Green Lantern: Grading, Review, Discuss, Tracking, Sequel?

My review on Facebook:

 

Well as MacLeod said, Green Lantern doesn't have a lot of name recognition - here in Europe, anyway. I literally had no idea who the character was until a few years ago when JacksonArcher and the like were discussing movie prospects for him. I've personally never known any fans of the Green Lantern, or seen any GL paphernalia or comics when shopping. It's why I found the Onion clip so funny, it kind of captured my reaction entirely.

Granted, I had no idea who Iron Man was either, and I think that did okay internationally.

 

I saw it last night and I gave it a C+. I loved the space scenes and all of the stuff on Oa. The guardians were pretty assholish as I would expect them to be. I liked the plot and I liked the fights as well as the things that the ring produced. The problems I had with this movie is the problems I had with X-Men and Thor, know of them, but I don't know them. I am a DC man, so I do know more about GL than Thor from Super Friends and John Stewart from JL. And The Daily Show so I do know about GL's origin and stuff. The other problem I had with this movie as well as the others is the lack of wow factor like I got with Iron Man and BB and TDK. These other superhero films seem to lack that. Overall I thought it was a good superhero mObie and I liked the CGI for the most part. The mask was retarded, the suit I liked, though I still want to see the white glIves. Synestro was awsome.

 

Which sucks, because Super Max sounded really cool, and I would love to see them go back to it.

 

The Green Lantern

My Grade: B-

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I almost would swing to a C+ but I liked the pretty in it (Blake Lively) so there's that.

I'm not a fan of the Green Lantern so I know nothing about his origins or how things are "supposed to be" so my experience wasn't weighted with that anticipation or expectations, in short The Green Lantern serves as the origin story for the comic book superhero who possesses an alien ring that allows him to manifest anything he can think of and serves in a corps of 3,000-some aliens from around the universe all of whom are tasked with watching over and protecting a segment of the cosmos, a segment which can include thousands of galaxies, millions of planets and billions of species. Budget cuts, you see.

Like many superheroes start-out Hal is a bit of a screw-up in his normal life to the point that he's fired when he points out to an Air Force defense contractor that an airplane that has an operational ceiling of 50,000 feet before completely dying isn't a good idea but fate has it's ways and a dying alien member of the Green Lantern Corps has come to give Hal the ring to carry on his duties. Hal is reluctant at first and humans are seen as a "young" race compared to others in the corps they're none-to-happy too especially when Hal mostly shirks his responsibilities for most of the movie up until Movie Villain #267-B (Giant Space-faring Ball/Cloud of Evil) turns up to not only wipe out Earth but also to continue on to wipe out the Lantern's home planet too. With no where else to turn as their efforts have so-far failed the Lanterns decide to pretty much shrug-off part of their own code and embrace the "dark side" in order to defeat Evil, who can show the Lanterns the error of their ways and back on to the path they've followed for eons?

It's also interesting that MV#267-B crosses the cosmos from a remote sector of the universe to Earth in a matter of days but once Earth-bound it's somewhat sluggish.

The movie, for me, was mostly entertaining but it also plodded along and was bogged down by trying to cram-in The Green Lantern's complex origin story (namely the nature of the group he belongs to), his internal conflicts, his external conflicts (with a former, on/off girlfriend/life-long friend), then there's the origins of the movie's villain, his internal and external conflicts (wanting "the girl", daddy issues) and then our big villain in MV#267-B. There's a lot here and getting there has a lot of somewhat slow spots or places where time could've been better spent exploring all of these issues and plots. There's probably a couple movies worth of story here, this one could've been better spent on setting up Hal and TGLC with a somewhat smaller baddie, I don't think Hal needed to save the entire universe his first time out.

The special effects, for me, were mostly okay but anymore CGI in movies of this nature are beginning to look to busy and too cartoony, space is shown as too complex, colorful and busy, alien worlds are too vast, colorful, busy and filled with too much "oddity" none of it "worked" for me. The CGI suit I could take or leave. Ryan Reynolds does a better job that I expected from the trailers so I actually enjoyed him here, the rest of the cast aside from the previously mentioned female lead are mostly forgettable for me. This movie plays like a Cliiff Notes version of what the entire first season of a GL movie would be like.

I did not see this movie in 3D and I'm glad as I can see some plenty of places where the format would have been abused and overused to point of annoyance particularly in space and in alien worlds. And as a final note, the movie's creators have no idea how gravity works.

The movie is probably worth seeing, I saw it on a free ticket so no loss for me, but I think it'll be mostly forgotten as time goes on and won't quite rank with some of the better superhero movies that have came out even the last 10 years; if the movie gets a sequel it needs to pace itself and try not to cram so much into one movie. That was the problem here, it wanted the entire world in one shot and for that it had to make Hal save the entire damn universe.

If you look back at a movie like Superman The Movie you'll see that pretty much that entire movie is spent on Superman's origins, his rise to the public spot-light and him finally accepting and realizing who he is and what he has to do in order to be Superman. His big threat? Lex Luthor's pretty simple plan of detonating bombs in order to seize a real-estate opportunity and that plot pretty much only soaks up the last half-hour or so; the big villains and story doesn't come until the sequel.

Superhero movies need to step back to that line of thinking just a bit and try not to take the world all in one shot and explore things a bit while laying the foundation, hell look at Batman Begins (again, fairly small "big baddie"/plot" compared to the origin story) and then "The Dark Knight" (origin established, bring out the big guns.)

Slow. Down.

Fun movie, go see or don't, whatever. Barring a Rifftrax on this this Fall it's not likely one I'll see again or buy on DVD.

 

Watched Green Lantern yesterday, and I enjoyed that the opening narration set up the movie with this kind of 80's feel for me. Overall, it was a good movie; but a few things held it back from being great.

The editing hurt things for me. For example, one thing that stood out was the broken nature of Hal's first flight to Oa as we keep going back and forth to Hammond's transformation. Hal's flight to Oa was a spectacular sequence that should have drawn us all in; but we were instead shocked out of the scene every few moments so that we could come back to earth for Hammond. I understand how they were trying to tie things together; but I just don't think it worked.

In regards to story, I was also thrown by the presentation of Sinestro. All the right beats were there; Sinestro was telling us how law enforcement can benefit from using fear (not noting the fine line that exists between police and militia). That's the problem I had, though; Sinestro was just telling us. Where was the passion? When Hal stormed into the Guardian council meeting, where was the part where Hal and Sinestro are in each others faces over this? Sinestro instead seemed to back off and politely wait for his turn to continue the civilized debate. Sinestro didn't even storm away in disgust from Hal's victory of convincing the Guardians; Sinestro just kind of nodded approvingly? What?

I liked the movie, but it fell short. B

 

B grade for me. I'd give it 3/4 stars as well.

I just came back from "Green Lantern". I enjoyed it. Thought it was one of the most rushed superhero origin stories that I've ever seen. It basically tried to pack about a dozen or so years worth of arcs into one hour and a half movie trying to please all facets of the GL fandom and I think it suffered from that. Ryan Reynolds impressed the hell out of me though. I was expecting him to be shit. Blake Lively was tolerable. Mark Strong was great as Sinestro although Tomar Re was more of a mentor to Hal than he was in this film. The training sequence was a joke. I thought the Hector Hammond stuff was among the weakest in the film...I don't like him much as a character though to begin with. I'll still be getting this on DVD though. Probably will be seeing this a couple more times.

 

An absolutely awful Saturday for GL. Looks like there will probably be no sequel.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/green-lantern-makes-3-35m-midnights/

At least we will always have GL: First Flight.

 

A-

Wow, maybe I was just in a really good mood, or someone spiked my soda or something...but I actually enjoyed the heck out of this movie.

I kept waiting for it to turn into the dull, disjointed, lifeless mess the critics have described, but I never felt that happen at all. In fact I was engaged from beginning to end, and thought the whole thing seemed really well-paced and well-executed (the tone was certainly more consistent and less jarring than that in Thor).

Yeah, sure, the plot was pretty simplistic, there were a few slow spots in the middle, and the final battle DID seem a bit rushed, but frankly I see those same problems in even the best superhero movies. Unlike with, say, the cheap and cheesy Fantastic Four movies, I thought the direction here was strong and sophisticated enough to overcome most of those problems.

Overall, I just thought this was a really fun and kickass superhero movie, and is at least as good as the first Spider-Man or X-Men (which also had their share of flaws). Shame we probably won't be getting a sequel.

 

What do you attribute that drop-off to? Word of Mouth or that the bulk of people who are actually interested in seeing this already have?

 

I'm wondering if the negative reviews aren't keeping people away. Or other films currently out as alternatives.

 

Word of mouth doesn't really work that fast. It usually only starts to become important in the second weekend, which is why really bad movies usually drop big in weekend two.

It's more likely that the fanboys rushed to see the movie on the first day, inflating the amount it made.

 

Is that really true any more? What with social networking and anytime, anywhere communications?

 

^ I didn't say that.

 

^^ No I don't think that's the case at all. I think people's standards have only increased by movies like "The Dark Knight" and "X2" and "Spider-Man 2". Comic book movies have now reached a level of legitimacy I believe where fans and general audiences combined demand quality over anything else. If something doesn't reach that standard then they simply won't see it.

 

^^^
That could spell trouble for future comic book movies. If general audiences become more like comic book fans, then it's all over...

 

I don't know if it would be "all over" we just won't be getting three or four a year. It'd probably still pump out one a year if the box office soured that much.

 

We'd probably be going back to how it was before the first X-Men movie.

 

Which was like I said maybe one or two a year. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here though. GL is still on track for 60 million. I didn't expect more than 70 or 80 I think. It has another weekend to go before Dark of the Moon eats everything up.