no evil shall escape my sight
One of the minor irritations of the Slight Medical Contretemps which afflicted me in the middle of this year, was its timing. It stuck me in hospital, and immobile/recovering, slap bang over the period when a bunch of movies I would have liked to see were on circuit. In horrible defiance of my ongoing superhero fetish, I thus missed X-Men First Class and Green Lantern, as well as PotC 4, although I'm not too distraught over the last one - Johnny Depp notwithstanding, the films have progressively lost the plot as they staggered onwards into greater and more unrestrained excess. Nonetheless, giant blockbuster special-effects extravaganza superhero films need to be seen on the big screen, all the better to Pow! Blam! Zap!
At any rate, we're watching X-Men FC and PotC 4 for movie club on Sunday, the theme being "Popcorn movies we missed on circuit", and proud of it. Green Lantern arrived in the same batch of videos, and I watched it the other night. I can't say I expected much, the reviews have been terrible, but in the event it was both a bad film, and more interesting than I'd thought it would be.
I Am Not A Comic Book Geek, insofar as I've actually read very few of them, and my collection is a small and random sampling heavily weighted towards Sandman1 and things which have recently been made into movies (mostly because the folkloric adaptation of mythology across media fascinates me unduly). However, any genuine comics geek is fully entitled to righteously look down their nose at me. I've never read any Green Lantern comics (although my unhealthy relationship with Loot suggests that that will change shortly). I didn't know much about it, other than random sideswipes in geeky blog comments, and a half-arsed sense that "the ring allows you to create anything green, but yellow is DOOM!" is not a well-thought-out superpower.
One movie and a spot of random research later, and it's a fascinating mythology. Its genesis is, I think, identical in sensibility to that of the classic old space operas of E. 'Doc' Smith, whose Skylark and Lensman novels presuppose the same inter-species troop of good ol' American clean-cut lads kicking righteous butt across the universe in the name of Mom and apple pie. The whole thing has a sort of goofy naiveté which verges on the endearingly gormless, and for which I have a low, reprehensible fondness. (I love the Lensman books, if only for their galloping excess. By the end of it they're chucking galaxies and universes at each other). The other influence I can't help detecting is that of animated cartoons: the endless morphability of the ring's creations, and in fact the weird alien races which make up the Corps, are really the opposite of realistic, tending to invoke the no-limits fantasy of an animated space-opera universe rather than anything real.
The film caused me, alas, quite unseemly levels of toe-curling fangirly glee, but that's a personal weakness: while it appeals equally to my mutant organs of space-opera and superhero enjoyment, it's not a good movie. It struggles with precisely the elements of unreality I describe above, and I've spent odd moments of the last few days wondering how on earth they actually could have dealt with the Green Lantern story in any way which would infuse it with even a little bit of grit. It's a fairly tall order, trying to use this mythology to appeal to the sensibilities of an audience conditioned to Dark Knights and the strange element of naturalism achieved by RDJ even in shiny powered armour. I don't think it's impossible, the mythology has some interesting things to say about heroism and power, but they really needed to be a lot more thoughtful about it.
The film, I think, hamstrung itself on two levels: in its special effects, and in its lead actor. The green in this movie is very green. Sunday morning cartoon green. Practically glowing. The suit looks plastic, the aliens look cartoon, the landscapes on Oa appear to originate in an animated special. The green ring creations are apparently radioactive, and horribly prone to slapstick. The script is serviceable, if uninspired, and certainly not good enough to infuse the mythology's over-the-top elements with any degree of conviction. Likewise, Ryan Reynolds is an extremely likeable lead, but in fact his fit with the material is almost too good: you could probably equally accuse him of a sort of goofy naiveté which verges on the endearingly gormless, which means he doesn't quite manage to ground the story in anything particularly real. He tries, but ... nope.
I had fun watching this film, but I'm slightly ashamed of the fact. It also occurs to me that at least part of the enjoyment I am apparently able to gain from bad genre movies and TV is the result of my academic inclinations towards contexualisation, analysis, deconstruction. To be an academic and a fan is to exist surprisingly comfortably in a state of dual personality, both enjoyably invested and equally enjoyably distanced. It means that even a bad and facile movie is layered and textured in surprising ways. It works for me.
1 If only because I possess four Absolute Sandman tomes, any one of which must weigh rather more than Hobbit.
At any rate, we're watching X-Men FC and PotC 4 for movie club on Sunday, the theme being "Popcorn movies we missed on circuit", and proud of it. Green Lantern arrived in the same batch of videos, and I watched it the other night. I can't say I expected much, the reviews have been terrible, but in the event it was both a bad film, and more interesting than I'd thought it would be.
I Am Not A Comic Book Geek, insofar as I've actually read very few of them, and my collection is a small and random sampling heavily weighted towards Sandman1 and things which have recently been made into movies (mostly because the folkloric adaptation of mythology across media fascinates me unduly). However, any genuine comics geek is fully entitled to righteously look down their nose at me. I've never read any Green Lantern comics (although my unhealthy relationship with Loot suggests that that will change shortly). I didn't know much about it, other than random sideswipes in geeky blog comments, and a half-arsed sense that "the ring allows you to create anything green, but yellow is DOOM!" is not a well-thought-out superpower.
One movie and a spot of random research later, and it's a fascinating mythology. Its genesis is, I think, identical in sensibility to that of the classic old space operas of E. 'Doc' Smith, whose Skylark and Lensman novels presuppose the same inter-species troop of good ol' American clean-cut lads kicking righteous butt across the universe in the name of Mom and apple pie. The whole thing has a sort of goofy naiveté which verges on the endearingly gormless, and for which I have a low, reprehensible fondness. (I love the Lensman books, if only for their galloping excess. By the end of it they're chucking galaxies and universes at each other). The other influence I can't help detecting is that of animated cartoons: the endless morphability of the ring's creations, and in fact the weird alien races which make up the Corps, are really the opposite of realistic, tending to invoke the no-limits fantasy of an animated space-opera universe rather than anything real.
The film caused me, alas, quite unseemly levels of toe-curling fangirly glee, but that's a personal weakness: while it appeals equally to my mutant organs of space-opera and superhero enjoyment, it's not a good movie. It struggles with precisely the elements of unreality I describe above, and I've spent odd moments of the last few days wondering how on earth they actually could have dealt with the Green Lantern story in any way which would infuse it with even a little bit of grit. It's a fairly tall order, trying to use this mythology to appeal to the sensibilities of an audience conditioned to Dark Knights and the strange element of naturalism achieved by RDJ even in shiny powered armour. I don't think it's impossible, the mythology has some interesting things to say about heroism and power, but they really needed to be a lot more thoughtful about it.
The film, I think, hamstrung itself on two levels: in its special effects, and in its lead actor. The green in this movie is very green. Sunday morning cartoon green. Practically glowing. The suit looks plastic, the aliens look cartoon, the landscapes on Oa appear to originate in an animated special. The green ring creations are apparently radioactive, and horribly prone to slapstick. The script is serviceable, if uninspired, and certainly not good enough to infuse the mythology's over-the-top elements with any degree of conviction. Likewise, Ryan Reynolds is an extremely likeable lead, but in fact his fit with the material is almost too good: you could probably equally accuse him of a sort of goofy naiveté which verges on the endearingly gormless, which means he doesn't quite manage to ground the story in anything particularly real. He tries, but ... nope.
I had fun watching this film, but I'm slightly ashamed of the fact. It also occurs to me that at least part of the enjoyment I am apparently able to gain from bad genre movies and TV is the result of my academic inclinations towards contexualisation, analysis, deconstruction. To be an academic and a fan is to exist surprisingly comfortably in a state of dual personality, both enjoyably invested and equally enjoyably distanced. It means that even a bad and facile movie is layered and textured in surprising ways. It works for me.
1 If only because I possess four Absolute Sandman tomes, any one of which must weigh rather more than Hobbit.