@@@ GREEN LANTERN Movie @@@@@@ Roundtable Review! @@@
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): So GREEN LANTERN is in theaters. Going into this one, what were you expecting?BAYTOR: I was expecting a big budget mediocrity on par with TERMINATOR: SALVATION and TRANSFORMERS 2.
KLETUS CASADAY (KLETUS): These are the things i wasn't sure about going in: 1. Is Ryan Reynolds actually playing a character other than himself? 2. That mask...ugh...that mask. 3. How much effin’ CGI is going to be in this movie? 4. Is Parallax really a cloud??!? Other than that i expected Mark Strong to be badass and Blake Lively to be pretty wooden...didn't expect much out of Hector Hammond. I actually was trying hard to be optimistic going in because the trailers didn't excite me at all...
MATT ADLER (MATT): Yeah, I'm rarely a fan of movies with multiple primary villains, so I felt Hammond was superfluous here. And though I think he did as good a job as possible, Ryan Reynolds still isn't who I envision as Hal Jordan; he captured the womanizing, Rat Pack aspects of the character, but I think of Hal as having a more commanding presence along the lines of Brad Pitt, Mel Gibson, Matt Damon. Mark Strong as Sinestro was pitch perfect.
BUG: Well, I doubt Pitt would do such a film. And Gibson’s just too old and loony these days. I’d have rather seen Dennis Quaid if they were going for the older Hal. Hell, since they wanted to go the whole TOP GUN route, Tom Cruise would have been an interesting choice. That said, I think Reynolds just didn’t feel like Hal. Someone more serious like a Ryan Gosling would have been perfect.
LYZARD: First time I saw a photo and the first trailer I was nervous. The next few trailers began to impress me, but then I started reading headlines for reviews and knew my first gut response was correct.
BUG: I purposefully avoided the reviews and I’d seen enough in the trailers to spoil the movie. I hate that I practically knew what the film was simply because I’d seen so much in the trailers. This is the reason why I’m avoiding all CAPTAIN AMERICA trailers.
LYZARD: What I liked? Not much actually. The best one-liners were in the beginning and quickly faded out. I did enjoy the scene where we found out that the Green Lantern has the worst superhero disguise; that moment was a lot of fun.MATT: That was cute, but it did remove a lot of the dramatic tension between him and Carol that existed in the comics. How can she give him a hard time over being irresponsible if she knows he's out saving the galaxy? However, I feel like they didn't give a good enough explanation for the mask; why do Green Lanterns (not Hal specifically) need to hide their identity anyway? Tomar-Re seemed to act like it was taken for granted.
BUG: A lot was taken for granted or explained in throwaway lines. It worked in X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, but not so much here. Not sure why. Maybe it’s all in the way the actor gives the line and how convincing it is. The line coming from James McAvoy or Michael Fassbender sounded much more convincing than when Reynolds did it.
BAYTOR: I liked mostly the Parallax stuff. While I think the design is pretty boring and it reminds me of The Mummy, the opening sequence, Sinestro's attack on it, and Hal's all-too-easy victory were all cool scenes.
LYZARD: I didn’t like most of the film, from the special effects to the casting. I mean, who can believe Blake Lively as a pilot and potential businesswoman? Ryan Reynolds was all right, not as bad as I thought he’d be. Seeing Angela Basset was random.
MATT: It looks like they're setting up Amanda Waller to play the same role that Nick Fury does in the Marvel movies, which I guess makes sense from a franchise perspective.
LYZARD: For the most part the movie was forgettable. I mean, I can’t even hum any part of the soundtrack and I saw the movie less than an hour ago.
BUG: At least the Foo Fighters didn’t sing a song in this one like that awful track they lent to THOR.BAYTOR: I disliked the endless existential crisis of Hal Jordan. While Thor and Iron Man had to overcome their faults to become better men, part of what made them interesting was they were mostly unaware of those faults. Hal spends far too much of the movie brooding over the death of his father, his failed relationship with Carol Ferris, and is far too reluctant to take on the responsibility of the ring.
BUG: You hit the nail on the head there. I think that says more about the story than the actor involved. Reynolds has made a career of being a cocky wiseass. Here as soon as he gets the ring, he loses all of the smarm established in the first few minutes. Had Hal been an self centered idiot for the bulk of the film, I think it would have been a stronger character development at the end.
BAYTOR: The earthbound adventure is also pretty non-existent, with Hector Hammond being the least menacing supervillain I've seen in a superhero movie. He's vaguely creepy, but ultimately completely unimportant.
OPTIMOUS DOUCHE (DOUCHE): Early reviews had me more frightened than Mogo meeting Galactus. I was worried about the heavy use of CGI--will this just be a video game I can’t play? I was worried that Blake Lively simply doesn’t have the cajones to play Carol Ferris, much the same way that Kate Bosworth was too demure to play Lois Lane. I was worried that the one guy who made Green Lantern cool again, Geoff Johns, had nothing really to do with the script.
MATT: To me, it played out in the opposite to my X-MEN: FIRST CLASS experience; whereas that had gotten a ton of positive reviews and I was disappointed, GREEN LANTERN was a pleasant relief. I'm still struggling with what brought out all the hate in the critics; I think at least some of it must have to do with the fact that the movie is very heavy on the comic elements, so if you're not immersed in that stuff, it may come across as ponderous. I gave my fiancée the big black-and-white compendium of early GL stories to read before the film.
BUG: Nothing says I love you like a big black and white compendium of early GL stories.
MATT: She really got into the soap opera aspects of it (she loves the way Carol Ferris was portrayed in those stories). But she wasn't as enamored with the film version of Carol and found the backstory about Parallax and the yellow energy of fear confusing. So I think that comics fan/non-comics fan divide must have something to do with it. But then again, some comic fans seem to hate it too. I can only say I found a lot to enjoy, from the humor, to the faithfulness to the comics, to some of the more exciting action scenes; I actually got a chill when Parallax is bearing down on Hal, and Hal uses the Oath to summon the willpower to beat him back.
KLETUS: My lady wasn't too happy with Carol Ferris either; she really gets annoyed when someone who can't act gets a part like this because they're attractive and in her opinion that seemed to be the case here. I just feel like no one was pushed in the movie to do better; it seemed like every scene was done in one take and I can't help having this vision of Martin Campbell in a lounge chair, chilling, drinking a alcoholic beverage out of a pineapple, yelling, "yeah, whatever...cut...action...you figure it out!"VROOM SOCKO (VROOM): I didn't really have any expectations going in, other than this was a GREEN LANTERN movie, I wanted to see it, and I hoped it would be good. It wasn't good. So many things just went nowhere. The movie makes a big deal of introducing Hal's family, then they don't show up again.
BUG: Yeah, I forgot to mention that in my review. All of this stuff that happens in the first fifteen minutes never gets a payoff. Maybe some of it gets left of the cutting room floor, but I think they really missed the boat by not having the kid come back at the end. Something like that is a not-so-subtle way of getting a kid audience involved. Here, worried kid goes out to his lame party and he could have fallen off the face of the earth for all we know. Hal missing another family get-together and then showing up at the kid’s window would have shown how the public reacted to GL in Coast City. We got none of that. The public was fodder to scream and run away from the yellow cloud. And maybe the occasional expository news report. Nothing else.
JOHNNY DESTRUCTO (JD): I was actually really impressed that the filmmakers included Hal's family, when they very easily could have been ignored. I liked that they went into the fact that this character is self-destructive despite all the people who care for him and worry about him.
KLETUS: I agree the stuff with his brothers was one of the better parts of the movie and I felt that was where Ryan Reynolds showed us his best Hal Jordan.
VROOM: The movie makes a big deal of the ring needing to recharge, and then it doesn't show up again.
BUG: Again, another weakness. Why give the ring a limitation like that and not use it in the story? Kind of like taking away the cool struggle of having organic webshooters on Spidey. You totally scrap the cool tension that there’s a limited supply of web fluid in the mechanical ones. It’s a conflict for the hero that is much more compelling than if GOSSIP GIRL can recognize Hal through his mask.
JD: And I disagree about them not doing anything with the ring recharging...I thought there was a pretty amusing bit that happens just before the scene in the commercial where he suits up in front of his buddy.VROOM: Too much of the film was spent on the romance angle, which was hampered by the fact that Blake Lively cannot act. And the movie as a whole was just too predictable. The thing is, while it's not a particularly good movie, it is a fun as hell movie. The stuff on Oa was fun, though short. The cheekbones bit was fun. Peter Sarsgaard inhaling, the impromptu Hot Wheels track, Hammond's classroom, all of that stuff was fun.
JD: The film did feel a little rushed, I'll agree with that. I wouldn't have minded a longer running time to get some more Oa in there.
KLETUS: The movie definitely seemed rushed, we didn't really spend enough time with anyone to be invested or attached to anyone's story. The movie felt very clunky. The stuff on Oa was fun but I thought the CGI was really bad; the part where Hal is flying for the first time and him and Tomar Re are flying toward the screen...wow...shit looked really bad.
BUG: I actually dug that scene. It looked alien. They missed the scope needed for it to be an epic scene, but it wasn’t horrible. To me if felt like someone who loves to fly, but had to rely on machines to do it, was feeling exasperated being able to fly himself.
VROOM: Could they have made a better movie than this? Hell yes. But they did make a fun movie, one that I'll definitely see again at some point. This movie is comparable to stuff like GRANDMA'S BOY, REMO WILLIAMS, or OCTOPUSSY: not a good film by any reasonable estimation, in fact it's a mess. But I'll be damned if it's not a fun, rewatchable mess.
BUG: Boy, that’s some prestigious company you lump the film in with.
DOUCHE: It was fun because everybody tried their best. The biggest problem was the script. They tried to stuff in too damn much. Hammond, though great, was totally unnecessary...and Parallax, though marginal, was totally unnecessary. Personally I would have just done Hammond. Shouldn't have tried to shoehorn in 5 years of new mythology at once.
KLETUS: Yeah, they should have kept it simple for this one and expanded into more with the next one. I think Parallax as a cloud thingy was lazy. I thought it would have been cool if the scene on earth where Parallax makes contact would have been cooler if they did it like GHOSTBUSTERS (when the ghosts are being released) where people are just seeing these crazy ass visions causing them intense fear. It WAS cool when he had to recite the oath to fight back Parallax though...i just wish the entire movie had that feel.BUG: The script was bass-ackwards and you’re right, it’s because of having to cram too much into one script. Parallax would have been a better extension of the Sinestro character, but then we would never have gotten Sinestro in the Corps. So by having Parallax come first, it seems like jumping the gun. Though there’s no guarantee that there’s going to be a second when you’re making a first film, that doesn’t mean you just shove everything into the film with no rhyme or reason. If they would have tied Sinestro’s story to Hal’s instead of Hammond it might have worked if they really wanted to add as much Oa as they did. Seeing Sinestro fray at the edges while Hal hones his power is a strong story. OR have it all be Earth based with teases of Oa for a future film with the revelation that Hal was not alone to occur at the very end, which would pull the camera back to reveal this expansive tapestry.
JD: I also think there should have been more OA and more Corps scenes and less Earth. As much as we all make fun of montages, I think that Hal should have spent more time training in Oa, getting his ass beat and figuring out the ring's potential.
MATT: I don't think more training scenes would have improved the movie, but we really didn't get any good scenes of the Corps fighting alongside each other, which was a disappointment.
JD: This is dating me, but I think it could have followed the path of THE LAST STARFIGHTER's hero. He gets whisked away from Earth, meets all sorts of different alien characters, fights a great battle and returns home at the end to deal with the people in his life and to put the things he'd learned into practice as the planet's new protector.
KLETUS: Yeah, THE LAST STARFIGHTER would have been a great movie for them to reference. They definitely took some scenes from other movies but couldn't actually do them as well. The part where he flies high in the atmosphere to shut down the planes...totally ripped from IRON MAN which is fine but it wasn't done half as well. The freaking out in the plane because of a past tragedy...definitely TOP GUN-esque but again they just couldn't pull it off, the flashback looked sooo cheesy and that coupled with the acting...it was just bad. Montages work great; sometimes they can get silly but i think they work. This movie could have used a montage and a scene where the Corps is teaching him about the influence of fear and its effect on the ring...JD: I liked a great deal about this film. Ryan Reynolds was a spot on Hal, Sarsgaard played Hammond with an unexpected sassy glee, Kilowog, Tomar-Re and Sinestro were as perfect as they could be and the GL green constructs were bad-ass! I was along for the ride as Hal wrestled with his fear and whether or not he was meant to wield the ring. I liked that for all his swagger, he was still the scared little kid that watched his father get 'sploded.
KLETUS: I'm sorry but i don't think anything about this movie was spot on, Reynolds definitely could have killed this role but a lot of things about this film were just lacking and half ass. I went into this movie with a glimmer of hope that this movie could really surprise me despite all the negative reaction (which i don't give a damn about) but it didn't. I wanted to like it but damn near every problem i thought i would have with the movie was manifested on screen. Hal was too goofy; the cocky asshole Hal showed up from time to time but I don't think Reynolds really pushed himself to be a different character than what he usually plays which is a wisecracking smartass, the way he played this role makes me feel he would have done waaay better as THE FLASH.
BUG: Agreed. Reynolds as Flash fits much better.
MATT: I actually think they could have done a better job of communicating the theme of "fear vs. willpower"; we were told a lot about Hal's fear, by Hal himself often, but maybe Reynolds didn't have the acting chops to communicate it through his body language/tone.
JD: Giant yellow dirty-hippie dreadlock monster Parallax could have been better. Blake Lively shouldn't exist in front of a camera. That's not to say that she was as bad as January Jones. I feel like Lively was actually TRYING to act, but just couldn't get there emotionally, whereas JanJones just sort of coma'd her way through FIRST CLASS.ROCK-ME AMODEO (ROCK-ME): I can’t add much to what’s been said, so I won’t try. I just got back from seeing it with my daughter and nephews, ages 12-18, with varying degrees of pre-knowledge. Actually, my 12 year old daughter was the kid most familiar with the GL character (go figure!), but with John Stewart wearing the mask. In any event, they all thought it was great. As for me, I kind of expected it to suck, and found it to be quite above the level of suckage, so I was happy. I’m actually glad they cut out the obligatory “oh my gosh, I can’t fly, ouch I hit a building” crap we’ve seen a dozen times or more. One thing I have to point out, full disclosure: I watched most of the movie fairly detached, enjoying the special effects, the occasional one-liner, and temporarily inured against bad female acting (thank you, January Jones.) But when Hal was reciting his oath, toward the end, I felt something weird going on with my arms and legs. I smacked my forearms. “Stop. Stop that!” But holy crap, there they were. Fricking goosebumps. What can I say? There they were.
JD: I agree! I remember seeing him yelling that in the trailer and wondering WHY. Why is he just screaming his oath?? But him focusing on the oath in order to pump himself up while the evil yellow cloud was trying to mentally break him down was pretty awesome.
DOUCHE: A sterling example of the difference between text and production. The oath, the family...it all works because it is based on years of great writing and Reynolds knew how to sell it. It's other parts of the script that were shoe-horned or completely collapsed canon where the wheels fall off.
JD: Overall, I have to say that this was a super-fun summer release. Above THOR in terms of fun, but below X-MEN: FIRST CLASS in terms of actual quality. This movie is getting terrible reviews, but it feels a bit like band-wagoning to me. DEFINITELY go see it and decide for yourselves.KLETUS: Better than THOR?...I'd put it about at X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE or X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, maybe slightly better than those...
LYZARD: Got to agree with Kletus, even mentioning THOR in the same sentence insults the Norse god. I had plenty of cringe moments (as soon as Lively took the screen).
JD: Sorry, brother, but those films don't even really exist as far as I'm concerned. They were filled with terrible, terrible acting, terrible stories, and inadvertently laughable moments that made me embarrassed to be a comic book fan.
KILETUS: Bad acting like Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds (more so than not), & Tim Robbins (and I like him)?
BUG: Robbins was awful here. I hate it when bigger actors ham it up just because they feel it’s a lesser movie. Then again, he did read the script. That said, had it been about saving eagles in Somalia or some other insane cause, I’m sure he would have tried a bit harder.
MATT: I'd like to pose a question to those who didn't like the movie; if they were to make a GREEN LANTERN 2, would you come back in the hopes that they listened and addressed the things people didn't like about this one?
KLETUS: I may be very critical and vocal about the shortcomings of this movie BUT I respect anyone involved with making the movie and appreciate the shit out of the fact that they even made a GREEN LANTERN movie but as a consumer I feel the right vocalize what i personally didn't like. With that said, I would totally go see GREEN LANTERN 2 just for the fact that it’s a GREEN LANTERN live action movie even if it looked like a green piece of crap.BUG: I’m sure a sequel will continue down Johns’ road map he;s laid out in the comics, but a more capable script and a director more confident with special effects of this magnitude.
LYZARD: I wouldn't give it a second chance, though to see Mark Strong as the villain would be a nice improvement.
BUG: The sequel would only be good if it focuses on Sinestro. That said a lot of the tension that could have happened in a sequel was squelched with that awful additional teaser footage after the initial credits. Sinestro putting on the ring at that point was a completely useless and ridiculous development.
KLETUS: Sinestro putting on the ring at the end made NO SENSE in the context of the movie.
BUG: Agreed, let's wrap this up. So for those who liked the movie and want more or for those who didn't and want to see it done right, what comics do you guys recommend?JD: The first whole story that got me to love Green Lantern was GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD DAWN! I absolutely loved it and besides all the brilliant Geoff Johns stuff of recent years, this is the first thing I would recommend.
DOUCHE: The movie did an admirable if not complete job of truncating GREEN LANTERN: SECRET ORIGINS for the masses. But see, here's the thing--SECRET ORIGINS was a truncating of all that came before. So while I enjoyed both the comic and the movie, at a certain point I noticed a huge diminishing return. I don't know if people should like either the movie of the comic unless they've been reading GREEN LANTERN since the ol' EMERALD DAWN days...or longer. The mind can fill in gaps that writers often leave out.
KLETUS: My favorite GL stuff from recent times would have to be GREEN LANTERN: THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR; this may not be the best jumping on point for new readers but its a great story.
MATT: As far as reading recommendations go, the only comic you really need to read for this movie is GREEN LANTERN: SECRET ORIGIN, since that's where 90% of the material comes from. Maybe GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH, too, for an explanation of the Parallax/yellow energy/fear stuff.BUG: I’d go back a bit further. GL existed before Geoff Johns came along, you know. Neal Adams’ GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW: HARD TRAVELING HEROES is a fantastic read bringing humanity and character for the first time to these somewhat cardboard cutout icons. I always loved the Hal and Ollie relationship and here’s where it all started.
If you want to really find out more about the Corps themselves, you can’t go wrong with GREEN LANTERN: MOSAIC which focuses on Black Green Lantern John Stewart, Ch’p, Mogo, and all kinds of fantastically weird aliens and adventures. Finally, GREEN LANTERN: WILLWORLD is a done in one graphic novel by J. M. Dematteis and the late great Seth Fisher that is gorgeous to look at and pretty fun to read without having to understand the phonebook of backstory Johns has added to the mythos.
KLETUS: This movie seemed to draw a huge line in the sand for those who thought it was pretty bad and those who think it was, as one of my customers (a huge GL fan) begrudgingly stated as his voice cracked, "it was a fun popcorn movie" which means they too thought it was bad but don't wanna say so.MATT ADLER: Actually, I think people usually call something a "popcorn movie" when it's a guilty pleasure they're embarrassed to admit they enjoyed! I'm not going to try to argue that it was better on a technical or movie-making level than XFC; that's not why I go to see these films anyway. But I did enjoy it more, perhaps because it was the first big screen GREEN LANTERN movie, and we got to see this cosmic character brought to life, with some cool scenes that I'm pleased to see you guys now admitting you got a thrill out of. So GL comes out on top for me, and as rough around the edges as this debut film may have been, I have faith they will improve on it for a sequel, just as they did with the X-Men franchise.
KLETUS: Which reinforces my point: if it was a good movie there would be no reason for people to be embarrassed to admit they enjoyed it, thus making no reason for it to be a guilty pleasure. I don't think the quality of a movie has anything to do with what characters are in the movie OR how many movies have been made before it. Ryan Reynolds COULD have pulled this off. All the right elements were there; good director, good lead...shit just kind of ran off the rails. I do agree with you that GL2 will be better than GL...how could it not ?BUG: And with that we’ll end our discussion and hand it over to you, noble Talkbackers to continue the back and forthings in the Talkback. Thanks for reading!
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
