I finally saw Grenn Lantern, not as bad as I expected.

[Phoenicianknight]

So, we have free HBO and Stars until 02/28/2013, and my sons and I finally watch the Green Lantern Movie. It was not as bad as everyone stated.

Ryan as Hal Jordan was almost believable, I mean the guy is a hot jock fighter pilot (didn't anyone see Top Gun?).

The story line was a little weak, but it is about a superhero not named Bruce or Clark (Or Peter Parker) for that mater. So, they had to have some back story. Which I had to explain to me son (14 yer old).

On a side not, HBO providing us with free services for two months, on the hope that I will keep it is actually to back fire. I wanted to stop the movie to explain stuff to my boy, but remembered this wasn't net flex or even a DVD I could "rewind", man that was frustrating. I couldn't even pause it to get a Dr. Pepper, or go to the bathroom. Man after having net flex, watching movies on HBO just sucks.

Back to the original premise, I thought the movie could have been better, but over all was a decent movie. Ryan could pull off being in the JLA movie, just not one of the big three stars (Batman, Superman and of couser not wonderwoman). Meaning the movie would have to center around those three, and everyone else would be 2nd stringers.

 

[propita]

When we get freebie movie channels, we dvr some of the movies. I did that with a few regular tv shows, then transferred to laptop and on to iMac. Bad part? Evidently no way to transfer to laptop at anything but original playtime speed.

 

[MacLeod]

^You might have thought it wasn't as bad as expected, due to low expectations going in to it.

 

[Phoenicianknight]

True, I had not thought of that.

 

[Yoda]

Yeah, I try to avoid people's opinions before seeing stuff these days. Partly to avoid spoilers, and partly as to not color my expectations. Movie watching for me is a more interesting experience if I know as little as possible about a film before viewing.

I don't get HBO, but that sort of experience actually makes me miss it a little bit. Back in the day before on-screen guides and instant streaming sometimes I'd just be flipping by, see the MGM, Paramount, or Columbia logo and just give whatever came after a try. If you'd forget to look up the title after the fact you might not even know what the movie was called

 

[FPAlpha]

Green Lantern was just mediocre like so many big budget blockbusters.

The script was weak which in all fairness is hard to do for an origins movie.. about the only good ones that come to mind immediately are Iron Man and Batman Begins (and maybe Spiderman).

The much touted digitally rendered costume was just bad and i ask myself why at all? What's wrong with a good fabric one (that you may spice up with some digital effects)? It looked like cheap rubber and the mask (when he had it on) was just laughable.

The villain was really uninteresting.. maybe in the comics (i didn't read GL though know about major things) Parallax is a more interesting villain but in the movie it felt not as threatening.

We get a short battle sequence where Lanterns fight Parallax and are beaten but it lacks perspective. How strong are Lanterns? It is said there are limited basically only by their willpower but it would have been good to use some of the time of the movie to actually build a up a reputation for the Lanterns, let us see why and how they are the most powerful organization in the universe before they get mauled.

Then we have the standard romantic subplot, the usual array of supporting characters etc.. nothing in this movie was truly original, inspiring or even interesting.

So it became mediocre.. apart from some good SFX scenes and some funny one liners the whole movie fell flat and short of expectations and that's bad for a movie that should have been the kickstarter for the DC movie universe (in the same vein that Iron Man was the kickstarter for the Marvel universe only that Iron Man succeeded).

 

[Mr Light]

Amanda Waller is supposed to be fat, dammit! You don't see them making her thin in the comics, do ya!!!

(irony intended)

 

[Shazam!]

Everything in space with Green Lanterns and aliens and monsters was great. Everything on Earth was shit.

EVERYONE had daddy issues. Hal's dad died, Carol's dad was her boss, Hector hated his dad.. even Sinestro was frustrated with the Guardians (the 'fathers' of the GL corps).

Stop with the bullshit melodrama.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think the Green Lantern: The Animated Series on Cartoon Network was much better than the movie.

 

[Tulin]

The copy we downloaded stopped about halfway through on the AVI player I had.

When this has happened in the past we'd just go in the study and finish watching on the computer.

This film was SO SHIT we just said, "Great - don't have to endure that to the end now!"

I have since bought a BR player so that doesn't happen much anymore.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Amanda Waller is supposed to be fat, dammit! You don't see them making her thin in the comics, do ya!!!

(irony intended)

Irony noted.

Some supervillain killer tracked nuAmanda down to her aunt/mothers house who looked exactly classic Amanda Waller... It's possible that there are too "Walls" who worked government black ops, one now and one in the 80s when it was interesting, because Waller senior had a safe-room full of guns in her house.

Maybe the older Wall will come out of retirement and show this slim kid how the job is really done?

The Giffen Suicide Squad from ten years ago (Which was fantastic.) had Amanda Wallers daughter as an operative/handler on the Squad, who looks just about like how the nu Amanda does now.

 

[Mr Light]

^^

That really happened, Guy? They showed an older fatter Waller in the new comic?

 

[Christopher]

Green Lantern was just mediocre like so many big budget blockbusters.

For me, GL wasn't a bad movie at all; it was flawed, but reasonably entertaining. It just had the bad fortune to come out in the same year as three really brilliant superhero movies, Thor, Captain America, and X-Men First Class, so it felt inadequate by contrast. If a film with this same story (though obviously less advanced VFX) had come out earlier in the decade, at a time when we had some good movies like the first two X-Men or Spidey films and Batman Begins but also a lot of weak ones like Catwoman and Elektra and Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider, I think it would've been regarded as one of the better superhero films. It's just that the bar has been raised so much in the past few years.

 

[Guy Gardener]

^^

That really happened, Guy? They showed an older fatter Waller in the new comic?

A close relative of the woman we know as Amanda Waller.

(Grumble, grumble grumble.)

The last page of issue #12 has (you made me look it up) has young fit hot Amanda coming to the family home to see her "Nana" only to find that there's a ninja with a knife to her tubby grandmother's throat.

Don't know grams name, but it might also be Amander Waller.

 

[Dream]

What the HELL is "Grenn Lantern"?

 

[Dantheman]

Personally, I thought Sinestro should've been the only villain in the movie, with a sequel hook hinting at Parallax or the Sinestro Corps. It seemed like having both Hector Hammond and Parallax in the film was Geoff Johns using his position as both the Green Lantern comics writer and a high muckety-muck at DC Entertainment to influence things, and not in a good way.

 

[Icemizer]

Had they edited out more of the overly comedic moments I thought it would have been a much stronger movie. As it was the movie suffered from bad villain syndrome. Fighting a giant evil cloud is a tough sell. Now had the cloud fully taken over Hammond and given us a giant one on one battle that might have improved things as well.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The ring is supposed to find someone without fear.

It chose a choking pussy.

Paralax is supposed to be Hal Jordan gone insane killing all his friends (Geoff Johns can go fuck himself.).

They turned Crazy Hal into space AIDS where there's no sense of victory or accomplishment in defeating a single outbreak of space AIDS, because out in space it's EVERYWHERE still growing!

Carrol Ferris is supposed to be a Supervillianess in hot pink skin tight lycra trying to sleep with and murder Hal Jordan at the same time.

They cast a tiny bony blonde dim child who can only act with her hair.

 

[Christopher]

As it was the movie suffered from bad villain syndrome. Fighting a giant evil cloud is a tough sell. Now had the cloud fully taken over Hammond and given us a giant one on one battle that might have improved things as well.

It wasn't the nature of the villains I found disappointing, but the nature of the heroism. They'd have the villain, whether Hammond or Parallax, spend over a minute endangering or killing large numbers of people, and then Hal would belatedly fly in and protect just one or two people. The scale of the heroism was too small. The fun part of superhero stories is watching the heroes save people and make a difference. That's the whole wish-fulfillment quality that makes heroes appealing in the first place, the idea that they can protect us and keep us safe. That's one thing The Avengers got right -- even in the midst of a huge battle against alien monsters, Whedon never lost sight of the heroes' priority to protect civilians and get them out of harm's way.

The ring is supposed to find someone without fear.

That's an outdated interpretation, and frankly a rather silly one, since no rational being would be devoid of the capacity for fear. The modern take, ever since the Emerald Dawn miniseries from 1989, is that the rings choose people who have the capacity to overcome fear. Here's an article about the evolution of the concept.

Paralax is supposed to be Hal Jordan gone insane killing all his friends

Sure, and Ra's al Ghul isn't "supposed to be" Batman's mentor, and the Joker isn't "supposed to be" an anarchist wearing clown makeup, and Tony Stark wasn't "supposed to" reveal his identity to the world right at the start of his career, and Heimdall isn't "supposed to" look like Idris Elba. There is no "supposed to." It's not wrong for an adaptation to do things differently than the source material. In fact, it's the whole point of an adaptation. If you want something exactly like the original, just read the original. Doing an exact copy would be redundant and pointless. The thing that makes adaptations worth doing is that they add something new, find a fresh angle on old ideas. Sometimes it doesn't work, but sometimes it works brilliantly. Sometimes it even works better than the original version.

Hell, the whole problem with the Green Lantern movie was that it was too faithful to the source, threw in too many threads of comics continuity that had accumulated over the decades and thus made the movie unnecessarily cluttered.

 

[Mr Light]

How does one act with one's hair?