Green Lantern

Note: This is my first post in a while. If it's a little rusty (read: shitty), please keep that in mind.

I knew from the first trailer that Green Lantern was going to be, from my completely subjective nerd perspective, either the best or the worst thing I'd ever seen. I'd heard all the negative hype but then again I liked Daredevil, so I knew I was the target demographic. Walking into the movie I was (extremely) cautiously optimistic.

Walking out I was underwhelmed, to the point of disappointment. The movie wasn't terrible, it just wasn't very good. In fact it was so very much not very good as to be bad. The performances were decent, and I walked into the theater already sold on the premise and in love with the characters, but I think what did not work boiled down to a couple things:

1. Pacing

The movie seemed designed to specifically undercut any tension or excitement that was building throughout the movie. An action scene would start to ramp up, placing our characters in real danger and then... they fly away and talk about stuff for 5-10 minutes. The all-too short training montage occurs giving us a sense of what the GL corps is about and then... Hal Jordan quits and whines about it for another half hour. Even the final action sequence goes: introduction of the final villain with a fight, fly to the outskirts of the city to watch him and talk about fighting some more, slow-paced scene showing how menaing the villain is, the fight. Why not cut out the fat in the middle? We know Parallax is scary, you spent the entire movie trying to show us that. Every time the movie felt like it was going somewhere, it just stopped dead in its tracks. And don't get me started about starting the movie with 7 minutes of pure exposition.

Despite the movie being two hours long I didn't feel like I got to spend significant time with any characters or that very much got done. I wanted to see more of the Green Lantern Corps. I wanted events to feel like they logically followed one another. I wanted people to do awesome things with their rings to really show the potential of the premise.

None of those things happened. God willing, this makes a ton of money so we can see a sequel that is better-written.

2. Shallow character development

Ryan Reynolds version of Hal Jordan is a bizarre mix of Hal from the comics, who is a self-absorbed brash asshole, and Kyle Rayner, who is more insecure in the Spider-Man "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" Mode. What we get is an "Immature adult, Insecure asshole, so if you fall on the concrete, that's yo ass fault" (Kanye West- See Me Now), whose personality seems totally incongruous. Are you all the asshole who charges in with no regard for others or the guy who is paralyzed by the fear of commitment? Can you be both?

I'm not sure if anyone changed from the beginning to the ending of this movie in any way that made sense. And I'm not sure that I cared about any of the character that I met. Also, given all the time they spent designing the Green Lanterns on OA, I would have liked to spend more time with them. I love Kilowog in the comics. In the movies I can muster apathy at best, mild distaste at worst.

Sinestro, on the other hand was fucking awesome. I want an entire movie about Sinestro. In fact I'm pretty sure thats what Green Lantern 2 would be. Please make this movie. Hector Hammond was also fairly well-done but not given any room to grow beyond his one dimension. It was also unclear if he was supposed to be creepy the entire time, or if his physical transformation was intended to transform his personality as well as his appearance. I believe they were going for the latter, but I didn't feel I got to know his character well enough pre- giant forehead to be sure.

3. Dialogue

Painful. So painful. Geoff Johnsian even. I half expected Kilowog to go "Face it, you're just too Green, Lantern" during the training session.

And the scene where Hal Jordan makes an appeal to the guardians to help earth- GAH! And then (spoiler alert), when they reject him and he begs them to at least let him go and defend his planet- something that they were in no way preventing him from doing prior to his arrival on OA... Come on guys.

4. Show, don't tell

So much talking. So little doing. I don't even know how to expound on this. (The joke is that I'm doing it too)


What did work:

1. Sinestro

I said this earlier, but if this movie was 90% less Hal whining and 180% more Sinestro being badass and a total dick, I would go to see it 3 times in theaters. Also, that scene during the credits? So many nerd-boners.

2. Final Action set piece

(spoilers on)

Most of the final action scene was pretty much crap. In fact, I thought most of the action pieces in this movie were lackluster and boring. But the end, where he was throwing Parallax into the sun (A scene that makes no sense given that this entity is powerful enough to consume entire planet-sized civilizations), was just beautiful. And the image of two jets tied to a belt, pulling him away from Parallax in space struck that perfect balance between silly and awesome. I think my affection for it grows largely out of my unadulterated love for the movie "Sunshine," but it was the first thing in the movie that made me that little kid in me sit up and take notice. Watching Parallax succumb to the Sun's gravitational pull really felt like a win

(spoilers off)

I'll grant you that OA was somewhat cool, but after seeing Asgard done so well in Thor, it really just looked lackluster in comparison.

3. Potential

I honestly believe that there are amazing Green Lantern movies waiting to be made, even if this isn't that movie. If a terrible and racist franchise about cars that transform into giant alien robots and are friends with Even Stevens can be a billion dollar enterprise, surely we can glean some success from intergalactic space cops with alien wishing rings? Green Lantern is one of my favorite characters of all time and there is so much rich history to be mined for future films. This film wasn't good, and that's too bad. But most films that make obscene amounts of money are mediocre at best, so I feel that the lack of quality can almost be viewed as an asset.

If this movie makes tons of money, which I hope to god it does (but looks like it won't), then hopefully we'll start to see studios taking risks on more obscure weirder characters. How amazing would a well-made Blue Beetle/Booster Gold movie be? Or a Thunderbolts movie? Or a 4th world movie?

Actually, leave that last one alone. I couldn't bear to see it fucked up.

My point being, if they could build up enough goodwill with this movie's success, they might be able to bring other relative unknowns to the big screen. As a comics fan, I think that would be awesome.