A New Big Budget Superhero Movie Trailer, You Say? Probably Time For Andrew To Blog Again!

First Green Lantern trailer:

I don’t particularly love Green Lantern. The idea behind Green Lantern is one of the best “high concepts” in superhero comics (a genre full of nothing but high concepts): Cocky test pilot finds a crashed spacecraft; dying alien inside gives him a magical wishing ring that allows him to create anything he wants; test pilot becomes intergalactic space cop. The execution, though? Meh. Despite all of the acclaim Geoff Johns has gotten for his run on Green Lantern, I still dislike Hal Jordan as a character and I still find Johns’s continuity-porn (and, occasionally, gory-violence-as-porn) version of cosmic action to be utterly uninteresting*.

There are two versions of Green Lantern I like: Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier is absolutely brilliant, and it stars a version of Hal who generally works for me, while the John Stewart as Green Lantern who appears in the animated Justice League and Justice League Unlimited is a really strong character who’d I’d like to see more of in the comics. However, the “main” version of Hal Jordan, Green Lantern is, in my opinion, either boring or unlikeable depending on the story.

That said, I do like Ryan Reynolds. I also think that DC/Warners is trying really hard to build on the success of the Nolan/Bale Batman and finally get their other superheroes to work on film. I want Green Lantern to work because, at a very basic level, I love superhero movies. Unfortunately, this trailer doesn’t get me terribly excited for the film.

A few thoughts:

1) I’m not sure this characterization of Hal Jordan will work in the wake of two films featuring Robert Downey, Jr.’s Tony Stark. Do we really want to see another superhero franchise featuring an arrogant womanizer (albeit one ten years younger and without the billions of dollars) in the lead role right now? It’s just a trailer with a few lines of dialogue, but I definitely got the sense that Reynolds’s Jordan will be unable to shake the comparison to Downey’s Stark in the popular consciousness. Unfortunately for Reynolds, the comparison is likely to be unfavorable to him, not necessarily because he’ll do anything wrong with the character, but because he appeared later.

2) The effects definitely did not “wow” me. I imagine watching on a larger screen would make a difference, but even so, the brief shot of Hal on what I assume is Oa looked very obviously green screened in the way that some of the scenes from Star Wars: Episode I looked very obviously green screened. On a similar note, the alien characters’ make-up was unimpressive. One of the toughest parts of doing a Hal Jordan Green Lantern movie would have to be making his arch-enemy Sinestro, a pink guy with a pencil mustache, look anything but ridiculous in a live-action film. From the brief glimpse we got, the filmmakers did not succeed here.

3) From the trailer, I got no sense of the actual plot of the movie beyond the origin story. I did, however, see glimpses of both Sinestro and that big head dude who I know is also a Green Lantern villain. Are they going with big head dude as this movie’s villain with Sinestro simply getting a few cameos? If even I don’t know that guy’s name (or what he does), and I actually read comics, is he going to be able to carry a movie? Or, potentially even worse, are they already introducing way too many characters and villains instead of waiting until the second or third sequel as most superhero franchises have done in the past?

*For the record, I’ve read Green Lantern: Rebirth, The Sinestro Corps War, and Blackest Night. The first one was okay in parts, but mostly confusing in its slavish devotion to DC continuity in which I have no interest. The second was mostly enjoyable but had a terrible resolution. The third was just stupid on every level.

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