The Official Green Lantern Review Thread - Part 4

[Blade X]

Was there a lot of action in this movie? How many fight scenes were in the movie?

What was the best part of this movie?

 

[The Morningstar]

The first draft I read was the greatest super hero movie I've ever heard of, sure parallax was called Legion in it, but thats a small fault compared with everything it does right. His father had a much bigger presence like uncle ben, he had all these really poignant heart breaking scenes with his mother. He had tons of cool "Superman-type" moments like a montage of Hal saving people all over the world once he accepts his responsibility as GL intercut with scenes of Hector going the complete opposite way and using his powers to rob banks and hurt people. Oh he also RECREATED Paris on the airfield for Carol because he never took her there as GL because he never took her as Hal!

Also, the plot was waaaaay more developed. Sinestro had way more scenes that gave you an inkling of what he was to become and did it with more subtly. Not to mention there was FAR more alien action. There was a scene in the first draft where sinestro battles rookies Green lanterns with FOUR GIANT FLOATING SCIMITARS. And after he kicks their ass Tomar-Re approaches and he says "Not today, Tomar. I'm too tired to fight underwater."

The Greg Berlanti first draft marked June 8th 2008, was just sooooooo SUPERIOR to the final product I can't understand how they could take a BRILLIANT script that covered all bases and dumb it down to what we got. The script even had a Guy Gardner Cameo as the ring searched the globe over for suitable Abin-Sur replacements! And where's the scene with the giant entity of fear attacking Oa and Hal fighting it with TEN RINGS! Then him and Sinestro team up to take it on together like Batman and Robin! Sinestro with a Giant SCIMITAR (A weapon they use on Kourogar) and Hal conjuring a giant Samurai sword (Something he's wanted to be since he was a kid)

Ohhhh! And in the first draft there's no Amanda Waller, instead there's a mysterious old government dude in a suit who handles all their alien stuff,the script calls him "Pipe" because he smokes a pipe and he pretty much narrates the film and has been acting as a government liaison between the Corps and Earth...we find out at the end that its ALAN SCOTT and at the end him and Hal have a heart to heart about "Wearing Rings"

OMG...just thinking about the greatness of that script makes me want to strangle the WB and Martin Campbell. How did it ALL go so wrong?

That sounds so awesome. Actually makes me even more angry about this movie. If that was possible.

 

[moviedoors]

i am no hollywood expert. but there is no way that this is how it works.

you think they hired screenwritters and when they were finished they run making the movie? come on.

studio has 100% full control what is in the script.

Yeah, I know that. You said "why bother releasing it" as if they weren't going to put out a finished movie because it didn't turn out so hot.

 

[The Morningstar]

Was there a lot of action in this movie? How many fight scenes were in the movie?

What was the best part of this movie?

If you've seen all the trailers, tv spots and movie clips... you've seen the best parts of the film i'm afraid.

Oa is in the movie for 20 minutes, tops. Hal has a 5 minute training session, which was LITERALLY all shown in the trailers and tv spots and clips.

 

[Rock Sexton]

Side note: Geoff Johns apparently turned the comment feature of his Facebook page off and is blocking users on Twitter who "demand" answers to GL's misgivings

Now, I don't feel he's one of the main guys to blame for this debacle, but if that's all true then he's making it pretty obvious he can't take criticism from fans that expect more from him.

Did he really?

Wow. That is priceless.

 

[Poni_Boy]

I honestly dont think it matters because they didnt film any of those awesome scenes, so I feel a directors cut will just show us more stuff we dont care about like carol.

They filmed a **** ton of solid scenes with Hal, Sinestro and Parallax. They just ran out of money to finish the effects on them; hence, they were cut from the theatrical release.

No way in hell they'll pour money into finishing the effects now just for home release.

 

[Rock Sexton]

And Thor's lesson doesn't register either because it's too damn quick.

Both films are in a rush to get the leads where they need to be in the end.

I honestly don't see that big a difference between the two, in that department.

Everything else in terms of filmmaking, Green Lantern wins, hands down.

And that's my final word on it....

Wow. I don't even know how you can begin to try to even pass that off.

 

[DarkSuperman]

Now this definitely sounds promising.
No wonder Johns shut the door to his office this morning.
He's pissed.

I'd be pissed too! He should've stopped this before it happened! Im sure he read the first draft I did, he should've told them to film that instead. What was he doing in his role exactly? Choosing the shade of green? He's one of the best writers ever! He should've told them what was wrong with the story to begin with! I dont wanna place the blame solely on him because i love him and he's been entertaining me for years, buuuuuuut...his JOB was to be our voice and make sure we get the best Green Lantern film possible.

Sorry to say, he failed us in that regard.

They filmed a **** ton of solid scenes with Hal, Sinestro and Parallax. They just ran out of money to finish the effects on them; hence, they were cut from the theatrical release.

No way in hell they'll pour money into finishing the effects now just for home release.

Ehhh, "Solid" isn't good enough. We need remarkable. With the talent behind this thing we needed outstanding. And after reading the 1st draft tey had everything they needed to make a remarkable film. They just didnt. If George Lucas can make Star wars prequels for 180 million they can make Green Lantern for just as much. How much would it really cost to film a scene between a little boy and his father? Not much. But they shouldve found a way to make it work, money smoney, they've got enough from the dark knight and batman begins to give us what we deserve.

 

[Marvin]

They filmed a **** ton of solid scenes with Hal, Sinestro and Parallax. They just ran out of money to finish the effects on them; hence, they were cut from the theatrical release.

No way in hell they'll pour money into finishing the effects now just for home release.

probably would have been easier on everyone if it wasn't for the CG suits...that seem to be impressing no one.

 

[The Morningstar]

Wow. I don't even know how you can begin to try to even pass that off.

Yea... that's just insanity.

 

[Marvin]

I'd be pissed too! He should've stopped this before it happened! Im sure he read the first draft I did, he should've told them to film that instead. What was he doing in his role exactly? Choosing the shade of green? He's one of the best writers ever! He should've told them what was wrong with the story to begin with! I dont wanna place the blame solely on him because i love him and he's been entertaining me for years, buuuuuuut...his JOB was to be our voice and make sure we get the best Green Lantern film possible.

Sorry to say, he failed us in that regard.

Probably not easy when talking to WB exec's
I rewatched his interviews at comic and his hosting and I can kinda see it now.

As for the script potential. To be honest this happens with pretty much every comic adaptation considering the source material it pulls form.
That arkham escape scene in Begins for example. Gordon and Flass...etc.
Thor, Xmen, and even Transformers.

we as fans are either happy that we even got it, or we campaign against their mediocrity forever.

GL is especially tragic because the first draft of the script was that awesome and still...

 

[Poni_Boy]

Ehhh, "Solid" isn't good enough. We need remarkable. With the talent behind this thing we needed outstanding. And after reading the 1st draft tey had everything they needed to make a remarkable film. They just didnt. If George Lucas can make Star wars prequels for 180 million they can make Green Lantern for just as much. How much would it really cost to film a scene between a little boy and his father? Not much. But they shouldve found a way to make it work, money smoney, they've got enough from the dark knight and batman begins to give us what we deserve.

I use the word "solid" because I didn't see those scenes with any effects added in. Just mo-cap suit wearing actors and space savers. The drama and dialogue in the scenes are was made me like them for what they were; maybe with finished effects they would have been remarkable.

 

[DarkSuperman]

Perhaps they can make a better sequel? Do a Retcon like with Hugh Jackman and "The Wolverine" I mean, thats Geoff Johns specialty right? Taking crap and turning it into gold, just like he does with every underrated comic book character.

maybe he'll take the ground work laid by this movie and "Retcon" the sequel into being something spectacular.

side note: how'd they give singer all that Superman Returns money and then short change my boy Martin Campbell??? Singer had enuff money to build water sets and crystal ice palaces and all kinds of crap. I need this explained to me. The 12 yo inside me is really upset.

 

[Poni_Boy]

Perhaps they can make a better sequel?

I remember the days when sequels were earned, not used as a sales pitch.

 

[Marvin]

Perhaps they can make a better sequel? Do a Retcon like with Hugh Jackman and "The Wolverine" I mean, thats Geoff Johns specialty right? Taking crap and turning it into gold, just like he does with every underrated comic book character.

maybe he'll take the ground work laid by this movie and "Retcon" the sequel into being something spectacular.

side note: how'd they give singer all that Superman Returns money and then short change my boy Martin Campbell??? Singer had enuff money to build water sets and crystal ice palaces and all kinds of crap. I need this explained to me. The 12 yo inside me is really upset.

lol good luck talking johns into switching the lead from Hal to anyone else though lol

 

[DarkSuperman]

lol good luck talking johns into switching the lead from Hal to anyone else though lol

They dont have to switch the lead, there's nothing wrong with Hal. They just needed a better story.

 

[The Morningstar]

Problem with Hal is, to the general movie goer, he just seems like a poor mans Marverick from Top Gun.

 

[J.Howlett]

Morningstar,

How many times are you going to say that? We get it.

 

[The Sage]

No Evil Shall Escape My Sight ...
How to do mythology

Elliot S! Maggin
June 19 2011

I love Green Lantern. Always have. He was the reason I convinced my dad to give me a dramatic boost in allowance in the early Sixties.

I was getting a quarter a week, which was actually in line with the purchasing power of most of my friends – at least the ones who didn’t live on the upward-mobile South Merrick landfill. Around 1960 Julie Schwartz, a senior editor at DC Comics whom I wouldn’t actually come to know for another ten years, started trying out new superhero characters every six months in a magazine called Showcase and then launching most of them off in their own comics. So when I was about eleven comics went from a dime to twelve cents an issue and new titles I just had to follow were coming out with predictable – but nonetheless alarming – reliability. The Green Lantern book by John Broome and Gil Kane was just so damned good I had to do something drastic, so I put together a spreadsheet to illustrate my predicament for Dad. I needed a nickel more a week just to account for the new cover price, and a regular boost every six months (retroactive to the previous half-year) to cover the new stuff from Julie. I needed a bump to forty cents right away, I showed, and my advancing years justified the inflationary spiral to ensue. Dad was not visibly impressed, but he and Mom conferred and a few days later he announced that I would now have to be responsible for several expenses for which they had heretofore paid. To accommodate for this my weekly allowance would now be three dollars. No matter that I now had to cover my own lunches; I had my Green Lantern.

There were many other reasons I loved Green Lantern, most of which are on display in the just-released Warner Bros film of that name. The critics uniformly seem to hate it. They have their heads up their asses. Especially Peter Travers in Rolling Stone who ought to know better. Here’s why:

Green Lantern the film launches a visual and figurative vocabulary – a set of assumptions about the viability of the popular consciousness – that we haven’t seen updated in this medium since Star Wars. The intelligence of the film is on display mostly in what the filmmakers choose to leave out. There have been wormholes, for example, in earlier movies, but they’ve always been accompanied by lengthy digressions where some learned Sagan clone explains in excruciating detail what they are and how they work. Sometimes there are even lame visual aids: toilet paper tubes and fiber optic reading lights and such. By contrast, somewhere toward the top of the second act, Ryan Reynolds in a holographic Green Lantern body suit launches into the maw of one somewhere off the northern edge of the solar system and pops out in the neighborhood of the ancient planet Oa at the geographic midpoint of the Universe. No problem; no further explanation necessary; visually obvious.

The film is full of such shorthanded leaps, all the better to fit a corker of a story. “Too much information,” one movie reviewer cries, drooling with the assumption that what he’s too intellectually lazy to integrate is beyond the grasp of an audience better acquainted with the shared experiences of twenty-first century collective memory than he.

There’s an astonishing absence of cultural sophistication among our supposed cultural gatekeepers these days. This lapse is so prevalent that reportedly the marketing suits at Warner Bros are already casting around for someone to take the fall for their huge but timorous investment in this superb product of American heroic fantasy. Someone somewhere in the arcane process that goes into making a big Hollywood movie understands the protocols of traditional mythology and, what’s more, whoever among the Warner geeks knows this stuff got to make some major creative decisions that kept this presentation consistent not only with its source material but with the classical coding that made it great.

Only one of the creatives who built and grew the Green Lantern character managed to get himself credited for anything in the film titles. Good going, pal, but here are some names that belong up there too: Mart Nodell, my buddy Gil Kane, John Broome, Julius Schwartz, Alfred Bester (who in a fit of chemical-enhanced invention wrote that oath in 1941), Dennis O’Neil, Neal Adams (happy birthday) and an Oscar-style list of people without whom we would never have had this common treasure.

To the suits at WB: As I write this the thing hasn’t even finished its opening weekend and already you’re circling the wagons like a bunch of wanna-be cowboys scared of a few coyote howls. You should know better but, really, we don’t expect you to.

http://www.caveatcorner.com/

 

[Karelia]

If they really did film a bunch of scenes in Oa and ran out of money, that's sad. Because I felt that's really what this movie needed. It explains a lot. I remember Campbell saying he wished they could have done more or something around those lines in an interview.

I think they should have put this out later this year. It might have benefited in every aspect.

 

[Doctor Jones]

There did seem to be a lot of suspicious editing in the film. Especially with Hector.

I mean you would think that Campbell would know better. He's very good with characters.

 

[cryptic name]

Problem with Hal is, to the general movie goer, he just seems like a poor mans Marverick from Top Gun.

I would bet money that most of the general audience for this flick (teens and 20-somethings) have never seen Top Gun.

 

[HighFivingMF]

I would bet money that most of the general audience for this flick (teens and 20-somethings) have never seen Top Gun.

Exactly what I was thinking.

 

[The Morningstar]

haha my ass. Top Gun is an iconic film. It's an 80s legend. It's ****ing Top Gun fer chrissakes!

 

[Marvin]

They dont have to switch the lead, there's nothing wrong with Hal. They just needed a better story.

true but he does his most popular work when he retcons and old character by replacing a charming one out of existence.