The Official Green Lantern Review Thread - Part 5

[KalMart]

There you have a point. Not counting New Gods and what not, in the DCU the universe is actually probably pretty devoid of life. I mean, the Guardians, allegedly the first beings in the universe, created a Corps responsible for 3600 sectors meaning they generally only have 3600 GLs at any one time(not counting alternates or Honor Guards, and I'm not sure the Honor Guards are in addition to those assigned certain sectors). There's not going to be very much in the way of sentient beings in that universe. Especially when there seems to be a pattern of GLs coming from the same planets in their respective sectors as well. Once Abin passed his ring to Hal, Earth had membership to the Corps locked down with not just the four main GLs of 2814 but a couple others like Jade were members as well at some point. Same is the case with 1417, Sinestro was from Korugar and when he got ousted it went to Soranik Natu of Korugar(who just happens to be Sinestro's estranged daughter). There are probably other such examples.

I have no idea what you just said....but it sounds cool.

 

[KalMart]

"Pretty low" when you're talking in universal terms is still a gigantic number. A massive number. A number that's too big for a human mind to truly comprehend.

Scale it back to the Corp patrols just the Milky Way, and I'll suspend my disbelief. But 3600 for the entire freakin' universe? I'm sorry, I can't do it.

But dude...they're like...really powerful and stuff, no?


Besides...if you can somehow buy that they can fly from galaxy to galaxy....millions of light years et al...in just minutes or such...even just to meet on Oa....the numbers aren't that hard a sell.

 

[moviedoors]

Why just sentient life anyway? I thought The Guardians thought in scales of billions of years. Shouldn't any planet with even the tiniest, most simple microbes be just as worthy of protection? Give them some time, and who knows what those microbes could one day become.

 

[KalMart]

Why just sentient life anyway? I thought The Guardians thought in scales of billions of years. Shouldn't any planet with even the tiniest, most simple microbes be just as worthy of protection? Give them some time, and who knows what those microbes could one day become.

How far is Oa from Earth...or from, say, Kilowog's home planet? When there's a call to meet up...how long does it take for each Lantern to get there?

Now what was that about unimaginable numbers again?

 

[moviedoors]

How far is Oa from Earth...or from, say, Kilowog's home planet? When there's a call to meet up...how long does it take for each Lantern to get there?

Now what was that about unimaginable numbers again?

You're not exactly convincing me here. You're just making me run further in the other direction.

 

[KalMart]

You're not exactly convincing me here. You're just making me run further in the other direction.

That's the point...you either buy it all...or you don't.


Watching over a gazillion galaxies at once doesn't seem quite as unimaginable when you can travel across the universe in a matter of minutes....thanks to a ring.

 

[moviedoors]

That's the point...you either buy it all...or you don't.


Watching over a gazillion galaxies at once doesn't seem quite as unimaginable when you can travel across the universe in a matter of minutes.

No, because even if you can make the trip instantaneously, there's the problem of having enough time in your lifespan to physically visit all of those places. 70,000,000,000,000,000,000, or even 10% of that, is a lot of places.

I know most people don't care about this kind of stuff, but I do. This pre-Hubble view of the universe just makes the whole thing seem kind of petty and small. Give me a universe so vast even The Guardians stand in awe of it.

 

[KalMart]

No, because even if you can make the trip instantaneously, there's the problem of having enough time in your lifespan to physically visit all of those places. 70,000,000,000,000,000,000, or even 10% of that, is a lot of places.

I know most people don't care about this kind of stuff, but I do. This pre-Hubble view of the universe just makes the whole thing seem kind of petty and small. Give me a universe so vast even The Guardians stand in awe of it.

Dude...they make big green glowing shapes with a ring.

Cut'em a little slack in the physical plausibility department.

 

[moviedoors]

Dude...they make big green glowing shapes with a ring.

Cut'em a little slack in the physical plausibility department.

Like I said, there's a line. I'll buy magic rings, but there's a serious disconnect when the universe's greatest threat is this insignificant cloud that ate a couple of worlds. Give me a REAL threat to the universe.

I guess I'm just sick of fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. I yearn for the real thing.

 

[KalMart]

Like I said, there's a line. I'll buy magic rings, but there's a serious disconnect when the universe's greatest threat is this insignificant cloud that ate a couple of worlds. Give me a REAL threat to the universe.

I guess I'm just sick of fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. I yearn for the real thing.

Your line is too thin, considering the concept.

 

[HighFivingMF]

Like I said, there's a line. I'll buy magic rings, but there's a serious disconnect when the universe's greatest threat is this insignificant cloud that ate a couple of worlds. Give me a REAL threat to the universe.

I guess I'm just sick of fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. I yearn for the real thing.

You yearn for real Science Fiction?

 

[moviedoors]

You yearn for real Science Fiction?

Uh, yeah?

Let's get real here. Green Lantern is very tenuously sci-fi. It's fantasy that happens to have aliens.

On the other hand, I loved Thor. It's goofy, it's more or less fantasy, but it at least played with that famous Arthur C Clarke line "any technology, sufficiently advanced, would be indistinguishably from magic." The line moves if the movie itself is actually entertaining.

Perhaps if Green Lantern had been a better movie, I wouldn't be thinking about these kinds of things, but alas, here I am.

 

[KalMart]

Uh, yeah?

Let's get real here. Green Lantern is very tenuously sci-fi. It's fantasy that happens to have aliens.

On the other hand, I loved Thor. It's goofy, it's more or less fantasy, but it at least played with that famous Arthur C Clarke line "any technology, sufficiently advanced, would be indistinguishably from magic." The line moves if the movie itself is actually entertaining.

Perhaps if Green Lantern had been a better movie, I wouldn't be thinking about these kinds of things, but alas, here I am.

Ding!

 

[The Guard]

How was Abin Sur so easily defeated by the Parallax if he was the one responsible for defeating it in the first place?

For the same reason almost anyone can beat anyone at any given time. The element of surprise. Attacking VS retreating. Strength of attack. Parallax may have been stronger than Abin Sur was after just consuming those three aliens. Maybe Abin Sur was younger or stronger or faster when he fought him the first time. Pick one.

2. Why did Sinestro put on the yellow ring after Hal having proved that the ring of will worked?

No one ever said the ring of will didn't work. The issue was that the ring of fear was known to be extremely powerful, period. Sinestro saw the power of fear firsthand, and clearly wanted it, and to see if he could master it. Just because Hal managed to overcome the power of fear when Parallax threatened doesn't mean that it can't still be used. Nevermind that we don't know for sure that the ring couldn't potentially be capable of being more powerful than even Parallax was, in terms of it being a conduit to an almost limitless source of power, much like the green ring. Parallax was basically a Guardian possessed by the power of fear...the ring seems to be a ring that channels it. Sinestro wasn't utterly possessed by it at the end of the film as Krona was shown to be at the beginning. So it seems he stands a better chance of controlling it.

3. I didn't see any qualities presented in Hal at the beginning that would make him suitable GL material in the way that they were describing him to be at the end (voice over by Tomarae)

It was made very clear that it had to do with his humanity, and his ability to overcome fear and act courageously (Keep in mind we haven't seen his full career as a Lantern, we just heard he'll be a great one). Apparently he was the most capable of these things on Earth, or the nearest human the ring could find. That's what the mythos said, that's what the film went with.

 

[DaveMoral]

Like I said, there's a line. I'll buy magic rings, but there's a serious disconnect when the universe's greatest threat is this insignificant cloud that ate a couple of worlds. Give me a REAL threat to the universe.

I guess I'm just sick of fantasy masquerading as sci-fi. I yearn for the real thing.

What do you consider "real sci-fi" though? Star Wars is science fantasy. So is GL. Hell, Star Trek is science fantasy.'

You want real sci-fi? We rarely get that in films and television at all. Maybe an update of 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea?

 

[moviedoors]

What do you consider "real sci-fi" though? Star Wars is science fantasy. So is GL. Hell, Star Trek is science fantasy.'

You want real sci-fi? We rarely get that in films and television at all. Maybe an update of 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea?

Something between Primer and Star Wars would make me happy. Avatar was sci-fi. A couple of fantastic ideas to get everything going married with some distinctly science rooted fiction. A lot of it wasn't explicitly stated in the movie, but Pandora had almost hard sci-fi thought put into it. For just about everything that looked cool in that movie, there was a halfway plausible scientific explanation. I was hoping for more of that in Green Lantern.

 

[Longshot777]

The only thing I really didn't like is when GL was first introduced the Earth's Public.


It wasn't EPIC enough.....NO one on earth except for Carol, his friend, and that evil genius guy...knows that this mysterious hero is NAMED Green Lantern.


It's Not as Epic as when the public first saw Superman and Spiderman.

 

[DaveMoral]

Something between Primer and Star Wars would make me happy. Avatar was sci-fi. A couple of fantastic ideas to get everything going married with some distinctly science rooted fiction. A lot of it wasn't explicitly stated in the movie, but Pandora had almost hard sci-fi thought put into it. For just about everything that looked cool in that movie, there was a halfway plausible scientific explanation. I was hoping for more of that in Green Lantern.

Man, I would never expect that in GL.

 

[Octoberist]

I think people are taking the words 'science fiction' too literally. It's meaning isn't the same as it was years ago.

 

[moviedoors]

I think people are taking the words 'science fiction' too literally. It's meaning isn't the same as it was years ago.

Sure it is. There's all kinds of science fiction now. I just don't like that fantasy sci-fi seems to be the most popular form of it.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Yea, I would like to see more hard Sci-fi. Can't wait for Ridley Scott's Prometheus.

 

[Paradox1]

I gotta agree the sci-fi in gl was embarrassingly non existent. First off light has no mass so the idea of a construct being built by pure light is retarted. It wouldn't even had taken much to fix it, the power of will should of been out. The green energy could of just been manufactured by some kind of energy source like a crystal like in the Gl animated movie. Then you just throw in something like the ring energy can manipulate gravity now the idea of a construct is possible. This is a real life idea that we see everyday in video games. If you can manipulate gravity there isn't anything the GL do that wouldn't be possible.

 

[The Sage]

I gotta agree the sci-fi in gl was embarrassingly non existent. First off light has no mass so the idea of a construct being built by pure light is retarted. It wouldn't even had taken much to fix it, the power of will should of been out. The green energy could of just been manufactured by some kind of energy source like a crystal like in the Gl animated movie. Then you just throw in something like the ring energy can manipulate gravity now the idea of a construct is possible. This is a real life idea that we see everyday in video games. If you can manipulate gravity there isn't anything the GL do that wouldn't be possible.

If you remove the Willpower element, you remove one of the core things Green Lantern is about.

 

[Paradox1]

For an adaption such as this some things have to be sacrificed for the general audience.

 

[The Sage]

For an adaption such as this some things have to be sacrificed for the general audience.

For a Green Lantern adaptation, that's not one of them. It's comic book science fiction, not hard sci-fi.