read it and disliked it.[23] The duo scheduled a meeting with Terrence Malick, film director and the best friend of Affleck's godfather, who suggested to them to end the film with Will following Skylar to California, instead of them leaving together as they had considered.[13]
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Stellan Skarsgård in 2014 (left) and Minnie Driver (right) in 2011
In early 1997, Bender, Moore and Van Sant began auditioning actors at the Bowery Hotel in New York, casting Cole Hauser as Billy but struggling to find performers for the roles of Skylar and Lambeau.[10] The team eventually chose actress and singer Minnie Driver for Skylar, with Van Sant saying of her audition: "She just blew us away".[10] However, Driver stated that Weinstein sent a sexist note to the casting director, disagreeing with the team's choice because "nobody would want to fuck" Driver, which left her "devastated" at the idea that she might not be hired for misogynistic reasons.[24] Weinstein denied Driver's claim regarding the note, but stated that he had wanted to cast Ashley Judd in the role at first.[24] Actor Stellan Skarsgård received the script while shooting Steven Spielberg's 1997 film Amistad, read it and accepted the offer for the role of Lambeau.[10] Van Sant and the production team assumed that Casey would play Morgan, since he embodied the character's personality and often spent time with the team.[25] However, Casey initially refused the part to focus on making a documentary of the production, before accepting to appear in Good Will Hunting.[25]
Meanwhile, the production team began scouting locations in Toronto, but realized that some of the scenes had to be shot in Boston to truly capture the city's character.[10] Affleck and Damon gave tours of South Boston to Skarsgård and Williams at the latter's request; one night, the duo brought Williams to the L Street Tavern, attracting a large crowd of residents.[10] Williams liked the gritty atmosphere of the bar and called Weinstein to inform him that he wanted to shoot some of Affleck and Damon's scenes at that bar.[10][21]
Filming
"As a matter of fact, when it all started, there was almost a ceremonial handoff of the project. We said, 'Look man, you are the director. This was our baby, it's yours now, go and do whatever it is you have to do.' Despite the fact that Gus is a very communal director in that he wants everyone's opinions, which makes you feel you're part of the team, there can only be one chef in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie."
—Damon in an interview with film critic Henri Béhar[26]
Filming began on April 14, 1997, and ended nine weeks later.[10] Affleck and Damon let Van Sant take over the development of the narrative and decided to focus on acting.[26] Van Sant's process included rehearsing with the actors, finding an inconspicuous area to place the camera and shooting long scenes without interfering, to get performances and interactions that conveyed a "moment-to-moment honesty" according to Damon.[16][26] Van Sant tried to accomodate actors: Damon often needed just one take, Affleck liked to try the scenes for a few times, and Williams needed "at least seven takes" to feel satisfied as he wanted to have versions that focused on different emotions.[16] Several cast members appreciated Van Sant's method: Damon felt that his acting process was "nurtured" by the director, Skarsgård said he gave "the actors space to grow", and Williams found the process "easy", liking that Van Sant stayed in the scene with actors and did not use playback frequently.[16][26] Williams often improvised lines on set, with one of his addition being the last line of Good Will Hunting: "Son of a bitch stole my line".[10]
Filming took place in Toronto for the interiors and in the Greater Boston area for the exteriors and a few interiors.[27] In Toronto, the production filmed several interior scenes at the University of Toronto, using Knox College, St Michael's College, Victoria College, Whitney Hall, McLennan Physical Laboratories and Faculty Club.[28] Other scenes were shot at the Central Technical School, the Upfront Bar and Grill, and other locations.[28][29] In Boston, Affleck and his brother along with Damon and Hauser lived in the same apartment and often hang out with Driver.[16] The cast and crew were welcomed by the residents of South Boston, with some offering suggestions for what would make the film "more Boston".[16] Van Sant cast Bostonians in small roles, giving the role of Judge Malone to the production's head teamster Jimmy Flynn, a member of the Winter Hill Gang who had previously been tried and acquitted for murder in the same courtroom of the Boston Municipal Court's South Boston Division used in the film.[16][27][30]
The Boston Public Garden in 2025 (left) and The Tasty (right) in 1996
The marketing team at Miramax wanted to use several chain restaurants as sets, but Affleck and Damon championed distinctive Boston locations like The Tasty and Kelly's Roast Beef.[10] The Harvard administration initially refused to let the production film on campus, but accepted after actor and Harvard alumnus John Lithgow vouched for them, allowing the team to shoot scenes in front of Dunster and Lowell House.[27] The Boston Police Department provided security for the production while Damon and Williams were filming a scene at the Boston Public Garden, which attracted more than 3,000 spectators.[10] Other locations in Boston used or featured in the film include the L Street Tavern, a Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin Robbins combination store, the MIT campus, the Bow and Arrow Pub, an Au Bon Pain store, the Harvard Square, and the Bunker Hill Community College.[27][30] The film ends with Will driving away on Massachusetts Turnpike.[31]
Post-production and music
Van Sant hired editor Pietro Scalia for Good Will Hunting, having liked his work with directors Oliver Stone and Bernando Bertolucci.[32] Scalia used an Avid Technology editing software on Good Will Hunting.[32] Scalia, Van Sant, and the film's cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier worked together to get the final result, starting from a first edited version that Escoffier and Van Sant thought had too many cuts.[33] Scalia focused on the rhythm of the dialogues and the actors' dialects, trying to convey the film's authenticity.[34] Cutting Williams' performance, he chose to use the actor's first takes, finding that Williams' later cuts did not have "that early freshness, that insecurity, that fear".[35] Surprised by the final result, Williams thanked him in person at an exclusive screening organized for him in San Francisco and in a letter after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, saying Scalia had done "the kindest cut".[35]
To score Good Will Hunting, Van Sant worked with film composer and singer Danny Elfman, with whom he had first collaborated on To Die For.[36] At that time, Van Sant had heard of singer-songwriter Elliott Smith while searching for "raw" sounds, but decided that an heavy metal artist would better fit the film.[37] After wrapping production for To Die For, he began listening to Smith's music, thinking it would be a better match with Good Will Hunting.[37] He first talked about it with Bender during pre-production and went on to film with Smith's music in mind, telling Scalia to begin incorporating his songs while editing.[37] Meanwhile, he met with Elfman in Boston to ask for his opinion.[38] Elfman approved and began writing the score to match the songs.[38] Towards the end of the editing process, Van Sant contacted Smith through mutual friends to ask for his permission to use his music.[37] Smith agreed after watching the film at Van Sant's house, which inspired him to write an original song, "Miss Misery", for Good Will Hunting.[37] Elfman, Smith, and Van Sant collaborated to finish the score, blending Smith's songs with Elfman's pieces.[39] Elfman provided the orchestral arrangement for Smith's 1997 song "Between the Bars" for the film and later rearranged "Miss Misery" for his performances at award shows, including the 70th Academy Awards.[38] Elfman recalled it as "the best experience" he had working on music with an artist, adding: "After 110 films, or whatever, it's been one of the only two times I feel I collaborated with anybody".[39][38]
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Soundtrack
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A soundtrack album for the film was released by Capitol Records on November 18, 1997, although only two of Elfman's cues appear on the release.[40][41]
"Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band and "Runaway" by Del Shannon were featured in the film but did not appear on the soundtrack album.
A limited-edition soundtrack album featuring Elfman's complete score from the film was released by Music Box Records on March 3, 2014. The soundtrack, issued in 1500 copies, includes all of Elfman's cues (including music not featured on the rare Miramax Academy promo) and contains the songs by Elliott Smith. One of the tracks is Smith's songs with Elfman's arrangements added to the mix.[42]
- Main Title (2:44)
- Genie Mopper (0:37)
- First Calculation (1:08)
- Theorem (0:42)
- Kick Ass Choir (0:59)
- Mystery Math (2:28)
- Them Apples (0:57)
- Jail (1:13)
- Second Shrink (1:14)
- Any Port (1:25)
- Times Up (1:14)
- Oliver Twist (1:58)
- Staring Contest (0:49)
- Secret Weapon (0:57)
- Retainer (Part A) (0:58)
- Retainer (Part B) (0:20)
- Tell You Something (0:48)
- No Love Me (0:47)
- Fire Music (1:11)
- Whose Fault (2:34)
- End Titles (3:50)
- Between the Bars (Orchestral) (1:09) – Performed by Elliott Smith / Arr. by Elfman
- No Name #3 (3:04) – Performed by Elliott Smith
- Say Yes (2:15) – Performed by Elliott Smith
- Between the Bars (2:21) – Performed by Elliott Smith
- Angeles (2:55) – Performed by Elliott Smith
- Miss Misery (3:12) – Performed by Elliott Smith
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Mathematics
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In an early version of the script, Will Hunting was going to be a physics prodigy, but Nobel Laureate in Physics Sheldon Glashow at Harvard told Damon that the subject should be math instead of physics. Glashow referred Damon to his brother-in-law, Daniel Kleitman, a mathematics professor at MIT. Columbia University physics and math professor Brian Greene at the Tribeca Sloan retrospectively explained that for physics, "Having some deep insight about the universe [ . . . ] typically [ is ] a group project in the modern era", while "doing some mathematical theorem is a singular undertaking very often".[43][44] Patrick O'Donnell, professor of physics at the University of Toronto, served as the mathematical consultant for the film.[45] In the spring of 1997, Damon and Affleck asked Kleitman to "speak math to us" for writing realistic dialogue, so Kleitman invited postdoc Tom Bohman to join him, giving them a "quick lecture". When asked for a problem that Will could solve, Kleitman and Bohman suggested the unsolved computer science P versus NP problem, but the film used other problems. The plot was inspired by George Dantzig's real life story.[46]
The main hallway blackboard is used twice to reveal Will's talent, first to the audience, and second to Professor Lambeau. Damon based it on his artist brother Kyle visiting MIT's Infinite Corridor and writing "an incredibly elaborate, totally fake, version of an equation" on a blackboard, which lasted for months. Kyle returned to Matt, saying that MIT needed those blackboards "because these kids are so smart they just need to, you know, drop everything and solve problems!".[47]
The first blackboard problem
Near the start of the film, Will sets aside his mop to study a difficult problem posed by Lambeau on the blackboard.[48] The problem has to do with intermediate-level graph theory, but Lambeau describes it as an advanced "Fourier system".
To answer the first part of the question, Will chalks up an adjacency matrix:
To answer the second part, he determines the number of 3-step walks in the graph, and finds the third power matrix:
The third and fourth parts of the question concern generating functions. The other characters are astounded that a janitor shows such facility with matrices.
The second blackboard problem
Lambeau subsequently poses a new challenge on the blackboard: state Cayley's formula and "draw all the homeomorphically irreducible trees with ". Will writes eight of the ten trees correctly before Lambeau interrupts.[49][unreliable source?]
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Reception
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Box office
In the film's opening weekend in limited release, it grossed $272,912. When it opened nationwide in January 1998, it grossed $10,261,471 for the weekend. It went on to gross $138,433,435 in the United States and Canada, surpassing Pulp Fiction as Miramax's highest grossing film in that market at the time.[50] It grossed $225,933,435 worldwide.[3]
Critical response
Good Will Hunting received widespread acclaim from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "It follows a predictable narrative arc, but Good Will Hunting adds enough quirks to the journey – and is loaded with enough powerful performances – that it remains an entertaining, emotionally rich drama."[51] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[52] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on a scale of A+ to F.[53]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three stars out of four, writing that while the story is "predictable", it is "the individual moments, not the payoff, that make it so effective".[54]
Duane Byrge of The Hollywood Reporter praised the performances of the cast, writing, "The acting is brilliant overall, with special praise to Matt Damon for his ragingly tender portrayal of the boy cursed with genius."[55]
Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle was equally positive, writing, "The glow goes well beyond a radiant performance by Matt Damon ... Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it's a movie whose impact lingers."[56]
Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a "B", stating, "Good Will Hunting is stuffed – indeed, overstuffed – with heart, soul, audacity, and blarney. You may not believe a minute of it, but you don't necessarily want to stop watching." He also noted Damon's and Williams' chemistry, describing it as "a quicksilver intercepting each other's thoughts".[57]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the screenplay "smart and touching", and praised Van Sant for directing with "style, shrewdness and clarity". She also complimented the production design and cinematography, which were able to effortlessly move the viewer from "classroom to dorm room to neighborhood bar", in a small setting.[58]
Quentin Curtis of The Daily Telegraph opined that Williams' performance brought "sharpness and tenderness", calling the film a "crowd-pleaser, with bags of charm to spare. It doesn't bear thinking too much about its message ... Damon and Affleck's writing has real wit and vigour, and some depth."[59]
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon stated that despite the "enjoyable characters", he thought that the film was somewhat superficial, writing, "there isn't a whole lot of movie to take home with you ... many will wake the next morning wondering why, with all that talent on hand, it amounts to so little in the end."[60]
Writing for the BBC, Nev Pierce gave the film four stars out of five, describing it as "touching, without being sentimental", although he felt that some scenes were "odd lapses into self-help speak".[61]
Emanuel Levy of Variety called the film a "beautifully realized tale ... engaging and often quite touching". He felt that the film's visual style showcased Van Sant's talent, but the plot was "quite predictable".[62]
Academic response
Several scholars have examined the role of class, religion and the cultural geography of Boston in the film. Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera observed that the residual Catholic–Protestant tensions in Boston are an important backdrop in the film, as Irish Catholics from Southie are aligned against ostensibly Protestant characters who are affiliated with Harvard and MIT.[63] Emmett Winn has argued that character interactions show class conflict and stunted social mobility,[64] while, similarly, David Lipset commented that class inequality is a driving subtext.[65]
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Accolades
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Home media and ownership
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Buena Vista Home Entertainment (under the Miramax Home Entertainment banner) released the film on VHS on July 7, 1998, with a LaserDisc release following on July 29, 1998.[89] That year, the film also received LaserDisc releases in Japan and Hong Kong, in addition to receiving a U.S. release on the short-lived DVD competitor format DIVX.[90] The film received a North American DVD release on January 5, 1999. This DVD was part of the "Miramax Collector's Series", and included an audio commentary by Van Sant, Damon and Affleck, as well as eleven deleted scenes, with optional commentary explaining their removal. It also included behind the scenes featurettes, TV spots, the theatrical trailer, an Academy Award Best Picture montage and the music video for Elliott Smith's "Miss Misery".[91] In the United Kingdom, the DVD was released on January 22, 2001.[92] The Australian DVD was released at an undetermined date, and was distributed by Village Roadshow, who had an Australian distribution agreement with Miramax at the time.[93] The film's DVD releases in Japan were handled by Shochiku Home Video, who had also released the 1998 Japanese LaserDisc.[94]
In 2010, Miramax was sold by The Walt Disney Company (their owners since 1993), with the studio being taken over by private equity firm Filmyard Holdings that same year.[95] Filmyard licensed the home media rights for several Miramax titles to Lionsgate, and on August 21, 2012, Lionsgate Home Entertainment released a 15th anniversary Blu-ray for Good Will Hunting.[96][92] The 15th Anniversary Blu-ray retained the special features of the 1999 DVD. In 2011, Filmyard Holdings licensed the Miramax library to streaming site Netflix. This deal included Good Will Hunting, and ran for five years, eventually ending on June 1, 2016.[97]
Filmyard Holdings sold Miramax to Qatari company beIN Media Group in March 2016.[98] During this period, Lionsgate were still partnered with Miramax, and assisted in distributing the film to other digital platforms such as Apple TV.[99] In April 2020, ViacomCBS (now known as Paramount Skydance) acquired the rights to Miramax's library, after buying a 49% stake in the studio from beIN.[100] Good Will Hunting was one of the 700 titles Paramount acquired in the deal,[101][102] and later that year, Paramount Home Entertainment reissued the film on DVD and Blu-ray.[103][104] Since acquiring the ownership stake, Paramount Pictures replaced Lionsgate as the film's distributor on digital platforms such as Apple TV and Amazon Prime,[105] and Paramount made it available on their own subscription streaming service Paramount+, which launched in 2021, in addition to making it available on their free streaming service Pluto TV.[106][107] In Australia, it was also on the streaming service for the Paramount-owned broadcaster Network 10.[108] In August 2025, it was reported that Good Will Hunting had recently charted as one of the most streamed films on Netflix.[109]
Since 2020, Paramount have had a first look deal to release any future projects based on Miramax properties, with sequels for the Scream and Scary Movie franchises having been developed since then. In March 2023, at the premiere of Air, Damon revealed that Affleck had recently been pitched a sequel to Good Will Hunting, titled Good Will Hunting 2. Damon expressed surprise at the proposal, noting it was a "flat-out sequel" but provided no further details on its content. Affleck confirmed the pitch but dismissed the idea, stating, "it’s not a sequel we're going to pursue, at least not for a very long time."[110]
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Notes
- Tied with Kate Beckinsale for The Last Days of Disco
References
External links
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