Green Lantern (2011)

[Misfit Toy]

He's not generating yellow - he's merely removing the blue...

 

[Shazam!]

I hope there's a reason why all the thousand other GLs don't all just team up to take down Parallax.

A reason that doesn't involve them all getting killed, BTW.

 

[Gepard]

That's all CGI, right? That means someone made a considered artistic decision to make it yellow. Now, personally, I don't attribute to foreshadowing what can be explained by stupidity, so I don't really think he's shooting Parallax at his enemies, just that it's a VFX error.

Well, it's probably footage of a real muzzle flare matted into the shot, but, yeah, they would have had total control over how it looked, so the decision to leave it a natural yellow-white was probably intentional. It's entirely possible they made a version with it colored green and thought it looked silly, though. People have a set idea of how muzzle flash is "supposed" to look from decades of action films, and I bet this is playing to that. These kinds of shots go through dozens or even hundreds of versions before the public ever sees them, and I'd be surprised if they didn't ever try a green flare.

 

[StarTrek1701]

People have a set idea of how muzzle flash is "supposed" to look from decades of action films, and I bet this is playing to that.

In other words: creativity has died in Hollyweird. Rather than give the audience something new to imagine about, it just gives them the same old thing.

 

[Gepard]

What a trivial thing to complain about.

 

[Thestral]

It could be a matter of which shots are more finished. My guess, though, is that Jordan has more character interaction with Tomar and possibly Sinestro than with Kilowog. We'll see Kilowog in his capacity as boot camp training sergeant.

That makes sense and seems reasonable.

 

[JD]

I just watched a trailer for the tie-in video game, Rise of the Manhunters, and they did actually show Sinestro using the same kind of gun, with a green muzzle flash.

 

[Nerys Myk]

People have a set idea of how muzzle flash is "supposed" to look from decades of action films, and I bet this is playing to that.

In other words: creativity has died in Hollyweird. Rather than give the audience something new to imagine about, it just gives them the same old thing.

Seriously?????

And "Hollyweird"????

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I've been reading GL since they started publishing Hal Jordan in Showcase.

If nitpicking like "the explosion color violates GL continuity" is what fans are gonna do with this film, that'll be lamer than trekkie canon whining.

 

[Saga]

I've been reading GL since they started publishing Hal Jordan in Showcase.

If nitpicking like "the explosion color violates GL continuity" is what fans are gonna do with this film, that'll be lamer than trekkie canon whining.

agreed.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

It strikes me as odd so many complain about the yellow muzzle flash, since it's not even directly created by the ring. I'm no expert, but wouldn't the muzzle flash be actually a byproduct of the shooting? I mean, the bullets are ring-created and the gun is ring-created, but they are still bullets and a gun. The muzzle flash is not directly ring-created, but is simply the explosion caused by shooting. If a GL would create a bomb out of ring energy, would the explosion be green?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yeah, one can delve into the excessive literalism about color that is to some extent encouraged by the comic book medium itself. Larry Niven plotted the story that introduced Ganthet, and his solution to the story problem at the climax turned upon the real science of light and color - the fact that things like the Doppler shift occur and are significant under certain circumstances, for example.

Whether a ring-created gun actually works on the same principles as a real gun is a separate question, of course, and turns upon what hypothesis one makes about how the ring and its constructs are supposed to work. Shockingly, no explanation that's been mentioned in the comics over the decades tracks perfectly with what's actually been shown to be the case in every instance.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

They're adding nine million dollars to the VFX budget for GL, according to Variety.

No, it's not all going to fix the mask.

The article's interesting, getting more generally into how this is becoming "the new normal" for effects-heavy productions, and one Marvel executive opines that things will change when "the system breaks" - that is, when a big movie misses its release date (which evidently none of this summer's films is in danger of):

Alonso said Paramount's "Captain America" is on a shorter schedule than Marvel prefers, and "We are feeling the heat for it." On Par's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," at least one vfx studio has gone to seven-day weeks, 12 hours a day, and canceled the Easter Sunday holiday for its vfx artists.

"Green Lantern" fell under heightened scrutiny after an early trailer showed little in the way of vfx. Fans grumbled, but that was a calculated risk by WB: Rather than rush some shots for marketing (a common practice), the studio held back the vfx for the second trailer. That gamble seems to have paid off, as footage shown at WonderCon and Cinemacon was well received, and buzz is building.

That last sentence should probably be more like "That gamble didn't entirely sink the ship."

...management practices are still catching up to the reality of tentpole production, where effects have to be built before the picture is tested, then vfx have to be added and/or changed as the picture comes together and in response to audience testing, all while marketing demands shots for the campaign.

All of Hollywood seems to be still figuring this out, and as a result, the tentpole pattern is now well established:

• A movie demands you've-never-seen-this-before visual effects both for marketing and story;

•Ambitious plans and a short schedule leave little margin for error;

•Inevitable schedule problems trigger urgent meetings among studio execs, vendors and filmmakers to get the project back on track;

•"911" emergency calls go out to almost any vfx shop in the world that can take on some last-minute work;

•Everyone runs a harrowing race to deadline despite all the extra help.

Collapse, rest, repeat.

With summer and holiday release skeds already crowded and so many tie-ins for these pics, it's unlikely a studio would let a movie actually miss its date. But the alternative may well be a picture coming to release with far less spectacle than the filmmakers and studio had planned upon simply because there wasn't time or resources to finish it. That is essentially what happened with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 1" when it couldn't be converted to 3D in time for its theatrical bow.
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Over the next year, films that will be angling to avoid a last-minute crunch will include Warner's "Superman: Man of Steel," Disney-Marvel's "The Avengers," Warner's "The Dark Knight Rises" and Sony's "The Amazing Spider-Man." Beyond that, Weta Digital will certainly have its hands full with Warner-New Line's "The Hobbit," in 3D at 48 fps.

All of these movies aim to give audiences something they've never seen before, and as de Faria said, "When the bar is raised, we can't refuse to jump over it." So the movies are bound to get more complex, especially with higher frame rates and 3D, and this pressurized process isn't likely to change.

The whole article is well worth reading for its take on the state of the industry where these kinds of films are concerned.

Also, new character posters for Sinestro and Kilowog:

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/Wolvie09/news/?a=35953

 

[Admiral_Young]

Sinestro is going to be awesome. Kilowog I've warmed up to design wise.

 

[JD]

Very cool posters.

 

[Myasishchev]

I've been reading GL since they started publishing Hal Jordan in Showcase.

If nitpicking like "the explosion color violates GL continuity" is what fans are gonna do with this film, that'll be lamer than trekkie canon whining.

Choice of color is not a tangential thing when you're dealing with artwork, unless you've got no taste or you've got no cones.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Choice of color is not a tangential thing when you're dealing with artwork, unless you've got no taste or you've got no cones.

And choice of color works differently and represents different things in different media. The only real reason for expecting these people to carry over every convention and trope from four color comics that were published on pulp paper would be a lack of taste and imagination.

Dick Tracy was somewhat interesting, but I don't need to see that in many movies, thank you very much.

You know, I wonder if the preponderance of green in this film is not itself a subliminally negative factor in it doing big business. You see more green in packaging than you did thirty years ago, of course. Still...how do people respond to lots of bright green, in media marketing terms? How often do you see it predominate in advertising campaigns? This could cut either way, I suppose - the ads for GL certainly stand out and are probably attention-getting on the basis of color alone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco[/yt]

 

[Myasishchev]

Choice of color is not a tangential thing when you're dealing with artwork, unless you've got no taste or you've got no cones.

And choice of color works differently and represents different things in different media. The only real reason for expecting these people to carry over every convention and trope from four color comics that were published on pulp paper would be a lack of taste and imagination.

Dick Tracy was somewhat interesting, but I don't need to see that in many movies, thank you very much.

You know, I wonder if the preponderance of green in this film is not itself a subliminally negative factor in it doing big business. You see more green in packaging than you did thirty years ago, of course. Still...how do people respond to lots of bright green, in media marketing terms? How often do you see it predominate in advertising campaigns? This could cut either way, I suppose - the ads for GL certainly stand out and are probably attention-getting on the basis of color alone.

A valid question--although the Matrix did all right, with its green-heavy palette. Granted, GL is going to have as much green in two minutes as the Matrix had in two hours. Iirc, human vision is most sensitive to green light, but I don't know if that would be a good thing or bad thing.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

If nothing else, we're probably somewhat protected from the supposed curse of amber-and-teal color correction on this one.