Overcome Your Fear!! Go Watch Green Lantern

A lot is riding on the success of The Green Lantern opening weekend, with it being the first big Superhero film not called Superman or Batman from the WB/DCE camp and with all of the stiff competition of other solid comicbook and genre films out now.  We all heard the talks of this being the next Harry Potter-like cash-cow for Warner-- from talks with friends at the shops yesterday-- I heard that most of the "critics" reviews were sucky, while most "comic" sites were on the opposite spectrum.

So when I walked into the theatre and sat down I tried to keep expectations marginal though I am obviously one of those geeks running around in those cool muti-colored Lantern shirts...the opening trailers ended and my fears of this film being shitty started to creep in more.

If there was ever a superhero film that gave me tingles (Dark Knight doesn't count cause well he is more an anti-hero)..I have to think back to Richard Donner's Superman back in the 70's.  From John Williams' goose-bump inducing score, to the on-screen magic of Lois & Clark that played so naturally between Margot Kidder and the immortal Christopher Reeve, to just any time we saw Kal-El in flight-- making us almost feel like we can do the same-- the film was unforgettably breathtaking.

15 minutes into Green Lantern, 30 minutes and then an hour later-- I was getting Donner-like deja va and I thought to myself-- how brilliant it was for Martin Campbell and crew to use that Superman-nostalgia in how GL was filmed.  Don't read on unless you want some SPOILERS.

What makes Hal Jordan such a compelling character is he is an everyman, powerless, flawed and just as heroic with or without his power ring on.  Reynolds captured Jordan's essence to the T.

Enough time was spent in the beginning of the film to reinforce the importance of Hal's deep connection to his father.  And how he has still yet to cope with his father's loss.   This was the source of Jordan's fear that made him go Maverick into a flat-spin that ended up making him lose his plane and nearly bite the big one.  Lively as Carol Ferris was spot on showing the fire, strength and grit that many modern women can identify with but also being a tether to Hal and helping to push him to be the hero he could be.  Her use of the AI craft missiles in saving Hals' life from near annihilation at the hands of Krona/Parallax rawked.   

Another homage to the Donner Superman films was the repeated use of intimate, romantic patio scenes were Hal flew in to visit with Sapphire..err I mean Ferris.  But damn let's all hope that Lively is signed on to the trilogy so she can get some ring-slinging on as the Queen of the Star Sapphires!

Everything OA was ill!  Sure there wasn't a lot of time spent in space but enough was provided to show how truly intergalactic they could get in the films to follow.  The Guardians character designs were slick, especially how their robes were flowing down each of the thrones in their Citadel.  CG-characters like Tomar-Re, Kilowog and the like were solid but some atmospheric shots were a bit low-tech looking but that's me being a lame internet geek looking for the flaws in things.  I was really pleased with how Thomas Kalamaku was written into the story as his best friend and a prominent cog of Hal's life as a pilot.  A far departure from the rascist "Pie-Face" shit going on in the 60-70's.

Parallax attacking Coast City was one of the more haunting imagery that will stay with us for awhile making us remember how crazy things were with footage of hundreds of people running away from groundzero during 911.

Intergalactic in scale but grounded in reality.   Martin Campbell didn't do it alone though..let's not forget that his Co-Producer, Geoff Johns was once an understudy to the legendary Richard Donner.  And the groundwork of this film is largely adapted from Johns' incredible retcon reboot of GL in Rebirth that also gets shine in the first of it's kind after the end credits.

Green Lantern is Superman: The Movie reincarnated in 2011 with all the fascinating use of CG, technologies but with the timeless quality of solid acting, strong directing and so on that leads to movie-magic.

I really couldn't have been happier leaving the theatre with thoughts that Green Lantern was created as an epic film experience first but treated as a comicbook movie with equality.

Actually I am about to head out to meet with some friends now to re-watch it in 3D! 

The above deviantart will eventually be replaced by the after credits final scene that shows Mark Strong enter his destiny of being Hal's greatest enemy as leader of the Sinestro Corps.  I literally crapped my pants that they jumped right into that!

Go check it out and tell a friend to do the same! 



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big O

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Life Imitates Art- Green Lantern

Call me simple, but when it comes to being entertained I prefer being taking in by a writers prose and words, reinforced with an artists illustrations as they were imagined and intimately crafted by a small team (colorists, inker, editor, et al) that has an authenticity to it-- a signature that is easily recognizable after spending enough time with the source material-- by all of that I mean the comicbooks.

Flashback to 2004-06 when a bunch of creators you may have heard of...Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Peter Tomasi, Eddie Berganza, Dave Gibbons, Patrick Gleason, Dan DiDio, Ivan Reis and more helped to craft a world where this second string hero with a green power ring would be elevated to Batman-status.  I was sucked in around 2007-08. 

Alright so we are back to 2011, the world hasn't ended and my boxes of Green Lantern comics be it works of Gil Kane, John Broome, Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Alan Moore, Ron Marz, Doug Mahnke, Joe Prado, Tony Bedard, Fernando Pasarin and the aforementioned GL creators rivals my shelf space of all of my years of Bat-books from my childhood, so I guess that Johns and the rest of DCE would be happy with that success right?  Wrong.

So they got this movie coming out in less than a month, called Green Lantern.  The flick stars Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Blake Lively, Angela Bassett, Peter Sarsgaard and a bunch of other fine actors.  Put your hands in front of you in a 90 degree angle, palms inward and bring them down to your waist in a waving motion chanting dududuhduh (via Waynes World-- this should make you forget about all of those other GL trailers, minus the Wondercon footage)...this is the only trailer you need to see.



The introduction of the vast, intergalactic scale of the Green Lantern Corps in this trailer made me think of how any book with the GL brand has become like coffee and cigarettes in my life.  A very, very bad habit to kick.  The production budget of Green Lantern is now at around $160 million, $20 mil less than Batman Begins and about $100 mil lower than the supposed Dark Knight Rises purse.

So GL is no Bats, but with Superman and Wonder Woman equating to small/big screen failures of late-- DC and WB Entertainment obviously has a lot riding on the mainstream success of the GL brand.  For me, I am definitely sold on it being a hit not only cause I am well, vested-- but the fantastic new footage rawks and if Geoff Johns says its good, well it just is. 

In Sinestro we Trust.


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big O

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New Trailer! Green Lantern - Summer 2011

So you say that you are not so pumped after watching the ET Green Lantern teaser from last Friday huh? Well...I can't say that the sequencing and initial low-quality res did it any justice.  But after some progressive-high-temporal Apple HD treatment and well an additional 2 minutes worth of footage-- you gotta love it yeah?!

 Ryan Reynolds as a young Hal seems like a perfect fit to the testosterone, fly-boy, GL recruit that is a far contrast to the more seasoned, heroic veteran that Jordan has grown into in the world of DC comics.  Blake Lively appears to be decent for the mere eye-candy role that we all know she is being scripted for.  Tomar-re, Sinestro and Kilowog floating around OA gave me goosebumps in their CG-laden debuts.  

And Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond looks straight scary.  So dope to have such strong actors to help balance the heavy-lifting this-- let's speak real-- new WB film franchise will be burdened with in the absence of the Harry Potter films.  Dope inclusion of Hal's classic fist-construct and gotta say it's a bummer Prop 19 didn't roll through cause you know that those Green Lantern Bongs woulda been a hit! 

I can't wait to see more and more of the concept art and footage as it is released, but as a die-hard Geoff Johns' era- Green Lantern head I can say that this trailer looks to deliver a finished product on June 17th that meets with what has become a fanatical interest in everything with the GL-logo.



I know you want to watch this over and over again, like I did so do yourself a favor and download it in HD and throw it on your phone so you can make all your friends jealous of your mad knowledge of all that is OA.

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan. Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax...he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.

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big O

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