The Problem with Green Lantern

After seeing (and being disappointed by) the Green Lantern movie, I called my best friend. On the walk back from the theater, I subjected him to a long, mildly incoherent ramble as to the movie's flaws and unmet promises. We both agreed that Marvel's movies were carrying the summer (a tough admission for a DC kid like yours truly).

I wanted to compact all of that rambling into a short (preferably tweetable) bon mot, but I couldn't knock it down to anything sensible or articulate. i just kept having this nagging feeling of wrongness when I thought about the movie, and I could only explain it by tortuous routes through twisted byways of logic and story examples. ("The movie just felt like this, when it should have felt like this instead...")

But just now, almost a week later, something popped into my head that sums up my issues with the movie:

The problem with the Green Lantern movie is that it's about what makes the characters tick, not about what the characters do.

For a straight drama, the former is fine. For an action movie, it's deadly.

If you saw the movie, what did you think? 

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1

Green Lantern
By: YA/takesmeback on Thu June 23, 2011, 23:59:21

I haven't seen the movie, but I'm surprised you didn't state your sentence the other way around. That it was "only about what they do - action - not about what makes them tick (motivation/background).

I watched X-Men First Class tonight. Another comic book based movie. And although I can't say I was a great fan when I watched the previous ones, this one introduced me to most of the main characters, had some action and I walked away liking the movie.

And I just went out on Wikipedia and never knew there were so many characters to that comic book.

So the fact is -- most movies can never beat a book because a book captures our imaginations. One of the only movies that I thought did justice to it's predecessor was Stephen King's short story that became 'Shawshank Redemption'. A gem - both the book and the movie.

So if I'm reading your press correctly, your Boy Toy may become a movie. Hope you have enough power to make sure the screenplay and actors are all that you envisioned.

Don't want anyone walking away say, "I just didn't get it."

2

Re: The Problem with Green Lantern
By: Barry on Fri June 24, 2011, 08:19:27

@YA/takesmeback: Nope, Boy Toy hasn't been made I to a movie yet. Just optioned. :)

Thanks for your thoughts on the movies. I didn't make my statement the other way around because that's the opposite of what I believe. Green Lantern was primarily about how Hal Jordan needs to overcome fear and why, with precious little examples of Jim actually doing it, but plenty of handwrining ABOUT it. :)