Green Lantern (2011)

[Lieut. Arex]

There are a bunch of supposed spoilers up over at Super Hero Hype. Some of these seem a bit much of a muchness, so I'm dubious. Nonetheless, here we go:

Spoiler: Green Lantern

• The Star Sapphire crystal will appear.
• There's a reference to "the prophecy" in the Book of Oa. Probably refering to the war between the Green Lantern Corps and the Sinestro Corps.
• The ring speaks. When Hal first uses it, it says "Voice signature identified. Willpower registed. Ring online."
• Kilowog's power ring makes a cannon-like "BOOM" sound, like in the comic books.
• Hal's constructs include a gattling gun, a giant green hand, a dune buggy, an anti-aircraft gun, a F-18 jet, a sword, giant pulleys and much more.
• Sinestro's trademark weapon is a double-edged Korugarian spear. He also makes a construct of Kilowog at one point.
• The Guardians live in high towers near the Great Hall of Oa. Krona's tower is slightly toppled as a sign of his corruption at Parallax's hands.
• During a battle scene, Hal's and Sinestro's power ring run out of energy, and Sinestro tells Hal to summon his battery from the pocket dimension. Hal says he doesn't know how to do it, and Sinestro asks him if Kilowog never taught him that. Hal says no and Sinestro gruffs before him and Hal unite their rings, opening a small wormhole from where Sinestro pulls his battery. Him and Hal both recharge on it. This is taken almost word-by-word from Geoff Johns' "Secret Origin.
• During the final battle, Parallax tries to possess Hal, but fails. In the process, Hal has a vision of the future, where Coast City has been destroyed and he is the one to blame.
• Hector Hammond tries to steal Hal Jordan's power ring, believing that it can cure his mutation, just as Parallax arrives. It consumes Hammond and tries to use the ring's energy, but fails and then tries to use Hal as a weapon to tap into the nearly unlimited powers of the Green Light of Willpower.

Think they are all just making stuff up from Secret Origins.

At a quick glance, and not a GL reader, it comes across like a comic fan's idea of cool stuff to happen rather than ideas for a film's plot or ideas for following films. Certainly nothing a general audience person would go wow over.

At least three of the points (1,2,9) set up events for following films. They are pulling plot threads from the current Johns run on the book, specifically Secret Origin, Sinestro Corps War, and Blackest Night. I dimly recall reading the producers have a 3-film arc in mind and those bits are small building blocks for GL2 & 3.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The stuff foreshadowing Sinestro makes sense, obviously.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

New TV spots:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ57VvytePY[/yt]

I gotta say Lively's growing on me (yeah, not on the luckiest day of my life) - I like her delivery, even if she seems to have wandered in from a Whedon show.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9kXSptzU6o[/yt]

Sinestro rules.

 

[JD]

Ok, it's been driving me crazy. Do we know yet, whether or not Sinestro goes bad by the end of the movie? I'd pretty much been assuming all along that he would, but the more I hear the more it sounds like the only bad guys will be Parallax and Hammond.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Spoiler: More than one spoiler about Sinestro

He does not go bad. However, there's reportedly a subplot about the Guardians creating a yellow ring which they are prepared to give to "the greatest of the Green Lanterns" (as Sinestro is customarily referred to) as a kind of ultimate weapon against Parallax. The ring is never used, but put away at the end by the blue boys against some future need.

 

[JD]

Hmmm, interesting.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Fact or rumor?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Most of that won't be known one way or the other until the movie comes out.

The answer to JD's question, though, is known.

 

[Captain Craig]

So I've seen the newest trailer that has a few more new nuggets.

Anyone else but me think the Guardians are just a pale enough shade of blue that they look almost Talosian? And why do they appear to have clear dome over part of their head? Don't recall that look from the comic. Unfinished cgi perhaps? It's not wisps of hair.

The foreshadowing to the Sinestro Corps was one of the new nuggets.

Michael Clark Duncan's voice is going to go a long way towards helping the character. I liked what I heard there.

Still not sure how audiences are going to handle it. I think I'm likely to enjoy it but there is still time to do some final cgi tweaks.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I have no idea how this is going to be received, but I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it. It looks great.

New trailer is available here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/greenlantern/

And here:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1810166777/info

 

[Hyperspace05]

It certainly looks EPIC, which is nice... I'm sold, but I do wonder how it will be received by the general public.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9dR8h0830Q[/yt]

 

[Unicron]

GL's rings have done some inconsistent things over the decades, to put it mildly. I don't know what the current versions are supposed to be capable of.

At one point in the 1980s they were saying that the rings were capable of anything, limited only by the willpower and imagination of the wielder. As one example, when John Stewart challenged Katma Tui as to why he shouldn't use his ring to simply wipe out racism and bigotry on Earth she responded that since she didn't know what the side effects of changing the personalities of five or six billion people would be that's not something that she would attempt.

Hence the use of yellow weaksauce. I always tended to think that the "anything" part was more suited to creating stuff with a ring rather than attempting to alter the will of others. Sinestro would be a less interesting villain IMO if he'd had that option on Korugar.

More recently we've seen that Lanterns who can sufficiently overcome fear can overcome the "yellow limitation" as well.

True, though the antagonist in Brightest Day/War of the Green Lanterns has gotten around that little flaw. I'm debating whether it might be worth getting those collections eventually, but I'm still undecided.

 

[Captain Mike]

OH YESS!!!! Definitely going to the cinema(s) for this one!...
I am so excited about this film....

 

[Captain Mike]

Anyone else but me think the Guardians are just a pale enough shade of blue that they look almost Talosian? And why do they appear to have clear dome over part of their head? Don't recall that look from the comic. Unfinished cgi perhaps? .

I always looked at the Gaurdians as being dark blue but perhaps that color was not working directly and for the CGI? As for the "bubble"...maybe it is suppossed to distinguish the MENTAL powers that they are known to have like in supposedly channeling the Central Battery?

 

[Lieut. Arex]

The more I see, the more I like. June can't come soon enough.

Edit: Rewatching the trailer, I just realized Abin Sur's hands are short one finger.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

More recently we've seen that Lanterns who can sufficiently overcome fear can overcome the "yellow limitation" as well.

True, though the antagonist in Brightest Day/War of the Green Lanterns has gotten around that little flaw. I'm debating whether it might be worth getting those collections eventually, but I'm still undecided.

There's a great moment in Johns' Secret Origin GL story concerning the yellow weakness

Spoiler: Hal and yellow

Newbie Jordan challenges the Guardians saying "you're afraid of us" because of what happened with the Manhunters, and he notes that it's a remarkable coincidence that all the buildings on Oa are...yellow.

 

[Unicron]

Yeah, that's an amusing scene. Especially when Sinestro ultimately agrees with Hal.

 

[JD]

I cannot wait for this movie. Do you guys think it would be a good idea to read Secret Origin before, or after the movie?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'd read it beforehand - but I'm inclined to say that because I have read it, and watching this trailer with that as context makes the various bits and pieces more exciting to me.

The evolution of GL's continuity over time has been one which has improved it immensely; Geoff Johns' version is the best to date, I think. I don't think Sinestro has ever become a complex villain, but he's become a plausibly motivated personality - one can empathize with him to some degree, without sympathizing.

A Guardian of the Universe (species Smurphodon Omniscientia)

Hal Motherfucking Jordan