Watching the trailer, it seems like everything but Reynolds’ face is CGI. His powers are basically that he can make monochrome animated analogs to real artifacts. How is this really different than what we might see on the Cartoon Network after your kid has screwed up the color settings?
I had hopes for this film, since Green Lantern was one of my favorite superheroes back in the Silver Age. But it doesn’t look promising.
(Disclaimer: I am currently wearing this shirt at the computer.) 
Opening day bump
Wait a second – no Ch’p? My enthusiasm level is being curtailed.
I’m a fan of both GL and Ryan Reynolds, so I’m hoping it’s at least very okay.
RR is incapable of delivering a performance without some snark I think, so I expect that.
Is this a 3D thing or have we been spared that?
My wife and I were going to go see this, but our local theater (the one with ample cheap parking) is only showing 3D. Looks like we’ll be seeing Super8, which is much better reviewed. That’s a shame as I love cosmic heroes.
The reviews have largely ranged from “Meh” to positively brutal. However, the reviews for the Transformer movies were also terrible and those movies ate tickets and shat out piles of money.
Midnight-release results were apparently in the $3.5 million range, slightly higher than those for “Thor”.
On RT, Thor got 77 to GL’s 22 (ouch)
Metacritic is closer, with 58 to 40, respectively.
Was planning on seeing this today, however, the Rotten Tomatoes stats stopped me in my tracks. Yes, I know critics can be wrong, but wow…that’s a lot of critics slamming the film - and not particularly subtle in their damning of the film.
I think I can wait until cable.
The audience rating is quite a bit higher than the critic rating on RT. Not sure how meaningful that is, but pre-release reviews often strike me as being written by people who evidently weren’t really watching.
Most people are not critics and/or fanboys and know it. And they also know that if you listen to critics and/or fanboys, you are likely to miss out on a lot of good stuff, if you are not a critic and/or fanboy. That’s why the reviews and Net buzz are not good indicators, and why movies like Transformers do the whole ticket-munching thing.
Right now the audience rating is probably based on a skewed sampling - those who saw it at midnight and those who saw it during the day (as opposed to the evening) on a Friday. In other words, they are likely closer to the “fanboy” end of the spectrum. That said, the audience rating will likely remain significantly above the critics ratings.
I’d guess that audience ratings for most heavily-panned movies would be relatively high, and audience ratings for heavily-lauded movies relatively low. Critical and mass audiences aren’t completely antithetical, but they certainly aren’t in lock-step, that’s for sure.
I always check RT, but I gotta say, their feedback really doesn’t mean much - they have panned stuff I enjoyed and given rave reviews on stuff I hated. A 22 won’t keep me from going. (I should start checking Metacritic and see how close they are.)
The divide is not between critics and audiences. It’s between people who want to see a quality movie and people who just want to see shit get blowed up. Fortunately for the Hollywood garbage factories, the latter outnumber the former.
On the other hand, fanboys can work against a movie’s popularity. How many were outraged that Spider-man had organic web shooters or Lord of the Rings movies missed something on page 587?
If a movie is rates around 50%, I can usually dismiss it as stuffy pretentious old critics not loving robots blowing shit up. If it’s below 25%, though, they’re usually right.
Roger Ebert likes it better than Thor. Thor got two stars and he gave GL 2 1/2 stars, although part of that might have been because he saw it in 2D.
I haven’t seen Thor yet. Did it suck?
It wasn’t great, but it had a certain charm. It was mainly carried by the charisma of the lead. I think the movie was helped by it’s relative simplicity - the story and characters are straightforward, but if it had had greater ambitions it probably would not have fulfilled them.
“Green Lantern” is predicted to gross in the $60 million range this weekend. If it can manage that, the next question will be how word of mouth affects following weekends.
I did not hate it - but was rather confused at all the great reviews. It was OK, but IMO Iron Man was much better, the Dark Knight was much better and Spiderman I and II were much better. Here is a fine example of where RT and I didn’t agree. It is now at 77 but at the time was in the high 80s. I had fun with it, but didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“Ryan Reynolds”, that’s what the fuss is about, I think.
I know I’m excited, reviews be damned. But it’s not here yet…
I keep meaning to ask: Is there anything after the credits worth waiting for? Often I have to relieve myself by that time (big diet coke during the movie) but I usually wait and see.