Science and Technology

Set in South Boston, Good Will Hunting is about Will Hunting (Matt Damon), a young man who immerses himself in books, drinking and friends to escape his anger and frustration stemming largely from his past experiences with abusive foster families. Will and his best friend, Chuckie Sullivan (Ben Affleck), hang out together with their small group of friends in impoverished areas of Boston, drinking and occasionally fighting down in Southie. Will works menial jobs, hiding his incredible genius (such as a talent for memorizing facts and an intuitive ability to solve complex math equations).

While Will is working as a janitor at MIT, Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgеrd), a Fields Medalist and combinatorialist, puts a difficult problem for his graduate class on a chalkboard in the hallway, hoping that someone would be able to solve the 'challenge' by the end of the term. Will solves it overnight and secretly posts the answer the next day. This throws the classes and professors into confusion, wondering who could have solved the equation.

At some point during the next few days, Will meets Skylar (Minnie Driver) at a Harvard bar, and she gives him her phone number. Meanwhile, at MIT, Lambeau and the other professors decide to put up a much more complicated problem -- one that had taken him and his colleagues two years to prove. Soon after they have put up this second problem, Lambeau and his assistant find Will, in his janitor's uniform, writing on the chalkboard. Lambeau (thinking Will is vandalizing the board) is incensed and chases Will away, but then returns to the board to find his astonished assistant staring at the correctly solved theorem.

While Lambeau is in the process of trying to track Will down, Will and his friends pick a fight. Will continues brutally beating a man who once picked on him in kindergarten, even as the police arrive and his friends escape. Will is arrested, and during his arrest hits a cop, which seems to guarantee that he will be facing jail time.

Lambeau meets with Will after the court hearing and lays out his options: Either he can go to jail, or he can be released under Lambeau's personal supervision, as per a deal that Lambeau worked out with the judge privately. The latter option comes with two conditions: Firstly, Will must work on advanced mathematics with Lambeau, and secondly, he must see a therapist.

Will does extremely well in the math sessions with Lambeau; however, he is averse to seeing a therapist, and quickly drives off several well known therapists whom Lambeau has arranged for him to see. On the verge of giving up, Lambeau takes Will to meet his former college roommate, a psychologist, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who teaches at Bunker Hill Community College, to mostly uninterested, uninspired students.

After a difficult start, Sean concludes that Will's defensiveness is the result of years of physical and emotional abuse, (as well as intense isolation), and that his hostile, sarcastic, and evasive behaviors are all defense mechanisms. The two work together to break through Will's considerable barriers, using a certain type of psychotherapy, and to get at the heart of the problem, dealing with Will's complex emotions. The two begin to relate to each other more, with Sean telling Will about his past and his happiness with his now deceased wife, which makes an impression on Will, particularly how Sean gave up a pair of tickets to see the Red Sox in the 1975 World Series (thus missing Carlton Fisk's famous home run in Game 6) to meet and spend time with a stranger in a bar who would later become his wife. This encourages Will to try to establish a deeper relationship with Skylar, whom he has gone on a few dates with after nearly having failed to ever call her.

At the same time, however, the well-intentioned Lambeau is attempting to push Will to excel in his direction, not seeing or perhaps not comprehending just how sensitive Will is and how he could snap in a second if pushed. Tensions eventually boil between Lambeau and Sean at a bar, resulting in a public argument that has Lambeau walking off. To make things worse, Will blows off several lucrative interviews that Lambeau has arranged for him, or in one case, sends his friend Chuckie in his place.

After he and Skylar have been involved for some time, she eventually asks Will to move to California with her, as she will begin medical school at Stanford University. Will panics at the thought of disrupting his life so greatly and shrinks from the emotional closeness that would be involved. He explodes, and begins yelling, revealing a great many things about his life to her, and the lies he told her. Will coldly walks out of her room while Skylar collapses in tears. Days later, after she leaves on a plane, he goes back to his normal habits.

Later at the professor's office, Lambeau chastises his protege for standing up the job interviews he had lined up for him. Will shrugs it off, which irks Lambeau. An angry Will tells Lambeau that the work he is giving him is so easy it's a joke. He then sets fire to a proof he had done for Lambeau, sending the professor running to put it out. Lambeau is hurt by Will's actions, and admits that he is incapable of doing the proof that Will considers "a joke" and carelessly burns. He seems envious of, and haunted by, the sheer magnitude of Will's ability; he tells Will that he wishes he had never met him, so he could sleep at night without the knowledge that someone like Will existed. At this, Will just walks away, shutting the door behind him. Lambeau, still kneeling on the ground by the burned proof, and still emotional, quietly says the other reason he wishes he'd never met Will: so he wouldn't have to watch Will throw it all away.

Next Will attends a job interview with the NSA, with the interviewer and a U.S. General promising him a bright future. At his next therapy session, Will discusses how he turned down the job offer as a way of avoiding misery. Sean however begins to see the flip side, perceiving that Will spends so much time and energy seeing all the things that can go wrong down the road in order to avoid pain, that he ends up paralyzed into complete inaction. Will chooses