Green Lantern, superhero movies, Marvel & DC
This isn't actually as much of a meta post as that sounds. I saw Green Lantern recently, later than the rest of the world that was interested in seeing it, and it's nowhere near as bad as the critical consensus would imply. But it's not great, and I'm not sure that I would need to see it again, and I'm being puzzled again by what makes some comic properties work on screen and some not, whether there's anything the makers could do about it, and what Marvel/DC has to do with that. Partially because me and 
scrollgirl had just such a discussion when she was last here, and partially because me and Brother2 had a similar discussion about the way he always quite likes superhero movies considered to be mediocre by the general population. (Green Lantern DVD was his, he apparently also quite liked Green Hornet, has tried to get people to rewatch Daredevil. Both of us are fans of Superman Returns.)
Green Lantern's problems are threefold: it didn't fully invest in the premise, origin stories are tricky, and it lacked a sufficiently compelling villain.
Last problems first, I can sort of see what you're trying to do, giving your other-worldly entity a human host to invade. It creates emotional investment, relatability etc. But you barely sketch out why we should care about him and then abandon him to play with your big cloud. Possibly I would have more interest if I knew more Green Lantern canon, but Sinestro was still much more interesting despite having probably less screentime, and not really having much to do. Movies I think have good bad guys: X-Men (depending whether you view Magento as bad I suppose), The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, Thor (again, Loki...). Emotional connection with the hero and/or tell us something about the hero in non hamhanded fashion. Green Lantern doesn't manage to make us care about Hector Hammond and until the end, Parallax isn't doing anything on earth so there's not enough peril for Hal personally. It's just a bit half-hearted and it makes the climactic 'throwing him into a sun' less than it should be.
Also, I would really like the makers of superhero stories to stop thinking they need to begin at the origin story. It means you have to spend a really long time with people angsting over the existence of superpowers, or aliens, or whatever your deal is. Iron Man is pretty much my one exception here. And I think that works because Iron Man's reason for being a hero is tied up in what happens to him at the beginning of the film. Tony isn't a hero by personality or inclination, he's a hero because he thinks he needs to atone for what his weapons are being used for - turning himself into a weapon that can't be stolen, and using that to fix the problems he caused is a way of regaining control. (Also, RDJ is never hotter than when he's building a suit out of scraps in a cave.) Batman Begins is a fine movie, but The Dark Knight is streets better (despite the fact that I find it too much to rewatch). This is at least partially because I know everything I need to know about Bruce Wayne and tragedy. The Dark Knight is compelling because it asks questions about society, and the requirements of justice, and what it is to be the dark things that need to be done when even you wish that it was a world where you didn't need to exist. I think (although apparently many people disagreed with me) that Superman Returns is a beautifully put together film that's about a genuinely balanced love-triangle as well as about the requirements of heroism and whether they're needed. It's a love-letter to the original films, and possibly to the golden age of Hollywood, but it's not an origin story - the central theme is what happens when you go back to somewhere you left behind. (And it's great, so go watch it if you haven't.) There clearly weren't enough explosions for the blockbuster crowd, but the plane crash scene is pretty impressive. Green Lantern spends too much time setting things up with The Guardians, voiceover, why Hal is a mess and how the Green Lantern mission works. If they just jumped in and dropped the other parts as flashback or exposition organically as the information was required, it would work far better as a film.
But a big part of the problem Green Lantern has is the same decision at the heart of any comic-book adaptation: how to balance fidelity to the source material with the needs of making a mainstream blockbuster. The decisions go different ways from film to film. None of the X-Men films have featured spandex, and they've hung a lantern on the fact that it would be a ridiculous thing to do (though First Class does have the colour scheme, and the later ones still have the X). Spiderman though, has Peter Parker swinging through New York in red and blue spandex and no one blinks an eye. You can make a lot of things work if you just commit to the premise. Brother 2 and I spent a lot of time wondering how they were going to make Thor - he's a god, he sometimes speaks cod-Shakesperean, and there's a lot of magic. The comic books adaptations hadn't done much with magic (Constantine and Ghost Rider are maybe closer to horror, and anyway are hardly success stories; Hellboy again is more demons than spells, and isn't a mainstream adaptation. Excellent though, and getting Guillermo del Toro to direct was the best choice they could make except maybe having Ron Perlman as Hellboy) and they certainly didn't try to integrate magic and real world heroes. But Thor was supposed to live in the same world as RDJ's tech-based Iron Man, and the 'science' of Captain America and Hulk. But you know what? Marvel Studios said 'We're going to get Kenneth Branagh to direct, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, and the audience are just going to have to come along for the ride.' And in the process made one of the more surprising success stories of the blockbuster season.
Thor integrates the Valhalla parts with the real world setting in a way which is not always entirely successful, but works well enough that people were debating which they liked more. Green Lantern should have been like that: they had the space parts and the real world parts and moving between them might be a little jarring for anyone who doesn't know about the aliens in Green Lantern but they could have made it work. Instead it felt an awful lot like 'we have Ryan Reynolds and he's charming (true) and the Green Lantern stuff lets us do some cool action scenes (potentially true) and we'll have to use enough of the space stuff to frame the story.' Now, I mostly know Green Lantern from the Justice League series (so John rather than Hal), and I think the Green Lantern Corps could make for some pretty awesome story-telling. It's an inherently cool premise: intergalactic peace-keeping force that is all-out with its range of alien species working together. Green Lantern needed to embrace that but it always felt like it was waiting to go back to earth. It needed a cavalry moment but we only get three of them, at the very end (which was still cool, but I wanted more than that.)
The frustrating thing is, Green Lantern did some things right, and some of those things were the ones that other films screwed up. Carol Ferris is pretty awesome! She flies planes and takes business meetings and does more than just scream in the big battle. Ryan Reynolds is charming and while I maintain he would have made a better Flash, it does work. Carol is smart, and the movie doesn't spend the whole time trying to hide Hal's identity from her:
Green Lantern: How did you know it was me?
Carol Ferris: What do you mean? I've known you my whole life! I've seen you naked! You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?
Hee. Anyway. So Green Lantern does better with its female characters than, say, X-Men. But they released in a year where Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis talked to each other about things that weren't men, and where Sif comes right out and tells Thor to stop stealing her glory, so they didn't win the summer.
Sinestro works? The other Lanterns would work too if we saw more of them. The script hits the voiceover too hard, it hits the exposition too hard, and it's unforgivably heavy-handed with the tragic backstory. It includes the things it needs to that you might think wouldn't work on film: the oath, the ring recharging in the lantern which is powered by a planet, the inexplicable immunity of yellow (I know there's an explanation of this, but there's no doubt it's one of the stranger things about Green Lantern). But it never feels like it believes enough in what it's doing.
DC seem to have worked out what to do with Batman (or possibly they hired Chris Nolan and got lucky) but can't make the next step. They're are apparently making a dark and gritty Superman, which seems to miss the point of making a Superman movie at all. Marvel seem more willing to take risks with their franchises, so we get X-Men 1 2 and First Class, Spiderman 1 2, and most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that work really well, and a variety of sort of failures which have a few redeeming points (X-Men 3 has Angel; Wolverine has Gambit and Deadpool; Spiderman 3 had the potential for a Peter/MJ/Harry resolution; Fantastic Four has Chris Evans and matches the goofy tone of the comics even though it chickened out on Galactus; Incredible Hulk has some nice Bruce/Betty scenes and things do blow up). Granted, then you have like The Punisher and Catwoman and a few more of that ilk but still. There's a range there. DC have Batman and can't work out how to make a successful movie with anything else.
I would like to see a Justice League film. I would love to see a Wonder Woman film. But I can't see it happening any time soon. In the meantime, I will be rewatching Justice League and the other DC Animated movies, plus Young Justice. And I will be waiting eagerly for The Avengers, which is another movie which should not work, but I have enough faith in what Marvel are doing (and Joss) to be super-excited :)
And now I need to go and have birthday tea. And not freak out about my life passing me by...
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth: http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/159795.html |
comments. Please comment there using OpenID or signed anon.
scrollgirl had just such a discussion when she was last here, and partially because me and Brother2 had a similar discussion about the way he always quite likes superhero movies considered to be mediocre by the general population. (Green Lantern DVD was his, he apparently also quite liked Green Hornet, has tried to get people to rewatch Daredevil. Both of us are fans of Superman Returns.)
Green Lantern's problems are threefold: it didn't fully invest in the premise, origin stories are tricky, and it lacked a sufficiently compelling villain.
Last problems first, I can sort of see what you're trying to do, giving your other-worldly entity a human host to invade. It creates emotional investment, relatability etc. But you barely sketch out why we should care about him and then abandon him to play with your big cloud. Possibly I would have more interest if I knew more Green Lantern canon, but Sinestro was still much more interesting despite having probably less screentime, and not really having much to do. Movies I think have good bad guys: X-Men (depending whether you view Magento as bad I suppose), The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, Thor (again, Loki...). Emotional connection with the hero and/or tell us something about the hero in non hamhanded fashion. Green Lantern doesn't manage to make us care about Hector Hammond and until the end, Parallax isn't doing anything on earth so there's not enough peril for Hal personally. It's just a bit half-hearted and it makes the climactic 'throwing him into a sun' less than it should be.
Also, I would really like the makers of superhero stories to stop thinking they need to begin at the origin story. It means you have to spend a really long time with people angsting over the existence of superpowers, or aliens, or whatever your deal is. Iron Man is pretty much my one exception here. And I think that works because Iron Man's reason for being a hero is tied up in what happens to him at the beginning of the film. Tony isn't a hero by personality or inclination, he's a hero because he thinks he needs to atone for what his weapons are being used for - turning himself into a weapon that can't be stolen, and using that to fix the problems he caused is a way of regaining control. (Also, RDJ is never hotter than when he's building a suit out of scraps in a cave.) Batman Begins is a fine movie, but The Dark Knight is streets better (despite the fact that I find it too much to rewatch). This is at least partially because I know everything I need to know about Bruce Wayne and tragedy. The Dark Knight is compelling because it asks questions about society, and the requirements of justice, and what it is to be the dark things that need to be done when even you wish that it was a world where you didn't need to exist. I think (although apparently many people disagreed with me) that Superman Returns is a beautifully put together film that's about a genuinely balanced love-triangle as well as about the requirements of heroism and whether they're needed. It's a love-letter to the original films, and possibly to the golden age of Hollywood, but it's not an origin story - the central theme is what happens when you go back to somewhere you left behind. (And it's great, so go watch it if you haven't.) There clearly weren't enough explosions for the blockbuster crowd, but the plane crash scene is pretty impressive. Green Lantern spends too much time setting things up with The Guardians, voiceover, why Hal is a mess and how the Green Lantern mission works. If they just jumped in and dropped the other parts as flashback or exposition organically as the information was required, it would work far better as a film.
But a big part of the problem Green Lantern has is the same decision at the heart of any comic-book adaptation: how to balance fidelity to the source material with the needs of making a mainstream blockbuster. The decisions go different ways from film to film. None of the X-Men films have featured spandex, and they've hung a lantern on the fact that it would be a ridiculous thing to do (though First Class does have the colour scheme, and the later ones still have the X). Spiderman though, has Peter Parker swinging through New York in red and blue spandex and no one blinks an eye. You can make a lot of things work if you just commit to the premise. Brother 2 and I spent a lot of time wondering how they were going to make Thor - he's a god, he sometimes speaks cod-Shakesperean, and there's a lot of magic. The comic books adaptations hadn't done much with magic (Constantine and Ghost Rider are maybe closer to horror, and anyway are hardly success stories; Hellboy again is more demons than spells, and isn't a mainstream adaptation. Excellent though, and getting Guillermo del Toro to direct was the best choice they could make except maybe having Ron Perlman as Hellboy) and they certainly didn't try to integrate magic and real world heroes. But Thor was supposed to live in the same world as RDJ's tech-based Iron Man, and the 'science' of Captain America and Hulk. But you know what? Marvel Studios said 'We're going to get Kenneth Branagh to direct, Anthony Hopkins as Odin, and the audience are just going to have to come along for the ride.' And in the process made one of the more surprising success stories of the blockbuster season.
Thor integrates the Valhalla parts with the real world setting in a way which is not always entirely successful, but works well enough that people were debating which they liked more. Green Lantern should have been like that: they had the space parts and the real world parts and moving between them might be a little jarring for anyone who doesn't know about the aliens in Green Lantern but they could have made it work. Instead it felt an awful lot like 'we have Ryan Reynolds and he's charming (true) and the Green Lantern stuff lets us do some cool action scenes (potentially true) and we'll have to use enough of the space stuff to frame the story.' Now, I mostly know Green Lantern from the Justice League series (so John rather than Hal), and I think the Green Lantern Corps could make for some pretty awesome story-telling. It's an inherently cool premise: intergalactic peace-keeping force that is all-out with its range of alien species working together. Green Lantern needed to embrace that but it always felt like it was waiting to go back to earth. It needed a cavalry moment but we only get three of them, at the very end (which was still cool, but I wanted more than that.)
The frustrating thing is, Green Lantern did some things right, and some of those things were the ones that other films screwed up. Carol Ferris is pretty awesome! She flies planes and takes business meetings and does more than just scream in the big battle. Ryan Reynolds is charming and while I maintain he would have made a better Flash, it does work. Carol is smart, and the movie doesn't spend the whole time trying to hide Hal's identity from her:
Green Lantern: How did you know it was me?
Carol Ferris: What do you mean? I've known you my whole life! I've seen you naked! You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?
Hee. Anyway. So Green Lantern does better with its female characters than, say, X-Men. But they released in a year where Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis talked to each other about things that weren't men, and where Sif comes right out and tells Thor to stop stealing her glory, so they didn't win the summer.
Sinestro works? The other Lanterns would work too if we saw more of them. The script hits the voiceover too hard, it hits the exposition too hard, and it's unforgivably heavy-handed with the tragic backstory. It includes the things it needs to that you might think wouldn't work on film: the oath, the ring recharging in the lantern which is powered by a planet, the inexplicable immunity of yellow (I know there's an explanation of this, but there's no doubt it's one of the stranger things about Green Lantern). But it never feels like it believes enough in what it's doing.
DC seem to have worked out what to do with Batman (or possibly they hired Chris Nolan and got lucky) but can't make the next step. They're are apparently making a dark and gritty Superman, which seems to miss the point of making a Superman movie at all. Marvel seem more willing to take risks with their franchises, so we get X-Men 1 2 and First Class, Spiderman 1 2, and most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that work really well, and a variety of sort of failures which have a few redeeming points (X-Men 3 has Angel; Wolverine has Gambit and Deadpool; Spiderman 3 had the potential for a Peter/MJ/Harry resolution; Fantastic Four has Chris Evans and matches the goofy tone of the comics even though it chickened out on Galactus; Incredible Hulk has some nice Bruce/Betty scenes and things do blow up). Granted, then you have like The Punisher and Catwoman and a few more of that ilk but still. There's a range there. DC have Batman and can't work out how to make a successful movie with anything else.
I would like to see a Justice League film. I would love to see a Wonder Woman film. But I can't see it happening any time soon. In the meantime, I will be rewatching Justice League and the other DC Animated movies, plus Young Justice. And I will be waiting eagerly for The Avengers, which is another movie which should not work, but I have enough faith in what Marvel are doing (and Joss) to be super-excited :)
And now I need to go and have birthday tea. And not freak out about my life passing me by...
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth: http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/159795.html |
comments. Please comment there using OpenID or signed anon.