They focused on the wrong lantern. They should have gone with Mogo.*
*mostly kidding.
This is exactly what I would have said, and I am a non-comic booky girl who generally loves the comic book movies. Who cares about some stupid guy with a magic ring? Obviously not enough people to make him famous enough for the rest of us to care.
While you have good points in your post, it would be wrong to suggest that Iron Man had Superman/Spider-Man level pop culture awareness prior to the movie. He was very much on par with Thor.
I think the problem was trying to do too much in the same movie. The two-minute “training” session with Kilowog was dumb; in the comics, there have been flashbacks to Hal’s training, it’s a long, boot-camp like process. Using both Hector Hammond and Parallax made the movie unnecessarily crowded; this movie could easily have been against only Hector, and if Parallax was important to Hector’s transformation, that could have been revealed in the second movie. The opening exposition was not a good way to draw viewers in at all and set a bad tone in peoples’ minds that (perhaps unfairly) colored their perception of the rest of the movie.
I guess it could be said to be too “comic booky” in the sense that it was trying too hard to satisfy comics fans by cramming too much stuff from the comics into a 2-hour movie.
The main problem with Green Lantern is that the character (Hal Jordan) himself is boring; the background (all the science fiction stuff) is awesome. I was about to list off the elements of the background that would make Green Lantern an awesome escapist SF movie, and realized that there’d already been a successful GL movie; it was just called THE LAST STARFIGHTER.
Haha, The Last Starfighter blew my mind when I saw it at 11. You’re right thoug, Jordan has always been an uninteresting character despite the whole concept of the Green Lanterns and the Corps actually being awesome and lending itself very well to a movie adaptation (Space Cops. You can also call them Jedis I guess). John Stewart is much much more interesting (not a surprise they chose him as the main GL in the cartoon show. Funnily, in “The Batman” cartoon, Hal Jordan seems very redundant with Clark Kent/Superman).
I don’t get how Spider Man and Iron Man are held up as “comic book movies done right” and then movies like GL are for some reason, “crap.”
Why? I liked the Spider Man & Iron Man movies okay, but they didn’t strike me as a better adaptation of comic book. If I ever bother to watch them again, I’ll fast forward through the first halves.
I’ll happily watch Green Lantern again and I won’t have to fast forward through boring backstory or personal story because they didn’t spend that much time on it. Visually it was great, and the action kept coming.
A good action movie should jump right in. Does anyone really care about origin stuff?
Doesn’t this really just boil down to it wasn’t a good movie? If Iron Man had been a bad movie and not done well, would people then be saying that it was too “Comic book” when in fact it was just bad?
I was factoring in the marketing to the general concept of release.
Well, if it was a bad movie, it was a bad movie for a reason. Adhering too closely to the comics rather than appealing to general audiences would be a valid complaint.
I haven’t seen it myself so I can’t say how “comic booky” it was but they did a poor job of interesting me in a not-well-known comic book character.
I suspect that Iron Man was bolstered somewhat by the popular cartoon series in the '90s. I could be wrong but he’s also higher on the pecking order than GL ever was.
I saw Thor and the new X-men and skipped on GL, mainly because the trailer looked too goofy, Green Lantern always seemed kind of a lame idea for a superhero anyways.
It probably didn’t help that its the third superhero movie of the summer either. I generally like superhero movies, but they’re getting a little over-used. I doubt I’ll see Captain America either.
That is really the question: Was Green Lantern a failure because it was just a flawed movie or was it because the character Green lantern works better on a Comic Book page or cartoon than he does on a movie screen?
Yeah, thinking about it more there is some circular reasoning. I guess most of these movies sound a bit crazy if you think about the concept too much. I would like to think that talented people could come up with an interesting story if they tried, but who knows if it is possible.
I agree, which is why that sentence ended with “…or you can glance at the character and come away with a positive impression.”
Because comic book movies aren’t action movies, at least not in the sense we typically think of action movies–ie, shit blows up for 2 hours, then you go home. Comics are as much character-driven as they are action-driven; why on earth would you keep buying a particular series if you had no emotional connection to the main character? The origin stuff is part of what makes it a comic book movie instead of just a generic action movie with really stupid wardrobe choices.
And on a personal level, your description of GL sounds like it would bore the tits right off me. Action movies are just…tedious beyond belief, even without silly outfits.
Valid points, but I’ve read Spider Man and Superman’s origins roughly eleventy guhjillion times and they’re just as boring each time. I’ll plod through them again if the art is good.
Comics are extremely visual. The story should be good too, but if the art sucks I’d just as soon read a book. In the 70’s I gravitated towards Marvel comics and would only skim DC stories. DC’s artwork was too simplistic and “for kids” and the stories were definitely lame kiddy stories. DC got better, but it was the artwork that got me interested in a few of their titles first. I had no interest in a Green Lantern forming a huge fist with his ring and socking the bank robbers, or whatever.
Another thing is comic books have years to tell their stories, generally speaking. The characters and stories have to be good enough to grab you (visually first, and yeah they are all about the action), and then you shell out your money every month because you want to learn more.
I’ll watch another “issue” of GL if they make one, because the first one was fun and grabbed my attention. Was it perfect? No.
This video from The Onion sums up my views quite succinctly: ‘Green Lantern’ To Fulfill America’s Wish To See Lantern-Based Characters On Big Screen.
I probably know slightly more than the average person about comic books characters (I can’t tell you any character’s entire back story, but I know a little about a lot of them), but I didn’t know much about Green Lantern beyond the ring. And there was something about the trailers that just had me thinking about The Great Gazoo. Also I like Ryan Reynolds enough, but not sure how I feel about him as a leading man (I’m not alone, apparently, based on some of his previous movies). Keep him as the sidekick. The hot, funny sidekick.
Didn’t see a newer thread on this green turd so I’ll comment here. I just watched this on an airplane and it failed because it was horrible in almost every possible way. The only redeeming quality was his suit looked pretty good.
The worst thing about the movie to me was how there were no transitions between scenes. It felt like I was watching a version that United arbitrarily cut out 2 min here and there. One minute he’s in a building getting leveled by Parelax and the next second he is flying outside with his girl friend. No transition whatsoever.
GL with Hal Jordan/Guy Gardner was about the only comic I read regularly. (I stopped reading after Crisis, which was awesome)
I never liked having Ryan Renolds cast as Hal.
The movie was just kind of bad.
It did break 100 mil domestically. Not bad, but it just did not establish a franchise.
My biggest wtf was why, after his training, did Hal basically make only bigger and bigger guns when he fought.
Now as a superhero I can identify with Hal/Green Lantern because I was not born on a distant planet like Superman. I am never going to do a lifetime of training like Batman but I could be chosen for some reason to be a superhero. I really don’t like the accidental superheros like spiderman or hulk.