How did Green Lantern fail where Guardians of the Galaxy suceeded?

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I watched both movies back to back last weekend, having not seen Green Lantern in almost ten years (only watched it once, when it came out on DVD). It just got me wondering what exactly worked for Guardians that didn't work for Lantern? Obviously, I can point to some of the more obvious examples such as better writing, characterization and cinematography. But what do you think were some of the less obvious examples? Any ideas?
 
While I think it mostly is the obvious broad aspects of "one has better writing and directing", I would say two more subtle elements that contributed to the difference:

1. While the people behind GotG were obviously passionate about it, none of them were personally invested in GotG as being "their baby". The closest to a key creative for GL is Geoff Johns, and Green Lantern is *absolutely* his baby. This meant that he lacked the objective distance to make the kind of adaptations necessary for a good movie. In particular, a more objective writer would have cut the *entire* "color of emotions" element from the script, both for being inappropriately silly and for contributing nothing to the story.

2. Incoherent vision. Over at Marvel Studios, all the people from Feige on down were mostly in alignment of purpose- they all were working to make a weird, different movie that would stretch the bounds of the MCU and hopefully also prove popular and make money now and in the future. With Green Lantern, by contrast, you had Geoff Johns trying to bring his own take on the GL mythos to ( overly literal ) life, the WB execs trying to make an Iron Man carbon copy because profits, and Martin Campbell who was probably just there for the paycheck and to get WB to greenlight his own works.
 
I didn't think either was good but the tone and focus of Guardians was a lot more consistent, compared to in GL Reynolds restraining himself from being either real funny or particularly serious, there being some meant to be light/comic scenes that felt really already-done/waste of time, and Hector Hammond's portrayal and story trying pretty hard to be psychological-drama and everything being pretty unconnected to the Parallax cloud.
 
Green Lantern=
-Poor CGI SFX even by 2011 standards (it came out 3 years after Iron Man and Incredible Hulk and 2 years after Star Trek 09. All of those had way better special effects)
-No good action scenes
-Really poor villains
-Not that funny
-A lot of characters just weren't interesting
-No good performances. Yes I'm including Mark Strong as Sinestro

Guardians of the Galaxy=
-Hilarious to most of the audience
-Some good action scenes
-Characters that people could get behind. They were likeable
-Part of a successful franchise (the MCU)
-A really good marketing campaign
-SFX/CGI was really good.
-Had a tremendous amount of heart

That's why Guardians succeeded and GL didn't. TL;DR: GotG has what the audience wants. GL didn't
 
Parallax is a great villain in the comics that just doesn’t translate well to live action and definitely not to how they tried it in GL. And Hammond is an even worse villain.

Had they used Larfleeze or Atrocious, or Volthoom or literally any other villain, it probably would’ve worked.
 
I will say Green Lantern: First Flight, despite a decent but unimpressive, kind of bland Sinestro, was as bad, it was very sad to have as good an actor as Christopher Meloni give such a mediocre/bad performance as Hal.
 
I will say Green Lantern: First Flight, despite a decent but unimpressive, kind of bland Sinestro, was as bad, it was very sad to have as good an actor as Christopher Meloni give such a mediocre/bad performance as Hal.
Really? I actually watched it for the first time in a while a few months ago and it was a lot better than I remembered haha.
It still wasn't great. I did like Sinestro a lot more in FF than in the 2011 movie. I never got the praise for Strong as Sinestro. He was one note and bland. But yeah First Flight is still decent to me.
 
I thought Strong was fine but he wasn’t in enough to make an impression. I think the praise he got was more for the makeup job, which was one of the few things that looked good in that movie. Also, Sinestro’s villainous turn at the very end made no sense, other than “yellow power corrupts” or something.
 
- Compelling family dynamics
- Legendary Soundtrack
- Effective Comedy
- Superior Script and Direction
 
GOTG feels like a kid having a blast playing with whatever toys he found in the box, very creative and free.

GL felt like they tried to composite it while looking at other movies. "Hal Jordan is our Han Solo, see. He's a little Tony Stark but also very Top Gun and a little Luke Skywalker too". Martin Campbell's great, but I doubt he ever truly dug or got the GL appeal. It was all done with an eye on formula but with tons of insecurities.
 
I thought Strong was fine but he wasn’t in enough to make an impression. I think the praise he got was more for the makeup job, which was one of the few things that looked good in that movie. Also, Sinestro’s villainous turn at the very end made no sense, other than “yellow power corrupts” or something.

That was one of the many story flaws in the movie: inconsistency about its villains. Hector Hammond is treated in some scenes as if he's a sympathetic victim of a corrupting alien influence, and in others like a cackling black hat villain for whom the audience is supposed to feel nothing but approval when Hal beats him up. Sinestro is clearly set up as the villain for the sequel, and yet is otherwise shown as a responsible authority figure in virtually every other scene. Probably both result at least in part from Hal Jordan being a Designated Hero: scenes that were meant to establish them as sinister and untrustworthy by their conflict with the hero fizzled, because Hal was a generally unheroic jerk for whom dislike or conflict would be entirely reasonable.
 
Supposedly Reynolds was cast behind Campbell’s back and he constantly berated Reynolds on set because he wanted Bradley Cooper for the role. Talk about a recipe for disaster. I can’t imagine how anyone involved thought that movie would turn out well.
 
It's been a while since I saw it, but one thing I remember was that Reynold's Jordan was an unlikeable D-Bag who his fellow employees rightly wanted to kick the snot out of. Compare and contrast that to Tony Stark, who though sharing many of the same character flaws was clearly beloved by his non-Obadiah colleagues and employees.

Hal needed humbling, which unlike Tony, he never really received during the course of the flick. Instead of him being a hotshot test pilot, it may have been a good idea to have him start out as a failed former astronaut in training who dropped out of the program, perhaps due to alcohol abuse. He now finds himself as a charming pilot for a small commuter/tourist airline, Ferris Air, and spends his nights staring at the stars wondering what could have been.
 
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Outside the box but Peter Sarsgaard could have been quite good as Hal Jordan (obviously if with a much better script).
 
Green Lantern=
-Poor CGI SFX even by 2011 standards (it came out 3 years after Iron Man and Incredible Hulk and 2 years after Star Trek 09. All of those had way better special effects)
-No good action scenes
-Really poor villains
-Not that funny
-A lot of characters just weren't interesting
-No good performances. Yes I'm including Mark Strong as Sinestro

Guardians of the Galaxy=
-Hilarious to most of the audience
-Some good action scenes
-Characters that people could get behind. They were likeable
-Part of a successful franchise (the MCU)
-A really good marketing campaign
-SFX/CGI was really good.
-Had a tremendous amount of heart

That's why Guardians succeeded and GL didn't. TL;DR: GotG has what the audience wants. GL didn't
Agreed. GL was so disappointing, considering the possabilities with that mythos and characters etc. I did enjoy the parts on Oa though. ONTH, I knew nothing about Guardians and got pleasantly invested in that film and its characters. Never thought I'd care about a tree and a racoon, but it worked for me.
 
It's been a while since I saw it, but one thing I remember was that Reynold's Jordan was an unlikeable D-Bag who his fellow employees rightly wanted to kick the snot out of. Compare and contrast that to Tony Stark, who though sharing many of the same character flaws was clearly beloved by his non-Obadiah colleagues and employees.

Hal needed humbling, which unlike Tony, he never really received during the course of the flick. Instead of him being a hotshot test pilot, it may have been a good idea to have him start out as a failed former astronaut in training who dropped out of the program, perhaps due to alcohol abuse. He now finds himself as a charming pilot for a small commuter/tourist airline, Ferris Air, and spends his nights staring at the stars wondering what could have been.

Yeah, didn’t his showboating somehow result in all of those guys losing their jobs (but somehow he KEPT his)? People always talk about Hal being an unrelatable or unlikable character and I’ve never really agreed with that but that ****ty movie seemed determined to prove me wrong lol.
 
It's been a while since I saw it, but one thing I remember was that Reynold's Jordan was an unlikeable D-Bag who his fellow employees rightly wanted to kick the snot out of. Compare and contrast that to Tony Stark, who though sharing many of the same character flaws was clearly beloved by his non-Obadiah colleagues and employees.

Hal needed humbling, which unlike Tony, he never really received during the course of the flick. Instead of him being a hotshot test pilot, it may have been a good idea to have him start out as a failed former astronaut in training who dropped out of the program, perhaps due to alcohol abuse. He now finds himself as a charming pilot for a small commuter/tourist airline, Ferris Air, and spends his nights staring at the stars wondering what could have been.
Both Peter Quill and Tony Stark, while arrogant, had sort of likable qualities. I'm thinking specifically of the scene in GotG where Quill gets off his ship to get the Orb and where Tony is in the vehicle with the Army people. I only watched GL once (that was enough), but I didn't really get the same vib from Ryan (who is an incredibly likable and charismatic character). In fact, ALL of the GotG characters were very flawed, but likable.
 
Yeah, didn’t his showboating somehow result in all of those guys losing their jobs (but somehow he KEPT his)? People always talk about Hal being an unrelatable or unlikable character and I’ve never really agreed with that but that ****ty movie seemed determined to prove me wrong lol.
I think Topless Robot did a good job explaining movie Hal
Blake Lively’s Dad: Well, Hal, you used my daughter as a decoy and then cheated to defeat the drones.
Blake Lively: Specifically, you used me as a decoy, but didn’t actually use that to your benefit, meaning you had me shot down for no reason whatsoever.
Blake Lively’s Dad: Now the military is going to refuse the contract, and I’m going to have to fire countless employees. Good men will lose their livelihoods because of you.

Blake Lively: And although you’re supposedly such an awesome pilot, you had a total freakout for no reason whatsoever and ended up destroying your incredibly expensive plane, too.
Hal Jordan: (shrugs) Oh well. Whatcha gonna do?

Blake Lively’s Dad: Christ, what an ***hole.
Newly Unemployed Man: Hal Jordan, you needlessly cost us our jobs, apparently just to be a dick. We are going to beat you up outside this bar.
Hal Jordan: Hyah! (tries to throw punch, ends up throwing giant green fist; men go flying into walls and car windows)
Newly Unemployed Man: Really? The first use of your superpower is going to beat several men who you got fired unconscious?
Hal Jordan: Guess so!
Newly Unemployed Man: Christ, what an ***hole. (falls unconscious)
Topless Robot Presents: The Best Scenes from the Green Lantern Movie | Topless Robot
 

OMG this is good. Thank you for introducing me to this site.


Sinestro: Hal Jordan, Abin Sur was the greatest Green Lantern ever. You embarrass him by wearing his ring. And even though I look like a bad guy with my pencil-thin mustache, the fact that I’ve been fighting for good in this movie so far but also because you’ve been a huge *****ebag, I am obviously right about this. I’m also more likeable than you, too, even though I look like an intergalactic pedophile
 
Can't vouch for the site as a whole, but way back in 2011 someone linked that article and it stuck with me haha
 
I love how every scene ends with someone calling Hal an A-hole. That’s so spot-on.
 
Agreed. GL was so disappointing, considering the possabilities with that mythos and characters etc. I did enjoy the parts on Oa though. ONTH, I knew nothing about Guardians and got pleasantly invested in that film and its characters. Never thought I'd care about a tree and a racoon, but it worked for me.
At first I thought you were talking about the hairy blue Smurfs handing rings to lanterns, then I remembered the title of this thread and the MCU flick discussed here.
 
At first I thought you were talking about the hairy blue Smurfs handing rings to lanterns, then I remembered the title of this thread and the MCU flick discussed here.
:funny:

At first I went: Was I that oddly peculiar in terms of my quite limited English? But then I went: Nah, this is just Aziz' wonderful imagination expressed in a humourus manner as usual. Which we always look forward too. :hrt:
 
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Can't vouch for the site as a whole, but way back in 2011 someone linked that article and it stuck with me haha

The author, Rob Bricken, moved on to Gizmodo and wrote articles about a bunch of genre flicks. His Man of Steel breakdown was fantastic.
 

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