Huh? Ryan Reynolds - People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2010. Tim Robbins - Oscar Winner. Also has Angela Basset and Geoffrey Rush (all the last three in minor roles).
Big names don’t make a movie, and it may bomb. But Ryan Reynolds is a pretty big name nowadays.
From what I’ve seen of rhe previews, it’s hard to pick between Thor and Green Lantern for stupid silliness. I chose Thor, only because I liked Green Lantern comics in the early 60’s when I was pre-teen.
Speaking of bad impending sci-fi/fantasy movies, sort of, are they ever going to release the remake of Creature From The Black Lagoon? Seems like it’s taking forever to finish it.
That’s exactly what I thought when I saw the CA trailer. Rocketeer is a great little movie that worked perfectly. Not too long ago I read an article in which a reviewer said that The Rocketeer is the best movie-based-on-a-comic-book ever made. I agree.
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Indeed. Green Lantern (along with the Green Lantern Corps) has been the focus of DC’s big crossover epics for the last three years or so now. GL is, at worst, at the very top edge of the “second tier” within the DC universe, if not lower-first-tier.
DC’s “Big Three”: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman
GL and The Flash are right below them, and thus logical candidates (along with Wonder Woman) for movies after all the screen time Bats and Supes have seen.
I’ve said this in other threads, but I believe there are only six first-tier comic book characters (in this order):
Superman
Batman
Spider-Man
The Hulk
Captain America
Wonder Woman
Everyone else is fighting for second-tier at best.
Thanks for the big red bold lecture, but most people really don’t give a tin shit about Norse mythology and their understanding of who Thor is, if in fact they have any understanding at all, is that he’s a god of some sort with a hammer.
Maybe that’s bad and maybe it’s indifferent, but it doesn’t bode well for the movie.
You consider the Hulk and Captain America to be more popular than Wolverine?
Honestly, anyone who thinks Green Lantern will do the worst of the 3 (or 4) is nuts, and I’ll bet anyone here to that effect.
One reason is that beyond the Comic Book arena, only one of the 3 heroes has had any public visibility of any significance: Green Lantern. He was a prominent member of the Saturday morning cartoon series (on a major network) The Superfriends, so a lot more non-comic readers are aware of him and his powers than either Cap or Thor.
Green Lantern also has, as its hero, the biggest star by far of the three. This certainly doesn’t guarantee success, but there’s no question a lot more people will come out to see GL because of Ryan Reynolds than they will to see Chris Evans (who I actually like a lot) and Blonde Nobody. All the co-stars and supporting cast in the world doesn’t make as much difference as your lead.
Also, his story is the easiest to explain. Magic Ring and Alien Law Enforcers. Not really that complicated (since all the GL mythology arcs in the books don’t relate here). Thor? I collected comics for years and I still never quite got the God-sort-of business. Your average moviegoer never thinks about Norse mythology and associate Gods (in a pop culture way) with ancient Greek fantasy, not modern-day action flicks. Cap is easier but still requires a lot more exposition because of the period trappings (again, something people may associate with some action films, but is unusual for superhero stuff). For selling a movie to the general public, the more you have to explain, the less buy-in there typically is.
Familiarity, Star power, Saleability–Green Lantern has the easiest road on all 3 counts. Will it be a good movie? Who knows. I have no dog in that hunt. But there is absolutely no way it’s going to make the least money of the three (or four). None.
But Thor has the built-in Vincent D’Onofrio and Adventures In Babysitting crowds!
I think Captain America will do pretty well because of the ‘america, fuck yeah!’ factor if nothing else (at least, do well in America anyway).
I think Thor will do OK because pretty much everyone has at least some idea who Thor is, even if they have absolutely no idea there is a comic involving him they know he’s the god of thunder and has a neat hammer… and that’s at least a somewhat interesting premise for a movie.
Green Lantern? ehhhh… not so much. All I know about the character is he’s got some sort of super magic ring and is allergic to the color yellow(?). I bet that’s a heck of a lot more then most people.
So I’m going with green lantern to be the least popular.
Well, I don’t know how often this translates into real world numbers, but Thor, Captain America, and The Green Lantern are 3rd, 4th, and 5th most anticipated movies on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively.
Thor’s got a big advantage because it’s coming at the start of the summer movie season. People won’t be burnt out on superhero movies and it has little competition. Of the three, I will agree it’s probably the lowest name recognition, but I’m not sure if that will have that big of an effect. It’s all about marketing.
Captain America comes at the end of the season. People may be burnt out, but it has a one month break from the previous superhero movie. It has the most name recognition, (and you can explain the plot just as easily as GL too: Super-serum, punch Hitler, AMERICA).
Green Lantern has the most to overcome. It’s sandwiched between X-Men, Super 8, Cars 2, and Transformers 3. It doesn’t have high name recognition outside the comic book crowd (Superfriends? Really?). And the movie is going to be hard to market without looking complex. I mean, Ryan Reynolds as part of an intergalactic police force that looks like this? IT might be a great movie, but judging from the two trailers, it looks like it packs in a hell of a lot for one movie. And it’s one of the few blockbuster movies this summer that isn’t a sequel/part of a series. Now that is hard to say whether it will improve or hurt it’s chances.
I’ll not argue that GL is ahead of the three Marvel characters in that list, as I specifically limited my post to DC characters. I also suppose there could be some argument about how the “tiers” are defined. For the sake of argument, “First Tier” characters could be defined as “Able to support their own solo title over the long term”. And after the Big Three of DC, Green Lantern and The Flash are the only DC characters I can recall off the top of my head that meet that criteria. Supes and Bats are obviously #1 and #2, as they’ve been published, without interruption, since their inceptions in the '30s. WW is #3, having been around almost as long, with only a couple interruptions. GL and Flash follow right behind, both having supported their own titles since the early '60s, with a few interruptions and restarts.
And as ArchiveGuy pointed out, both were key members of the Superfriends cartoon that I watched growing up, and I believe both have been represented in the more recent Justice League cartoons that would be familiar to my own kids (if I had any, they’d likely be in their early 20s by now), though I believe the GL slot in the more recent cartoon series is/was filled by John Stewart, not Hal Jordan.
I think there might be some amount of people who see Thor not realising it’s a superhero film, whereas the other two clearly are. Even the Thor trailer doesn’t make that explicitly clear.
It’s impossible to tell. I thought the last Superman was going to be great, but it was just a huge stinking pile by the end. I was iffy about the last Batman before going to see it but Ledger’s Joker brought it home.
It’s all about the acting and the story. Why good movies about iconic comic characters are so difficult to write escapes me. They have decades of back story and epic adventures to choose from, and still the stories often come out sounding like something right out of Kevin Smith’s example.
I thought the film did pretty well, considering the low expectations? Originally supposed to be a summer release in 2010, then pushed back multiple times, ended up opening in the January wasteland. Not exactly an all-star cast, not a well-known character, and terrible reviews. I mean, it didn’t do really well: Box Office Mojo has it with a budget of $120 million, pulling in $98 million domestically with worldwide total of $227 million. Not great, but nowhere near the flop many (myself included) thought it would be.
He wasn’t that prominent. He had maybe a dozen appearances and the same voice as Apache Chief. The character was far more promiment in Bruce Timms’ Justice League toon, where the character was black.
…well, after watching the newest Green Lantern trailer, I’m really hoping none of them bomb. They all look like interesting movies and all are in a genre I love…can’t wait!
I’ve never read any Green Latern stuff. I know him from the Justice league of America, but he always seemed to be in the background, just kinda there. I have no presuppositions or knowledge about the Green lantern as most 16 year old boys and girls have no real baseline to go off of or backhoistory. I don’t really care for, nor know much about Batman, Spiderman, nor Iron Man. I like Ghost Rider and Daredevil but they srewed the pooch on both of those…horrible mistreatments of my favorite comics.
Yes. Captain America may not have had a big budget movie yet, but the character is recognizable in a way that Wolverine isn’t. I’d argue that his costume and his name (not necessarily his origin story) are right up there with Batman and Superman.
The Hulk has had two movies in the last ten years and was the star of the 70s TV show that played in syndication all throughout the 80s (making The Hulk the first superhero I was ever exposed to as a lad of four).
Both are more prominent in the mainstream landscape than Wolverine (but I agree that he just misses the cut at #7 and is the highest second-tier character). Green Lantern wouldn’t even be in the discussion for me. Yes, he was in Superfriends and JLA/JLU, but he was second banana in both to Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Thus making him very clearly second-tier.
Well, I asked here a year or so ago what was needed for a movie to be a commercial success and I was told that it had to gross domestically at least 125% of the budget.
But you are right, it made more than I expected too.
