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

I'm going to try and stay away from the obvious answer that GotG was a better movie. Because good movies flop and bad movies make money all the time.

I would say two issues in particular outside of the reviews really had them on opposite trajectories even before release. That means looking more at the trailers and promotional material.

1. It really seemed like they were pushing Green Lantern as "The Next Iron Man" as in the promotion in the lead-up really went out of the way to make it look as much as Iron Man as possible. It made it look like one of those quick cash-grabs jumping on the latest bandwagon and people noticed. GOTG looked far more unique and original.

2. The costume. GL's was in a word, dreadful. Both this film and Fant4stic from that decade really showed how important costuming is as both had their reputations destroyed immediately upon the reveal.
 
Never thought I'd care about a tree and a racoon, but it worked for me.

Did it for you benefit from those low expectations? Me I was never into the GotG but did quite a bit like Nova and so from it having but wasting them it suffered.
 
: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 humours manner as usual. Which we always look forward too. :hrt:
:toth
Your post is very clear and well constructed. :yay:
 
Did it for you benefit from those low expectations? Me I was never into the GotG but did quite a bit like Nova and so from it having but wasting them it suffered.
Yeah, I'd say low expectations (and knowing very little) helped here. But if the executions hadn't been right for me in that first film, I'll probably thought something like "oh, so we have to drag with these in the Infinity and Endgame stories". Which tankfully didn't happen for me, even though Gurdians 2 wasn't as good 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.

I think there are two other key differences between Tony and Hal:

1. Tony is actually portrayed as being good at what he does. He may be an arrogant jerk, but he's clearly arrogant for some good reasons. Whereas Hal mostly comes off as incompetent and cowardly, someone whose full of himself without good cause.

2. As much as the narrative wants you to root for Tony, it also has no qualms with making him suffer a bit, too, or a lot. He has to deal with real hardships, real screwups, and real embarrassment, and the audience is expected to laugh at Tony as well as cheer for him. Whereas the narrative is way, way too kind to Hal Jordan, with everything bad somehow never being his fault.
 
2. The costume. GL's was in a word, dreadful. Both this film and Fant4stic from that decade really showed how important costuming is as both had their reputations destroyed immediately upon the reveal.

Green Lantern deserves bonus points here, too. The Fant4stic costumes were awful, but at least they were cheap. GL's outfit looks just as bad, only it also had the 'virtue' of being ridiculously expensive and contributing to the overbloated budget. They should have *never* made his outfit full CGI.
 
Disclaimer: never seen GL.

I'm curious about something: beyond surface level details and an emphasis on comedy, are these movies similar enough to bother comparing them? feel like the stories they're each trying to tell are so different.
 
Disclaimer: never seen GL.

I'm curious about something: beyond surface level details and an emphasis on comedy, are these movies similar enough to bother comparing them? feel like the stories they're each trying to tell are so different.
They're not really. Other than the space aspect (which is handled completely differently in both movies) and they both feature cocky, jokey male leads I don't see the similarities to compare.

But we compare all SH movies here, so I'm not surprised
 
i think that the difference is that the fan base for these to movies was different. GOTG has a small fan base with little overall lore that wasn't used that much opting for an original story. were as GL just pulled a bunch of things from the comics that just didnt work and mashed them together
 
GotG had so many more appealing elements:

-Good CG, art direction, and settings.
-A unique 1970's soundtrack
-Unique characters like a talking racoon, a tree, and a sarcasm-illiterate brute

What did Green Lantern have? I don't think the filmmakers even asked themselves what's appealing about their movie or the source material that'd get butts in seats.
 
They're not really. Other than the space aspect (which is handled completely differently in both movies) and they both feature cocky, jokey male leads I don't see the similarities to compare.

But we compare all SH movies here, so I'm not surprised

Pretty much. Honestly, despite theoretically involving space a lot, Green Lantern wasn't really *about* space or space-based genre tropes. It was the lowest common denominator Superhero Origin Story, and Oa might as well have been Oz for all it mattered to the story concept. I mean, think about it- aside from a few brief visits to Oa, virtually the entire movie took place on Earth.

Whereas GotG used the forms and themes from "Space Traveling Team of Adventurers" stories that date back to at least Flash Gordon ( and have been used regularly since, from Star Wars to Farscape ). You have the heroes coming from multiple different species ( and interacting with several ), visiting multiple different planets ( none of them Earth ), engaging in space dog fights. . .
 
From a financial perspective the reasons do seem pretty basic-with GL there was a lot of competition that summer, the marketing was not good and the critic reviews were bad while with GotG Marvel Studios had already gotten a lot of goodwill/hype especially given the not that long ago previous team movie The Avengers and being soon after CA:TWS (TWS and GotG both fit the idea that Marvel was expanding, pushing the genre into different sub-genres).
 
I think there are two other key differences between Tony and Hal:

1. Tony is actually portrayed as being good at what he does. He may be an arrogant jerk, but he's clearly arrogant for some good reasons. Whereas Hal mostly comes off as incompetent and cowardly, someone whose full of himself without good cause.

2. As much as the narrative wants you to root for Tony, it also has no qualms with making him suffer a bit, too, or a lot. He has to deal with real hardships, real screwups, and real embarrassment, and the audience is expected to laugh at Tony as well as cheer for him. Whereas the narrative is way, way too kind to Hal Jordan, with everything bad somehow never being his fault.

Stark pays hard for his failings in the opening act which gives him a new outlook on life and a reason for us to cheer for him for the majority of the movie. That’s an important factor. Hal’s “redemption” is never earned the way Stark’s is.
 
Yeah they were clearly trying to do a whole Top Gun thing with Hal - the talented pilot who is too cocky for his own good. Only if Hal was Maverick, he would have not only gotten Goose killed, he would have gotten his entire squadron slaughtered and then somehow would have gotten a promotion for it.
 
Wouldn't say it was a reason GL failed, but also Ryan Reynolds was horribly miscast as GL. If anything, he would've been a better Guy Gardner than Hal Jordan. Reynolds has natural talent at playing wise-cracking foul-mouthed smartasses; whoever thought he should play Hal Jordan was clearly smoking something.

I know lots of folks (especially here on SHH) would've preferred Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, and that's for good reason. You want a hotshot fearless & confident character that can make jokes without coming across as an unlikeable *****e and could still come across as a willing hero? Yeah that's pretty much Fillion's MO, and actually some other actors could've played that too. But that didn't fit Ryan Reynolds' sensibilities.

I'd say the main reason GL failed was that no one who worked on the movie knew how to make a good movie about GL, and no one had a clear vision of what it should've been. The basic concept should've easily worked as a crowd-pleasing movie: a classic story of an unwitting character getting humbled by trials and mishaps and then rising to the occasion at the end to become the hero. But no one who worked on the movie simply cared enough to put any genuine effort in.

Add the fact that WB's Animation department has churned out so many well-made GL stories (whether through STAS, JL/JLU, GL: TAS, or the standalones). That NO ONE at WB had the presence of mind to think "hey we've got our Animation department who know the source material and have already been doing GL for years, maybe we should ask them for some creative input?" is just mind-boggling.
 
Reynolds would've worked fine as Hal. It's not that deep of a role. Especially if the character was written more like his character in The Adam Project rather than a Tony Stark rip off.

The problem was the writing. As has been pointed out, there's no real reason to like Hal. He ****s over his own coworkers, isn't reliable to his family, is a huge flake, and Hal doesn't get humbled really until near the end if at all.
Going off what was said before, Stark was humbled 30 mins in. Thor gets humbled (at least get his powers removed) 30 mins in.
 
Yeah I feel like Reynolds would have been fine if the script had been better and if he wasn’t constantly clashing with the director throughout the film (the latter seems like it was more Martin Campbell’s and WB’s doing than Reynolds). I was never really into the whole Fillion casting. He’s fine in TV shows and I’m sure he would have made a decent Hal but the fancasting of him back then was so insane it really turned me off of it. People acted like he was the ONLY person who could play Hal. Like MadVillainy said, Hal isn’t that difficult of a role to play and plenty of actors could have pulled it off. Unfortunately, with that script and all the cooks in the kitchen, it would have been hard for anyone to come off well.

I do think that MAYBE Bradley Cooper would have been better simply because he was the guy Campbell wanted and so at least the friction between the director and actor wouldn’t have been there. That doesn’t always make a better movie but it might have. Case in point, the topic of this thread. One reason GOTG works so well is because of Chris Pratt, who was the guy that James Gunn wanted for the role. He tested a ton of actors and Pratt was the only one that he felt really made Star-Lord click. And Marvel give him the OK rather than pushing for a bigger star (remember, Pratt was mostly just known for Parks & Rec back then). And that turned out to be the right move.
 
Fillion is cool but I've never been the huge fanboy for him as many have. And his time had passed. He was too old for a starting out Hal Jordan.
 
As others have said it's really bad scripting. I still can't believe the moment where Hal first uses his powers was having him beat the crap out of a bunch of guys who were justifiably pissed off that he cost them their jobs with his showboating.
 
I still recall seeing the part from 0:59-1:03 and wondering what in the ever-loving f*** had I just watched. I've never seen a movie completely and utterly shatter its tone and sense of immersion so thoroughly as in those few seconds. Honestly, whoever decided that that should remain in the movie ought to be thrown out of the industry.

 
If we are simply comparing it to the success of GOTG and why that worked as a cosmic comic book movie while Green Lantern failed...

1. Everything in GOTG looked better. The only pure CGI characters were Groot and Rocket and CGI was used to create worlds and space and the things it made sense to use it to create, but a lot of the aliens were people in makeup and prosthetics, and much better designed. Whereas all the aliens in GL 2011 were CGI (bad CGI) and ugly as ****. GOTG just had more color in general, whereas GL 2011 looked like it was set in the same universe as Superman Returns with its over use of bad CGI and dull washed out look.

2. It commits to its direction as a full on space opera. GL 2011 didn't know what the **** it wanted to be. Was it a standard superhero movie with the hero fighting his former friend turned evil while trying to save his love interest? Was it a space opera where he trains to fight a cosmic threat? The movie tried to do BOTH of these things at once, and there was no cohesion with the storyline because it felt like they literally meshed two movies together without making it seamless on any thematic level. If they had made it more like the Bruce Timm animated series with the more cosmic focus they would have been better off.

3. Chris Pratt is perfectly cast as Star-Lord. I have never felt Reynolds was a good choice for Hal because Hal is not Deadpool. He's basically Tom Cruise's character from the Top Gunn movies if he got a magic space ring. Cocky and arrogant, but still an all-american guys guy that you could have a beer with. Reynolds still felt like the college frat boy in a gross comedy (which I think works for Deadpool). Just a bad fit for Hal. Martin Campbell's original choice was Bradley Cooper and I think that is a better casting for Hal than Reynolds ever was.
 

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