Hmm. I didn't rush to see Green Lantern when it first came out. The reviews weren't particularly hot so it didn't look like a must-see ticket. But it was on at the conveniently-placed Stephen Joseph Theatre (that's its full name - the Conveniently-Placed Stephen Joseph Theatre. Named in honour of Conveniently-Placed Stephen Joseph. Brother of Wrongly-Accused Roger Joseph. I'll stop now) so I called my homie, No1 son, and we checked it out. This was the fourth of this year's comic book movies that we had both seen - we'd caught our 3rd, Captain America on Sunday. On the way home we compared notes and ranked the fillums.
Green Lantern
We both agree that this was the least successful of the bunch. For optimum results we saw it with a group of German students - I was this close to calling out 'nicht sprachen!' but I wasn't sure if that was correct and they shut up when the film got going anyhow.
We'd read some 60s GL comics in the big black and white Showcase reprints, so we were familiar with the character. One of the issues has a brilliant cover that always gets a laugh when we quote it to each other:
Ah, 'you crazy fool!' So we were well up for that sort of nonsense. But the whole film seems to be a lot of unconnected stuff happening. The bits where he creates 'constructs' with his ring (Green Lantern's schtick is that whatever he can imagine, his ring can create: shields, chains, fists, even a giant version of a Matchbox car race track) look amazing, and an early 'dogfight' sequence featuring fighter jets is exciting. But we go from one scene to another, with aliens and backstory and this and that introduced with little sense of how it all links together. Everything is chucked in. I wondered if this would have benefitted from a Batman Begins approach where only the bones of the character and his world are established in the first film (this film is clearly designed to be the first in a franchise. Whether that happens now after its lukewarm reception is another thing, but I think a bit more confidence in the long game might've paid off) with more time spent on establishing them. Instead we discover that there are 3600 Green Lanterns that operate as a sort of galactic police force, and we touch on some of their history. None of this serves the story particularly well - it's interesting background but it's all a bit 'told' and not 'shown'. Imagine that as a cliff hanger instead - Hal Jordan, the hero of the film, thinks he's the one and only Green Lantern. Then there's some interstellar emergency and he suddenly discovers that rather than being unique he's one of thousands wearing one of these powerful rings. I don't know, easy to throw ideas like that around, much less easy to put them into practice. Just thought there was a lot in this film but not much was done with it.
Time has run away with us again folks. Going to wrap this up for tonight - more thoughts on some of the other comic book films of 2011 tomorrow. Cheers.
More soonliest.
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