Review: Green Lantern

In summers past we've seen big guns like Superman and Spider-man and Batman make big screen appearances, but this summer it's lesser known heroes like Thor and Green Lantern taking to the big screen with varying degrees of success. What follows is my brief review of the new GL film with some spoilers and commentary. You have been warned.

The plot is simple: Alien gives magical ring to brave test pilot which makes him a member of the space police, and unsurprisingly a big monster is coming to destroy the earth.

I feel like they cast Reynolds wanting him to play Kyle, but the executives had decided that they were going to cast Hal because they all remembered Superfriends. Reynolds is a charming actor with a gross streak, but the movie barely lets him run loose. Peter Sarsgaard is pretty awesome, but the whole daddy-issues thing is so belabored by the end of the movie that you just don't care. Everyone else is completely forgettable (Sinestro), underutilized (Kilowog), or just flat-out boring (Carol).

The special effects are ok. Not great, but not bad either. It doesn't help matters that the whole green lantern ring power is pretty silly. Using the power of will to create giant punching gloves and green gatling guns and springs is pretty cheesy stuff. Of course, that's the bread and butter of Green Lantern: using creative, imaginative solutions to fight monsters. Fun visual gags. The movie shies away from all that, instead just letting GL do flips and float around in a green ball except for occasional moments.

What it all comes down to for me is that the movie failed to embrace the raw 'Fun' in the same way that, lets say, Thor did. Let's face it: both super heroes have a lot of silly in them. OA and Asgard are over-the-top locations. Fighting with a magic ring that can create giant fists to punch people, or using a giant hammer, are sillier weapons than a utility belt or super strength.

The difference is that Thor made fun of it, goofing on the hammer, creating a charming supporting cast of superheroes and humans that made it clear you were supposed to smile and have some fun. But GL spends huge blocks of the movie trying to make you feel like OA is Awesome and that the Lantern Corps are a big deal. Unfortunately, it just doesn't succeed; it comes off as unintentionally cheesy. It spends so much time trying to convince you it's the epic start of a massive franchise that it forgets to have the fun that you want. For example: the joy when Peter Parker first figures out how to web-sling; the thrill of a Mutant displaying newly discovered powers; or just the joy of human flight. Reynolds could have done great stuff here, but it's limited to just a few moments sandwiched between so much grandiose plotting. Ugh.

X-Men: First Class is probably the best comic book movie so far this summer. But Thor is just more straight up "fun." Green Lantern just tries so hard that it feels boring; you'd be better off seeing Super 8, which at least has fun. But there's still Captain America around the corner, and it has had the strongest trailer so far. Here's hoping!

Comments

Re:So unimpressed

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Why are you coming to Slashdot to get a demo of what 'humanity' can come up with? You must be angry every day.

Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[eldavojohn]

There's more sacrifice in real life than there are in modern movies. Really, it's an overused tactic from long ago but it has long since bored me when the main character makes a perceived sacrifice and the writers put everything back to normal. For long running series, this is necessary to keep the same characters rolling but a lot of what I see today just makes me feel patronized. Are they targeting a younger age group or afraid that I can't handle loss? And I'm not talking about "Oh boohoo, I have superpowers now and will never know what it's like to be a normal human." I'm talking about real permanent irrevocable loss from a tough decision. Whether it's fun or not gets overlooked in my mind when this act of personal sacrifice for the good is later trivialized.

<Thor Spoiler Alert> That's what bothered me about Thor ... "oh the king is sick, nope instantly better." "Oh, I'll never see Amidala again! Just kidding, there's always a way to restore the waygates." "Oh no, he lost his brother Loki! Wait now Loki's talking to Nick Fury in the post-credits scene." What the hell, Hollywood? I understand that people go to movies to escape reality but what does it even mean when Thor sacrifices any connection to his woman to save an enemy race from genocide and then scenes later it turns out you're just going to make a sequel to undo that? </Thor Spoiler Alert>

What draws me to Sunshine, The Watchmen and Game of Thrones more so than The Green Lantern or Harry Potter? Your friends don't step in and save you at the end and there aren't any phoenix tears to make everything instantly better. Lazy plot devices and disney endings are a dime a dozen--am I the only person that feels this way? I guess profit margin says "yes." Go ahead and check your boxes for love plot, slapstick comedy, action and a happy ending. People have to get sick of your formulas at some point.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[marnues]

Pretty much sums up why I gave up on Marvel and DC at the age of 11.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[bennomatic]

You are absolutely not alone. One of the things that stuck out for me about I am Legend was the hero's ongoing sacrifices. He lost his family. He lost his dog, the last vestiges of his humanity, and finally his life. The story goes on after the movie, but there's no hint of a Legend 2: Zombie Will Smith Fights Back.

Even Black Swan was great in that way. NP gives her all--she gives her very life--to be the perfect white+black swan.

I hate it when movies don't commit.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[ackthpt]

This past weekend I watched Twelve O'clock High. There's a movie about heroes and sacrifice. Probably one of the most honest war movies of the era.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[jomama717]

Of course the ultimate example of what you are talking about is Lord of the Rings. [ducks]

Granted it was written for children and still manages to hold itself up through pure imagination and exploration of a fantasy world - but I think it has set the tone for many fantasy/scifi stories since, including the ones you reference.

If you watch children play with toys (or remember playing with them yourself, as I do) you'll notice a lot of parallels with modern day fantasy/hero movies - the hero is always put into a completely impossible situation, against enemies that are set up to be so evil and powerful that any hope of defeating them is absurd - and yet the hero always prevails. The details of how are irrelevant. How many times in Terminator: Salvation could the old-school terminator have snapped Connor's neck rather than throw him dramatically into a large cushiony vent pipe? Child's play.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[ackthpt]

You are absolutely not alone. One of the things that stuck out for me about I am Legend was the hero's ongoing sacrifices. He lost his family. He lost his dog, the last vestiges of his humanity, and finally his life. The story goes on after the movie, but there's no hint of a Legend 2: Zombie Will Smith Fights Back.

Even Black Swan was great in that way. NP gives her all--she gives her very life--to be the perfect white+black swan.

I hate it when movies don't commit.

Sounds like you, too, are ready to move on to Indy Cinema - those films where you have good cast, good direction and a story which could end in any way possible. Much more impressive than anything at the corporate cinemas these days, where you see the trailer, you see the film.

Here's a thought for a Super Hero film .. someone suddenly is born with super powers/finds a rune which grants powers/is bitten by a radioactive leech/what have you, they're SUPER now, in some capacity. They are the only one like them in the world of ordinary mortals. Have them explore their own moral code with what they could get away with or what wrongs they could right ("That b**tard Gahaffi, I'll just fly over and grab him and take him to the Hague! Up, up and away!") and finally have the film end on a note of remorse, loss or even death - (what will the world do now that Superperson is dead?)

I'd like to see that .. done in a very serious manner, not with a bunch potty humor and in-jokes.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MightyYar]

You aren't alone, but it's just personal preference.

I like unpredictability and misery in my movies. I like my comedies dark. I am a big fan of unhappy endings.

My wife likes predictability.

To me, her movies seem like watching the same movie over and over. To her, she can't possibly see why I'd want to watch something that isn't relaxing and removed from reality.

Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Rachel dieing in The Dark Knight was a pretty good example of a real sacrifice, then again, I am pretty sure that he was going to save her, and was simply lied to about who was where (a point they never really came back to, so you'll miss it if you don't listen carefully before it happens).

I too have to give props to George R R Martin for the Game of Thrones, I have seen the 'main' character die more than once, and characters I hated become likeable, if not loveable (Tyrion). When death happens, it happens like in real life, enemies gloat, friends and family grieve/vow revenge, and the story simply goes on without them (with one annoying exception).

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

As you listed, there are plenty of movies with "realistic" endings. Guess what? Unlike you, most people don't go to summer movies to get depressed. They want a happy ending. You want real sacrifice? Go to the Marine recruiter, do 13 weeks of boot camp, and go to Afghanistan. There's your reality! There's enough of that to find in real life, without needing a movie to give that to you.

Thor is supposed to fit into the larger Avengers cannon that Marvel is putting together, not just be a one-off superhero movie. Don't you think, since Thor is part of the AVENGERS, that maybe, just maybe, they would find a way to get him back to EARTH, where the Avengers are? Don't you think that, since Loki is Thor's enduring nemesis, that they would find a way for him not to be DEAD? You are looking at this from the myopic view of one movie, instead of through what Marvel is doing with the whole cannon, trying not to make the mistakes so many others make with comic superheroes brought to life.

They are aiming for a target audience. Just because you obviously aren't that audience, doesn't mean they are out of line.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Windwraith]

It's a very valid opinion, but you know how media producers cannot stay away from clichés. If sad, unhappy endings happened to be the standard, few movies would be worth watching. Pretty much the same as now but in reverse.

Personally, I enjoy movies that have a good ending, but a hard-earned one.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[vlm]

There's more sacrifice in real life than there are in modern movies.

OK, agreed, but the business model is endless remakes / reboots / resets / reinterpretations.
Lets consider a decent western from the end of the western era... how bout "The Shootist"

Uh, I think thats gonna be a pretty hard sequel or reimagination task. Maybe the kid grows up to be a sniper in WWI and comes home to a "The Deer Hunter" crossover remake kinda thing? Maybe a Dune crossover where they clone the Shootist in to a Ghola and together with the Bene Geserit they save the town from ... uh, all the gunslingers were already dead .. .uh maybe the vampire nest from ringworld? I feel dirty just coming up with these plots, realizing there's probably some coked up studio exec (but, I repeat myself) trying to sell these scripts at this very moment.

As a side issue the weirdest part about The Shootist is it seemed to be set vaguely just before WWI and was made in the very late 60s, so we're getting close to that movie being older than the historical events it portrayed when it was being filmed, what I mean is 1970-1910=60 is rapidly nearing 2011-1970=41

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Black Parrot]

Sounds like you, too, are ready to move on to Indy Cinema - those films where you have good cast, good direction and a story which could end in any way possible. Much more impressive than anything at the corporate cinemas these days, where you see the trailer, you see the film.

Aren't the issues under discussion a problem with the comics the films are based on?

I don't read the comics, but after I see a movie I go read up on the topic on Wikipedia. Seems like nothing is permanent in the comic-verse.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure why you're mentioning Harry Potter there, because it's full of sacrifice that is permanent - in fact death is the core theme of the series. Harry's parents die to protect him (and the power of that sacrifice is a major plot point), Sirius Black dies, Dumbledore dies, and a lot of characters die in the final battle at the end. None of that gets undone, and the books go to great lengths to demonstrate that the cost of attempting to cheat death is horrifically high, and the end result isn't even desirable even if you do pay it.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Black Parrot]

Of course the ultimate example of what you are talking about is Lord of the Rings. [ducks]

If you read the stuff published posthumously, some of Tolkien's stuff is so grim that I find myself wondering whether he had psychological problems.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Quiet_Desperation]

Er... I can't speak for the Potter films, but in the book a number of good guy characters die by the end. I mean, geez, the story starts out with the main character's parents being murdered.

That being said, you are correct in you rassessment of the Green Lantern and Hollywood in general.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[1u3hr]

Don't you think, since Thor is part of the AVENGERS, that maybe, just maybe, they would find a way to get him back to EARTH, where the Avengers are?

Understanding that these plot machinations are all in service of building some "franchise" doesn't make it any easier to swallow.

One thing though: Thor and the heroes of Asgard did fight their wars, occasionally got killed and then were reborn to fight (and drink) again So Marvel didn't invent the endless reboot style of storytelling.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Artifakt]

There apparently isn't going to be a third Fantastic Four film. I doubt there will be a single sequel to Green Lantern. The Star Trek reboot must have not done well enough to get an immediate sequel either, and we're just coming up on the second attempt to reboot the Planet of the Apes, (apparently unconnected to the Ape Lincoln Memorial version).
        It's not just that sacrifice isn't permanent. Things don't get permanently changed in general. For the Fantastic 4 films, why not cure THE Thing? Why not have Reed Richards sell flying cars and other ultra tech to everybody until the world looks different? Why not permanently kill Dr. Doom? For Trek, why not make the 2009 Kirk not a womanizer? Did we really need a new Chekov? (Not that there's anything wrong with having one, but in the original series, he was added to target the same young girl audience that was interested in the Monkees - not exactly a good reason to add one for the film).
Hollywood slavishly retains some things and drops others, and usually doesn't see the bigger picture. In the original Wild Wild West, the two characters formed a balanced pair, one mostly Physical, one mostly Mental. The fact that we never saw the train crew in the original helped play up that fact, because the viewers didn't worry about whether they were there more to support the physical actions of West or the mental feats of Gordon. Original Trek did the same thing, but with a Physical-Mental-Emotional triad. Does anyone think that the people who made the film Wild Wild West took that into account one way or the other before deciding to show the train crew, or make the only source of comedic relief a 'pseudo-poofter' angle?

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Ghostworks]

So far as Thor goes, sacrifice was not one of the things that bothered me. I expected Odin to be fine, since it would otherwise be Ragnarok, and I expected Loki to survive, because Loki is the reason the Avengers were formed in the comics. A comic fan and a non-fan viewer will see two slightly different movies, because the viewer may wonder "when does the villain die" while the fan will wonder "how does this sync up with canon and the Avenger movie coming out next year."

Thor was irritating to me only because 1) they had to "science-up" the gods, and 2) because Thor's lesson in humility seemed incomplete and forced due to time constraints.

By point (1), I mean that they could not have true "gods". They had to be "a highly-evolved, long-lived race that primitives on some planes would worship as gods and build a mythos around." Yggdrasil* can't be a literal, mystical tree mapping the 9 worlds of the Norse cosmology, but is a metaphor for a network of wormholes between planets. And so on. I can only assume this was done as a preventative measure, just in case middle-America decided it couldn't cotton to the notion of strange gods in a fantasy, and decided to just stay home instead. (*Sidenote: why on Earth does Yggdrasil need to be in the firefox spellcheck dictionary?)

By point (2), I mean that the intent always seemed to be that Thor would live among the mortals, become a champion to them, and learn humility before he could return to Asgard (or at least get Mjolnir back). He got Mjolnir back at the very end, mostly because Odin (or the director) said "okay, this is running long, let's finish up."

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Quiet_Desperation]

If I had the budget, I'd film Mark Waid's "Irredeemable".

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Sarten-X]

Your friends don't step in and save you at the end.

It sounds like you need some better friends.

Perhaps I'm too young, but I've had friends come traveling overnight by car to help me when I needed it. A friend from my childhood went out, got into heroin, watch a dozen people die in front of her, and has since rebuilt her life into a reasonable facsimile of success. Happy endings do happen, and people can be loyal. Now, granted, having the ability to rebuild a life usually requires good friends, and having good friends usually requires being a decent person in the first place, but there are exceptions. Don't be an ass, and you'll find plenty of karma to work life out.

What's the fun in a story where everything just goes wrong? Oh, sure, there's a few things that pull it off well, like a certain Pisan tower, but they're best viewed as works of art rather than works of entertainment. A significant part of the fun in a movie is seeing how the hero can pull things together at the end. Maybe he apologizes to his friends, and assembles a team of dedicated sidekicks to combat some evil. Maybe he falls into an inventive trance and builds a perfect widget to save the day. Maybe he turns an earlier defeat into motivation to improve. Maybe he gives up, accepts the status quo, and realizes that he's actually the one causing problems.

The resolution is half of the story. If you don't want a happy ending, don't let the movie end. Walk out. When the Big Bad Monster is coming to eat the hero's soul, just leave and assume the hero's defeated. Are you missing something you really want to see, anyway?

Real life does have its happy endings, but they aren't placed squarely in front of your eyes. Go look for them. Go look for the kid graduating high school despite a brain injury in his third year. Go look for the guy who walks into a road, stopping traffic from hitting a child. Go look for the friend who will drop everything and come across the country to help clean up a deceased parent's house. Go find the other half of life.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the experience of trench warfare in WWI, it would be hard for him not to have some issues.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more sacrifice in real life than there are in modern movies. Really, it's an overused tactic from long ago but it has long since bored me when the main character makes a perceived sacrifice and the writers put everything back to normal.

Darn these modern movies! Whatever happened to the good old movies that didn't do this kind of stuff. Classics like "It's a Wonderful Life". Oh, wait.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

as a note, it appears haven't read the last harry potter installment. hopefully they don't gloss over all those sacrifices in the movie though, otherwise you're rant would hold true on most points.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[ackthpt]

You aren't alone, but it's just personal preference.

I like unpredictability and misery in my movies. I like my comedies dark. I am a big fan of unhappy endings.

My wife likes predictability.

To me, her movies seem like watching the same movie over and over. To her, she can't possibly see why I'd want to watch something that isn't relaxing and removed from reality.

Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.

Hollywood loves your wife's tastes and is catering to them, not yours. Interesting bit on the BBC this weekend, in analysis - many films are being geared to be friendly to the Chinese audiences - Hollywood knows where the money is.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[parlancex]

Without revealing any spoilers I think you should watch The Dark Knight. I enjoyed that movie immensely because it doesn't do any of the things you described. There are still some good movies out there, but they're pretty damn rare these days.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[icebraining]

Well, there's Boromir. It was an important character in the story until he was killed, sacrificing himself.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Sarten-X]

Don't think of it as a franchise. Think of it in the same way that Marvel does/wants us to think they do: It's a single enormous story, told in several parts from several perspectives.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MBGMorden]

Rachel dieing in The Dark Knight was a pretty good example of a real sacrifice, then again, I am pretty sure that he was going to save her, and was simply lied to about who was where (a point they never really came back to, so you'll miss it if you don't listen carefully before it happens).

Slow to comprehend things huh?

You know, come to think of it, if you listen real closely during the end of The Empire Strikes Back, I believe that Darth Vader may actually be Luke's father. He kinda hints at it after he chops off Luke's hand.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[vlm]

(*Sidenote: why on Earth does Yggdrasil need to be in the firefox spellcheck dictionary?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil_Linux/GNU/X

It generally took the same beatings in the early 90s that Ubuntu took in the late 00s WRT to appealing to the n00bs, although they got some extra frying for trying to charge way too much money in a market where the competition was mostly free. They also got flamed for not including some source code, which wouldn't have been so bad if they weren't trying to overprice it.

My personal, possibly faulty, recollections are it was more or less free SLS except it was some years later to market than SLS and you got to pay $100 for it...

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Duhavid]

See Command Decision.
Some similarities in plot, but another good movie ( IMHO ).

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[__aamnbm3774]

I was really excited for the sequel to Wall Street. But it was a shithole.

Gordon Gekko steals from his daughter, she disowns him, he turns that money into a trillion fucking dollars....donates an insignificant amount of that money to some bullshit cause, and they all make up....right at the end of the movie.

It felt so 'tacked on' and pointless. Let the man be an asshole, that's why Michael Douglas won an academy award in the first one. He was heartless, and the plot wasn't so jarring. It didn't even make sense when the curtains closed.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MBGMorden]

To sum degree I think it's a bit unfair to cite characters dieing in the last installment of a 7-8 movie story arc as having any real significance. When you kill them the far along the characters are basically already spent. In the cases you cite too, those characters aren't really the main core. For real sacrifice in Harry Potter, they should have killed of Hermoine or Ron mid-series. THAT would have had a major effect.

My personal favorite of sacrifice was Terminator 2. They played that perfectly. Arnold's character was the weaker of the two terminators sent back, but they still managed to keep capturing that recurring theme from the first movie for BOTH terminators: these things are damned hard to kill. The T-800 kept getting up, even when you thought he was toast, it kept coming.

Then, after you were like "YES, the other Terminator is dead. He made it!", they STILL kill him off, but in a valiant and awesome way.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

The endings you seek went the way of the grues.

Now that being said - I can understanding why we don't have as many any more. Everyday life is filled with bad endings, bad choices, missed opportunities. Movies are an escape for a reason.

Personally I like a mix. Game of Thrones is great for the reasons you describe; but I liked Thor's ending as well. The important part of Thor was that he didn't *know* his sacrifice wasn't permanent when he made it. The later impermanence of it is largely irrelevant to the story.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[gstoddart]

Sounds like you, too, are ready to move on to Indy Cinema - those films where you have good cast, good direction and a story which could end in any way possible. Much more impressive than anything at the corporate cinemas these days, where you see the trailer, you see the film.

Or, you end up watching something like Enter The Void, and wishing you could have the last 161 minutes of your life back.

It may have been a good film, but it was well over 2 hours of film what was a cross between Midnight Express, Trainspotting, and something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel ... all while having had a generous dose of peyote. The 5 minute cut scenes of nothing but sound and light, for instance, left me wanting to stop the DVD.

Sometimes Indy films are art-house and fringy to the point that everyone else finds themselves wondering WTF they've been watching -- while die-hard cinema geeks talk about imagery and subtext the rest of us never saw, and sneering how the uneducated masses can't appreciate a film like that.

I'm the first to admit my film tastes run to the mindless action film -- because I hate watching a movie that at the end I don't know anything more about than before I watched it. Give me car chases, giant robots, spaceships, and girls in tight spandex. I'm sure the fault lies in me, but I've decided I'm OK with that.

Unfortunately, the list of "critically acclaimed" indy films that I've watched and simply didn't "get" has pretty much soured me on them. It's like post-modernism -- if you're not deeply involved in it, it just sounds like gibberish.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Fnord666]

It sounds like you need some better friends.

Like the old saying goes:

Friends help you move;
Good friends help you move bodies.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you have common sense but just look around you... these people don't want to give up comic books. Even our fearless leader here hardly says a peep unless it's to ramble on about comic book movies or video games.
 
Maybe you've matured. I'd like to think so. If this is the case and you're looking for hi-tech and science you really should move on. Slashdot has lost its wit a long time again.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[obarthelemy]

I remember having a very strong sense of loss at several points while reading the books way back when: at the very end of the books, all elves and mages leave; bilbo repeatedly is described as dying soon; frodo too, and he takes the boat. The ones left behind do not fare much better, I remember feeling sad for Aragorn, essentially reigning over decay, and the remaining hobbits, once again ensconced in their little lives. The only ones who seem to fare OK are the dwarves, back into their mines.

I found it much darker than comics, with their endless resurrections and deus ex machinas.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[elrous0]

It's just reflecting its comic book origins. No one ever really dies in comic books. No real sacrifices are made. Dead heroes are always brought back. Everything bad just turns out to be in some alternate universe. Pam always finds Bobby in the shower at the end.

But if you want to cite the most egregious example of this, you have to go back a lot further than modern superhero movies. The "Oh, I'll just reverse time and take it all back" cheat ending of the original Superman in 1978 was the worst example by far. It was a shame too, as that was one of the best superhero movies ever made (excluding the aforementioned lame-ass cheat at the end). If they had only had the balls to leave Lois Lane dead at the end, it would have gone down as a true legend of a film.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[fahrbot-bot]

Your friends don't step in and save you at the end and there aren't any phoenix tears to make everything instantly better. Lazy plot devices and disney endings are a dime a dozen--am I the only person that feels this way?

Nope. Actions without consequences, success without sacrifice - all too annoyingly Disney for me. Some recent movies do buck this trend. Someone mentioned Black Swan; how about Body Heat (from way back when). For something a bit more classic, read/watch Hamlet (almost everyone dies) or Romeo and Juliet (hero and heroine commit suicide) - sorry "spoiler alert" :-)

I also highly recommend the movie Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - haven't read the play, but imagine it's also good - which is Hamlet from the perspective of the supporting characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern .

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[asdf7890]

Hollywood loves your wife's tastes and is catering to them, not yours. Interesting bit on the BBC this weekend, in analysis - many films are being geared to be friendly to the Chinese audiences - Hollywood knows where the money is.

In some territories Pulp Fiction was re-edited so that all the segments followed in correct chronological order, as they didn't think the audience in those places would accept the events being told the way they were for the rest of us because their story telling traditions were far more fixed format-wise and the execs thought the disjoint style of the original edit would be too jarring for them to find interesting or enjoyable.

Not quite the same as tweaking the standard edit we all see to account for possible differences in how the average Chinese audience member takes in entertainment, but Hollywood has been tweaking films for foreign markets for many years where they think it might improve sales. This is separate from censorship, where the differing cuts are usually imposed by an official body in the given territory in order to fit to locally defined standards of what is acceptable: in this case the studios are self editing to try make more money.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[zzsmirkzz]

more so than The Green Lantern or Harry Potter?

I take it, you did not read the Harry Potter books and are only judging the movies. There is permanent loss in the sacrifices of Harry and the other wizards of the world - many die (including both his parents - at the very beginning) in the fight and a long repeated saying, even in the World of Magic, death is permanent, there is no coming/bringing someone back.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[elrous0]

Comparing the Terminator films is always interesting to me. The first one is really just about survival. The second one has hope, a sense that the future is mutable. The third is fatalistic. And the fourth returns to a new kind of hope.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[mcmonkey]

Here's a thought for a Super Hero film .. someone suddenly is born with super powers/finds a rune which grants powers/is bitten by a radioactive leech/what have you, they're SUPER now, in some capacity. They are the only one like them in the world of ordinary mortals. Have them explore their own moral code with what they could get away with or what wrongs they could right ("That b**tard Gahaffi, I'll just fly over and grab him and take him to the Hague! Up, up and away!") and finally have the film end on a note of remorse, loss or even death - (what will the world do now that Superperson is dead?)

I'd like to see that .. done in a very serious manner, not with a bunch potty humor and in-jokes.

Isn't that what Hancock did? Not 100% serious, but it did look at real-world consequences such as, yes Superman you stopped the train before it hit the car stalled on the tracks. Now can you help us clean up the wreck of a train that suddenly goes from 60 MPH to 0?

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MaWeiTao]

You're absolutely right. The simplistic and safe storylines in addition to constant, gaping plotholes are two big reasons why I haven't been motivated to watch movies in years. I'll catch something from time to time, although never in theaters. But generally, I always feel like most movies are patronizing the way everything is spoon fed to the audience.

There are some indie gems, but a lot of that is lacking too, but for different reasons that the mainstream.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[crow_t_robot]

AGREED. Add "The Wrestler" to the list.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[jomama717]

I found it much darker than comics, with their endless resurrections and deus ex machinas.

I suppose "endless" is a matter of opinion but LOTR certainly has no shortage of either.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[St.Creed]

I agree. There have been some arthouse films I thoroughly enjoyed, though. The Thin Red Line was very, very impressive on a big screen with good audio. Avatar was a long snooze by comparison. And the weird movie from David Lynch, Lost Highway... well, I can't say I knew what it was all about, but it had a plot, a start, some ending and it was a well made movie with a great soundtrack.

Most other indy movies are meh... but so are a lot of big budget movies. I've been to Fortress (gawd that was so bad) and Species (with a girl on a date. Last time she ever looked at me). Much worse than any indy movie I've seen.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Sir_Eptishous]

I'll queue up Porkys for ya.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Watchmen?

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[mdielmann]

<Thor Spoiler Alert> That's what bothered me about Thor ... "oh the king is sick, nope instantly better." "Oh, I'll never see Amidala again! Just kidding, there's always a way to restore the waygates." "Oh no, he lost his brother Loki! Wait now Loki's talking to Nick Fury in the post-credits scene." What the hell, Hollywood? I understand that people go to movies to escape reality but what does it even mean when Thor sacrifices any connection to his woman to save an enemy race from genocide and then scenes later it turns out you're just going to make a sequel to undo that? </Thor Spoiler Alert>

Sucks when they actually follow the mythology, doesn't it?

Odinsleep isn't permanent until Ragnarok. Anyone who knows anything at all about the Thor comic knows Odin is going to wake up, so that isn't a surprise.

Given the presumption of a technological solution to travel between the various worlds/realms, why would you think it could never be done again? Given the mythological premise, Bifrost lasts until Ragnarok, in which case we still expect any issues with its use to be transient, or of a political nature (Odin says no).

Loki is the trickster, and known for worrying about his own skin more than pretty much everything else except playing pranks. Given the personality, does it seem plausible that he would sacrifice himself if he didn't have to? Given the premise in the movie, he was well versed in the secret paths between worlds. when he fell, I was certain he wasn't giving up on life, but making the others think so while he took one of those paths.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

("That b**tard Gahaffi, I'll just fly over and grab him and take him to the Hague! Up, up and away!") and finally have the film end on a note of remorse, loss or even death - (what will the world do now that Superperson is dead?)

A great throw-away joke in the "Venture Brothers"; Captain Sunshine nabs villian "The Monarch" and takes him to prison. We find this out because The Monarch is joking with his henchmen "They let me walk out, its like he never heard of due process!"

Bundling people up and dropping them off at the Police Station is not real useful in the real world. Do Superheros ever show up at trials to give testimony?

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[DurendalMac]

Hancock was disappointing. It could've been much better than it was and had some great elements in the character, but they mired it up with Charlize Theron's character not making much sense and the massive contrivance of the guys from prison deciding that they'll break out and kill the invincible guy with fucking guns (you know, the things that can't hurt him) right when he just happens to be vulnerable due to yet another contrivance in the script. I wanted that movie to be so much better than it was.

But I can certainly agree with the sentiment of wishing to see that kind of movie.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[RMingin]

They made that movie. It was called Hancock, and got panned pretty hard. They did rehab the ending to Hollywood-happy at the last minute, but it otherwise follows your formula pretty closely. I rather liked it, but most folks didn't.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Grishnakh]

The third was crap. It's just like the Alien series: the first two were great, but in different ways, and then the third one came along and ruined everything.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[lymond01]

There are a lot of great comic stories (and they don't have to be graphic novels). So far, Hollywood has yet to put any of them to good use.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Joe Mucchiello]

Real characters, important in the books, die in the 4th and 5th books. They just got so little screen time in the movies that their deaths were rendered impotent by the films.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[RoccamOccam]

I just watched the remake of True Grit this weekend. I think that you might enjoy that movie.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MikeBabcock]

You missed the headmaster's death in the Harry Potter series somehow? Sure, its mostly happy endings but there are some real tragedies in the series as well. On a whole its better than many. Canon or not, Professor X and Jean Grey were both allowed to be destroyed in the third X-men movie as well.

On the whole though I agree.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that in the first Harry Potter book, the professor who has Voldemort stuck to him gets killed when Harry burns his face off with his bare hands? His parents have also died. The extremely aged Nicholas Flamel and his wife, though not actually appearing, have sacrificed their philosopher's stone, and therefore their own lives, to stop it from falling to Voldemort. The second book had the flashback death of Myrtle. She persists as a ghost, but the books make clear that the ghosts aren't truly the person themselves, just a sort of imprint of them, much like magical portraits and photographs. In the fourth book, Barty Crouch and Cedric Diggory die. In the fifth book, Sirius Black, a fairly significant character that we could have expected to live for the standard hollywood ending, dies as do a bunch of Order members, although none of those are characters the reader really knows. In the sixth book, a lot of people die, including some minor characters some of whom had been around since the first book, as well as Dumbledore. In the 7th book, all kinds of people die.

So sure, the three main characters survive. It doesn't have the "real sacrifice" of a greek tragedy. Nevertheless, the Harry Potter series is a terrible example of the kind of series where no-one ever dies and everything always ends happily without moral ambiguity.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Grishnakh]

It sounds like you need some better friends.

As the other poster said, "friends help you move, good friends help you move bodies".

That said, the big problem I have with friends is that it seems to me that you make your best friends when you're very young, and that it's really really hard to find new friends (the good kind, as defined above) later in life. Basically, it seems like you make your best friends either in grade/high school or in college, and once you're out in the "real world", that's it, because now everyone is getting married and starting families, and doesn't have time to make new (good) friends with anyone. Add to this the fact that many people (especially college-educated professionals as many on Slashdot undoubtedly are) move around in their adult years, rather than staying in the same town/region where they grew up. Plus the fact that many "geeks" tend to be introverted.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it just doesn't seem like it's that easy to find new friends (the kind who will help you bury a body) if you're, say, 35 and move across the country to a new city for a job. It's not like when you're 19 and have tons of free time to hang out with people and get to know them, plus an easy way to meet them (i.e., you meet them in classes, dorms, etc.).

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Very similar to Twelve O'Clock High, and slightly earlier, was The Dawn Patrol. (They actually made that one twice - both are very good. If you liked Twelve O'Clock High, you might want to give either Dawn Patrol a watch. British film, WW1 fliers, definitely NOT Disney.)

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[bzipitidoo]

Warning: I'm going to spoil your fond remembrances of T2!

Terminator was much better than T2. Terminator had plenty of flaws. (For instance, what is the deal with frickin time travel being so popular? Time travel is such an overused, tired, totally lame plot helper. It's our era's deus ex machina.) But on the whole the story is just plain better. The reason to watch T2 is to enjoy the special effects and action scenes, not the plot. T2 pushes forward the idea that the villanous, evil, unstoppable terminator can be co-opted with the flip of a switch. Urgh. It's like nothing is related, nothing depends on anything else, there is no history. There isn't any reason or logic for anything. Suppose in T3 (which I have not seen), they did the same thing? Just like that, that shape shifting liquid metal terminator is on our side. Or, heck, let's do a brain transplant or implant on young Connor, make him join the terminators, and now Sarah has to undo the conversion. For T2, I understand Schwarzenegger forced them because he wanted to play a good guy, so I don't blame the writers for that part at least. That doesn't absolve them for wanting to do T2 in the first place.

And I found the sacrifices in T2 especially cheesy and obnoxious. They die for ... ignorance! Yes, they bravely die to destroy the dangerous knowledge that leads to the creation of the terminators. Yep, that computer "genius" guy, after Sarah tries to murder him, joins her "cause" with astonishing rapidity, and bravely finishes the job by killing himself! The Terminator does likewise at the end. Never mind the logical difficulties and basic stupidities of such thinking.

In contrast, Harry Potter had a pretty good mix of random death and sacrifice. Admittedly, a character like Hedwig the owl had "red shirt" written all over her. Some of the deaths and escapes were a bit too convenient. But mostly, the fatalities are understandable, and except for R.A.B., the sacrifices are not cheesily certain. Life is chancy, and sometimes when people take risks, they pay the ultimate price. That's war.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[fremsley471]

Tolkien spent his war on the Somme, in the summer of 1916. In case anyone is unaware, this is the British by-word for slaughter. The French have Verdun, the Russians Stalingrad, Australian and Kiwis Gallipoli. Tolkien would have been an intimate part of the emerging mechanised slaughter of WWI at its peak.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Chris Burke]

The first fifteen premise-defining minutes of Hancock were fantastic. The delivery on that premise was awful.

So yeah, so disappointing.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a setup movie so he gets to be in the avengers, they make some money, and we have some fun.

And the Odin sleep is actually canon.

I did have a lot of problems with Loki's motivations though.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Chris Burke]

I also highly recommend the movie Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - haven't read the play, but imagine it's also good - which is Hamlet from the perspective of the supporting characters Rosencrantz and Guildenstern .

The play is also really good, but also goes a little farther and to darker places. One difference I noticed (reading play and watching movie in close proximity) was that in the part with the players, and "The Rape of the Sabine Women... or rather Woman... or rather Alfred," Alfred isn't some weird looking goon, but rather a young boy. I guess they didn't want to broach the subject of underage male prostitution in the film.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Ihmhi]

Read Deadpool or Squirrel Girl. Sure, you go through the exact same tropes, but at least it's hilarious.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Raenex]

Here's a thought for a Super Hero film

Another vote for the Watchmen. It's what you describe.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Rakarra]

[spoilers abound]

Well, those of us familiar with the Thor canon know that Loki was in no danger of actually dying. And for Thor, what happened was worse than dying, it was Loki's literal fall from grace. Did anyone in the audience actually think that Loki falling into the space out there would kill him or had the capability to do so? Hell, did anyone in Asgard actually think that?

And honestly I saw far more sacrifice in Harry Potter than I did in, say, Watchmen. Harry/Hermione/Ron form an unbroken triangle, but every other facet of his life is systematically destroyed, starting with his parents, then a school friend, then the godfather who was supposed to provide a home, then his favorite teacher, followed by a good number of the Order who was protecting him. They're not resurrected with comic-style retcon either, all those characters are dead and stay dead.

You have a good point about the phoenix tears, it was a problem with the second book (and especially the ineptly-directed second movie), and its plotting, basically a retread of the first book, is probably a big reason why it's most fans' least favorite of the series.

I haven't read Game of Thrones (or seen the series), but I've been intrigued. It sounds good.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Rakarra]

You are absolutely not alone. One of the things that stuck out for me about I am Legend was the hero's ongoing sacrifices. He lost his family. He lost his dog, the last vestiges of his humanity, and finally his life.

Unless you go by the far superior 'alternate ending.' Will Smith's suicide at the end of the theatrical version of I am Legend made no sense. It was unnecessary, since the grenade would have gone off regardless of whether he was with it or not. There was certainly space in the coal chute. He simply chose to die, which sort of fit the tone of the movie.

Here's a thought for a Super Hero film .. someone suddenly is born with super powers/finds a rune which grants powers/is bitten by a radioactive leech/what have you, they're SUPER now, in some capacity. They are the only one like them in the world of ordinary mortals. Have them explore their own moral code with what they could get away with or what wrongs they could right

Another Will Smith film, Hancock, started out that way, and it was quite interesting.. until the 'twist' in the middle that I was a bit turned off by.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Twelve O'clock High. For a second I had it confused with Three O'clock High.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MightyYar]

many films are being geared to be friendly to the Chinese audiences - Hollywood knows where the money is.

Well, they'd love that... but China only lets in 20 Hollywood movies per year!

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Rakarra]

Warning: I'm going to spoil your fond remembrances of T2!

Terminator was much better than T2. Terminator had plenty of flaws. (For instance, what is the deal with frickin time travel being so popular? Time travel is such an overused, tired, totally lame plot helper. It's our era's deus ex machina.) But on the whole the story is just plain better. The reason to watch T2 is to enjoy the special effects and action scenes, not the plot. T2 pushes forward the idea that the villanous, evil, unstoppable terminator can be co-opted with the flip of a switch. Urgh. It's like nothing is related, nothing depends on anything else, there is no history. There isn't any reason or logic for anything. Suppose in T3 (which I have not seen), they did the same thing? Just like that, that shape shifting liquid metal terminator is on our side. Or, heck, let's do a brain transplant or implant on young Connor, make him join the terminators, and now Sarah has to undo the conversion. For T2, I understand Schwarzenegger forced them because he wanted to play a good guy, so I don't blame the writers for that part at least. That doesn't absolve them for wanting to do T2 in the first place.

A flick of the switch? That's a horrible simplification that does a great disservice of the plot (such as it is). I don't think it's a great stretch to believe that they couldn't remove, reprogram, and replace the T200's computer core.

Yup, it's true, they died for ignorance. There was the notion that too much knowledge -can- be dangerous, and that a tipping point will be reached where inventions race on outside of human control. Do you really think this won't be a problem? As much of a technologist as I am, I admit the problem of "dear God, what have we unleashed" is a realistic and horrifying one. For some reason that works for me, though a similar idea killed my enjoyment of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. But I will concede this is a little bit of a plot hole -- killing one scientist isn't going to stop AI from happening. Human progress has never come down to one person making great leaps forward to exclusion of all others, as much as we enjoy the celebration of individuals. I suppose the ending came down to the notion that "the end" may someday come, but we don't know for certain anymore. They'd stopped one possible avenue, so the future was no longer set in stone. It could go in any direction.

While I thought T3 was generally bad, it did have a few good plot points:

1) Fixed the plot hole of the second movie by saying that Judgement Day was inevitable. That humanity, no matter what, would always progress to the point where machines of that level of sophistication and intelligence were possible.
2) The T200 was a good guy again, but the next T200 that Conner saw would kill him.
3) The fanservice terminator girl started taking out all of Conner's future lieutenants, people who would become leaders, when they were just kids. Good move.

In contrast, Harry Potter had a pretty good mix of random death and sacrifice. Admittedly, a character like Hedwig the owl had "red shirt" written all over her. Some of the deaths and escapes were a bit too convenient. But mostly, the fatalities are understandable, and except for R.A.B., the sacrifices are not cheesily certain. Life is chancy, and sometimes when people take risks, they pay the ultimate price. That's war.

Unfortunately Hedwig needed to die to serve the plot. Harry had to be isolated, so killing off his means of communication served two things -- No more sending covert notes, and it killed part of his emotional connection to the school the wizarding world in general.

Life is chancy, and sometimes when people take risks, they pay the ultimate price. That's war.

One thing I liked about Sirius Black's death is that it demonstrated the consequences of rashness -- Harry's rashness for rushing to the Department of Mysteries which was reflected by Sirius's own rashness through the book, with his "risk == fun" philosophy.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[CubicleView]

I despise that movie. Professor X's mind was transfered to a vegetable, a meat one, that wakes up at the end of the movie. Jean Grey was already destroyed and hinted at rebirth in the second movie, are we expected to care if she's dead at the end of the third as well? Cyclops appears to have been disintegrated at the very beginning of the movie, in a very pointless way and no one really missed him or grieved or anything, Wolverine just maybe looked surprised for a second or two. Juggernaut, possibly the most powerful mutant from the cartoon (I never read the comics) bumps his head (dies?) and presumably gets disintegrated with the building he was in. Magneto gets his powers back at the end. The list goes on...

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[1u3hr]

Don't think of it as a franchise. Think of it in the same way that Marvel does/wants us to think they do: It's a single enormous story, told in several parts from several perspectives.

With respect, bollocks. They think of it as a franchise.. That's why they never will actually resolve any story, never really kill off any costumed hero or villain -- because it has to go on forever.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[MBGMorden]

Warning: I'm going to spoil your fond remembrances of T2!

Terminator was much better than T2. Terminator had plenty of flaws. (For instance, what is the deal with frickin time travel being so popular? Time travel is such an overused, tired, totally lame plot helper. It's our era's deus ex machina.) But on the whole the story is just plain better. The reason to watch T2 is to enjoy the special effects and action scenes, not the plot. T2 pushes forward the idea that the villanous, evil, unstoppable terminator can be co-opted with the flip of a switch. Urgh. It's like nothing is related, nothing depends on anything else, there is no history. There isn't any reason or logic for anything. Suppose in T3 (which I have not seen), they did the same thing? Just like that, that shape shifting liquid metal terminator is on our side. Or, heck, let's do a brain transplant or implant on young Connor, make him join the terminators, and now Sarah has to undo the conversion. For T2, I understand Schwarzenegger forced them because he wanted to play a good guy, so I don't blame the writers for that part at least. That doesn't absolve them for wanting to do T2 in the first place.

And I found the sacrifices in T2 especially cheesy and obnoxious. They die for ... ignorance! Yes, they bravely die to destroy the dangerous knowledge that leads to the creation of the terminators. Yep, that computer "genius" guy, after Sarah tries to murder him, joins her "cause" with astonishing rapidity, and bravely finishes the job by killing himself! The Terminator does likewise at the end. Never mind the logical difficulties and basic stupidities of such thinking.

Warning: I've rewatched T2 less than 2 years ago - I'm not viewing the movie in hindsight.

I think you're complaining about one of the main parts of the show that make it good. The whole POINT that they were emphasizing throughout that movie was that the Terminators aren't really *evil*. They simply have a job do to. Whatever command you feed them is what they're going to do. Tell them to go kill person A and their very reason for existence is to kill that person. Tell them to protect the same person and they serve that role in the same fashion. To some degree, that's a level of loyalty that is only possible from a machine, much as humanity is fighting them. To quote Sarah from the movie:

"Watching John with the machine, it was suddenly so clear. Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine, was the only one who measured up. The Terminator would never stop. It would never leave him. It would never hurt him. It would never shout at him or get drunk and hit him. Or say it was too busy to spend time with him. And it would die to protect him."

To think that a machine can't be given a new objective is a bit naive. The theme is carried over in further Terminator franchise parts (though admittedly none of them reach the level of Terminator 2, which was the pinnacle of the series). In T3 the terminator protecting him states very non-chalantly that in the future he comes from John Connor is already dead - because HE killed him. Also later in the movie when his programming is corrupted the thing that John emphasizes in order to force him back in line is that he is about to fail his mission, which basically send him into a tizzy as failing his mission is absolutely incomprehensible.

In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles it carries the concept even further and basically shows the future where some of the humans in the future are distrusting John to some degree because he's utilizing the reprogrammed Terminators a bit too frequently. They, when their programming is turned around, offer a level of loyalty that the human counterparts can't match - they gossip while the terminators simply work towards their mission objective.

Sorry, but the original Terminator, much as I liked it, was simply a low budget 1980's horror flick. It was a good one, but that's the extent of it. Terminator 2 is what really took that franchise and made it into a classic. It dealt with issues for more complex, and basically made us question just who really are the bad guys, and if there really is such a thing.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Narcogen]

Here's a thought for a Super Hero film

Another vote for the Watchmen. It's what you describe.

No, it wasn't.

Some of the Watchmen have super powers, and some don't-- but no one is alone in that respect, which was a key element of his suggestion. The world isn't forced to cope with the death of that individual, which is the second element. As for moral codes-- Watchmen doesn't so much examine the idea of a superhero exploring his own moral code as it deals with superheroes who become immoral (the Comedian) or amoral (Dr. Manhattan) or fall back on personal loyalties instead of a comprehensive moral code (Night Owl) or on paranoia and conservative dogma (Rorshach). That's also very much the opposite of the suggestion.

Okay, so apparently you liked The Watchmen. That doesn't mean it's the answer for every viewer who'd like to see something different from superhero films than what is being presented.

The Watchmen did fit into this suggestion in one way: it took itself very, very seriously-- probably far more so than the actual content warranted.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

From memory The Shootist was set in 1901. I think he reads a newspaper where the big headline was the death of Queen Victoria (she died in 1901).

The film was released in 1976.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

But in Potter-world, death is not a big deal, because there is an afterlife. Death simply amounts to separation for a maximum of one human lifetime.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a game out that you would like: The Witcher 2. Give it a shot...

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The story goes on after the movie, but there's no hint of a Legend 2: Zombie Will Smith Fights Back.

Actually, the DVD had an alternative ending in which Neville comes to realise that the zombie leader ("The Duke of New York") actually cares for the female that Neville is testing the cure on. There follows a scene where Neville in a fashion makes his peace with the zombie hoards, then later drives off into the sunset in a sports utility vehicle with Anna and the boy to find the colony in Vermot.

Naturally, I felt the theatrical ending was superior.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[AmiMoJo]

Star Trek and Superman Returns both did well enough to warrant sequels, but politics at the movie studios are keeping them from getting made. There is a new Batman film out this year though, and The Dark Knight is a genuine classic I think. The first time anyone has really managed to bring the dark vigilante nature of Bats and the simultaneous insanity and genius of the Joker to the screen.

I'm surprised they are still doing films like GL. I suppose there must be an audience for that kind of formulaic and largely brainless action movie, but personally I got tired of marvelling at the CG special effects in the late 90s. At least if you go and see the latest Jackie Chan film you know he really did those stunts. Perhaps it is due to the apparent difficulty of organising sequels for serious films, where as you can be guaranteed the same bunch of no-talent losers will be along for the second outing of GL if there is one.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Raenex]

Some of the Watchmen have super powers, and some don't-- but no one is alone in that respect, which was a key element of his suggestion.

You're nitpicking. Dr. Manhattan was the supreme superhero. His powers were god-like, quite unlike any of the other superheros. He was conflicted about his morals, and the movie did end on a remorseful note. He was so upset by the whole thing that he left the galaxy.

Okay, so apparently you liked The Watchmen. That doesn't mean it's the answer for every viewer who'd like to see something different from superhero films than what is being presented.

For somebody looking for what he described, it's a very good candidate. Just how many films do you think are out there that match exactly? It's fine if you don't like and don't recommend it, to each their own, but my recommendation still stands based on the criteria and my own enjoyment of the movie.

The Watchmen did fit into this suggestion in one way: it took itself very, very seriously-- probably far more so than the actual content warranted.

It was very close to the source material. It wasn't meant to be silly superhero schtick. The whole idea behind Watchmen was "What if we took superheros seriously?"

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[bennomatic]

He chose to die because he'd lost everything he loved, and the only thing left for him to do was to cure the plague. Sure, he also wanted to act as bait to ensure that the greatest possible number of zombies died with him so there was a tactical reason for that, but you're absolutely right, it was a suicide.

For rational people, suicide never makes sense. But that was the beauty of this movie. For a high-budget, name-brand flick, it allowed the hero to commit, even to the depravity of insane, senseless desires.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[bennomatic]

Never saw the alternate ending, but I did remember thinking it was interesting that Neville *didn't* see the care that the zombie leader felt for the female. He was ascribing animalistic drives to them and decrying their lack of humanity, when there was obviously something else going on.

That being said, I agree with you that the alternate ending you describe was not as good, and probably would have ruined the movie for me.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Rakarra]

1) they had to "science-up" the gods, ... I mean that they could not have true "gods". They had to be "a highly-evolved, long-lived race that primitives on some planes would worship as gods and build a mythos around."

I'm not sure you can really blame the movie for that though, since I thought that was an idea lifted from the comics. Marvel brought in all cosmologies from various cultures and had to figure out how to reconcile them all, and the only way to make them beings just above various super-powered beings was to make them not quite gods of legend.

Then again, I thought bone-claws wolverine was a stupid idea from the comics that should have been ignored. I ignore all Marvel continuity after the 80s since they got some bad writers who really screwed up lore. I think the universe needs a crisis-style reboot.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Ghostworks]

Saw this response. It's an old comment, but just for the record:
No, the comics cosmology is more complicated than a Platonist's nightmare. The polytheistic pantheons all exist, and the heads of each also occasionally meet as a "Council of Godheads". Apparently this only includes Earth-based pantheons; alien polytheistic pantheons form their own clubs. Nor does it include the powerful, mystical beings who are worshipped as gods, but which aren't because they are just demons, spirits, ascended wizards, etc., such as Cthon and Shuma Gorath.

Also not present is the Islamo-Judeo-Christian God, who seems to be the "one above all" who created the universe. If this particularly offends you as, say, a Wiccan, you'll have to blame the twin guns of American market forces and primarily Jewish character-creators. You will also have to take it up with His avatar, the Living Tribunal, judgment incarnate.

There are also abstractions of cosmological forces -- Eternity, Infinity, Death, Oblivion -- ultra powerful alien beings (such as Celestials, who are only called "space gods" by lesser beings... which is everyone), and the so called "primordial gods" created when the universe was young. We will not discuss other universes -- neither the countably infinite number of parallel universes arranged in a strand from order to chaos, nor the universes that preceded the mainstream universe in that place in the order as part of the big crunch/big bang cycle, nor the other timelines which can temporarily come into being by overlaying/changing an existing timeline -- at this time.

So in conclusion: "they're not gods, they're aliens" is actually way too simple for the comics, and is absolutely unnecessary for the comparatively simple shared universe of the Avengers movies. It was (kind of) used in Earth X, though.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Rakarra]

That's fine, and I certainly agree that the protagonist's despair and pain fit with the rest of the movie. But suicide is not the same as sacrifice. You can have a sacrificial suicide, but the protagonist's suicide was not that.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

This "good always wins in the end" thing certainly isn't catering to Chinese. It's an American thing.

Afterall you can watch "The Departed" and then the original "Infernal Affairs." I'd have to say the Chinese original is better because there's no stupid "good guy wins" ending.

And while we're at it, half the Korean dramas have another formulaic ending: the "everybody but one major character dies in the end, and he/she is left standing to either mope alone or wonder wtf happened." Personally, I think it's fun to watch the storyline tie up like that.

Re:Impermanence of Sacrifice Bores Me

[Anonymous Coward]

My memory of the movies may be clouding my memory of the books, but I recall having same feelings, except when it came to Aragorn. As I read it, the end of the trilogy was the end of middle-earth and all the magic in it (elves, wizards, etc), and the beginning of the world we know (ruled by men). So Aragorn reigns over a renaissance. The bit that tore me apart was the elves leaving and all the magic going out of the world.

it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[circletimessquare]

if you give it to a bunch of corporate suits and a squadron of rewriters, you get something boring like green lantern

if you give a fistful of money to a director you trust, you get christopher nolan's the dark knight. that's the way!

or... you may get ang lee's hulk. oh, oops

so you don't want to trust quirky directors with tons of money... but you don't want boring vomitus from a squadron of executives

so... split the difference. give jon favreau a wad of cash, but you attach some strings and keep yourself in the loop, and you get iron man

hollywood: you have to get the director with some quirk and passion. so sorry martin campbell, you've arrived at hired hack status

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[Nerdfest]

The deal with movies of comics these days seems to be make a cheesy attempt, rake in the millions based on the name, then wait 10 years and do it right and get everyone to see it done right. There are very few that do it right the first time.

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[circletimessquare]

i think you are referring to batman

actually, the original 1989 was a pretty damn good movie. of course, totally different than dark knight, but good on its own merits in its own time. yes, by the time mr. freeze and poison ivy and bane and nippled suits showed up, it was suckage, but it took time to get there

likewise, in a few iterations, nolan's batman universe will be suckage too, much like cameron leaving the terminator universe left it as suckage. let's hope nolan and thomas hardy can do something inspiring with bane in the meantime:

http://watchplayread.com/first-images-of-tom-hardy-as-bane-in-dark-knight-rises/

also, superman was done right the first time, and was suckage the second time (now they're trying for a third time!)

and let's not talk about the hulk

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[kannibal_klown]

i think you are referring to batman

actually, the original 1989 was a pretty damn good movie. of course, totally different than dark knight, but good on its own merits in its own time. yes, by the time mr. freeze and poison ivy and bane and nippled suits showed up, it was suckage, but it took time to get there

Agreed. I like Nolan's take on Batman, but as far as I am concerned Michael Keaton is THE Batman of film. Kevin Conroy is my TV Batman (at least in voice).

The first Michael Keaton Batman was great, and still holds up fairly well today. I can't think of many 80's action-type movies that hold up well over 20 years later. It was dark, action packed, and all out fun. The second one wasn't my favorite film but it was OK. After that it got progressively cheesier.

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[countertrolling]

Yes, the original was the best by far..

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[paedobear]

Original you say?

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[Hork_Monkey]

Amen. He's the only one who the dichotomy between Batman and Bruce Wayne.

Re:it's hard to make a good superhero movie

[Rakarra]

if you give it to a bunch of corporate suits and a squadron of rewriters, you get something boring like green lantern

if you give a fistful of money to a director you trust, you get christopher nolan's the dark knight. that's the way!

or... you may get ang lee's hulk. oh, oops

Mmmmph. I liked Ang Lee's hulk and that it didn't just turn out to be another A-Team sort of movie. It tried to think things through, gave us an interesting Banner and an interesting Banner's father. Sure, it f'ed up with those horribly stupid hulk dogs, and the ending was pretty dumb too, and, umm...

Well ok, it's a pretty mixed bag. The beginning was fine, Hulk's battles against the military (not the hulk dogs!) were incredible, and his San Francisco rampage and its aftermath were great.

Reelz Fyzicks

[Anonymous Coward]

I really enjoyed how a helicopter flying 20ft of the ground created zero wind for the party literally right under it and when becoming crippled, the pilot decided to accelerate and fly forward as fast as possible, instead of just landing. Made Michael Bay look like Shakespeare...

Re:Reelz Fyzicks

[Assmasher]

Made Michael Bay look like Shakespeare...

That is the cruelest comment in history.

I found it entertaining

[Mandrake]

I guess I mostly found this movie entertaining because I went in expecting garbage, and was pleasantly surprised to find that unlike some other movies recently, there was a coherent plot, and the acting wasn't terrible. I concur that it wasn't as good as first class or thor, but I still found it to be an enjoyable movie, not half as bad as everyone seems to make it out to be.

Re:I found it entertaining

[JudgeFurious]

Same here. I just didn't go into this (or Thor, or Iron Man, or Incredible Hulk, or any of them really) thinking I was going to get my Shakespear fix. Green Lantern was no worse than many of the superhero films of recent years and better than several. It just has enough flaws and to have arrived at the exact moment in time when the public has had enough and wants something more than what they're seeing on the screen. Marvel is about to deliver with Captain America and the upcoming Avengers tie-in picture. Nolan's film was very good and upped the expectation of quality where these kinds of films are concerned and Marvel is in the process of scaling up the stage. This Green Lantern film made 5 years ago makes $300 million and a couple of profitable sequels. Made today it runs face first into the growing backlash against comic book movies and the overindulged and cynical fanboys who would have creamed in their pants at it years ago. I can't understand the hate that's been poured on this film. I watched it in a full theater full of people who seemed to really like it. Walking out all I heard were positive comments. Nobody was running back to the box office to buy another ticket but nobody was bitching about it either.

Re:I found it entertaining

[ddd0004]

Lowered expectations are the key to happiness

Can we have a review from a non-Marvel fanboy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thor, Spider-man and X-Men. Three references to other movies who did things better. Very nice; also not that relevant.

I feel that this movie had a massive mountain to climb according to the reviewer. Pretty short too, but I guess that's all you can fill on one of the napkins they give you at the movie theatre nowadays. At least it wasn't in crayon.

Re:Can we have a review from a non-Marvel fanboy?

[SnarfQuest]

Who, besides a Marvel fanboy, would go to such a train wreck of a movie?

Re:Can we have a review from a non-Marvel fanboy?

[Flyerman]

Green Lantern is DC.....

Not my Green Lantern

[ackthpt]

This is the problem with growing up - you return one day to see what they have done with your old comic book heroes. Nothing looks familiar, so you pass.

If it were quirky or fun to watch I might go for it, but these very purposeful heroes of today's cinema are so preposterous I can't really stomach it (plus the cost of admission would buy me a pizza, which I'm sure to enjoy more fully.)

Here's an exercise - stand on a street corner in your downtown area and try to visualize any of these "heroes" at work. Takes a heck of a leap of imagination, doesn't it? Works much better if you read the comics in your bedroom or treehouse.

Re:Not my Green Lantern

[vlm]

(plus the cost of admission would buy me a pizza, which I'm sure to enjoy more fully.)

What kind of theater charges so little to see a movie? Or you mean some kind of pro-rated monthly cost of a torrenting cablemodem instead of a theater? Around here actually attending a movie at a theater is more like a full homemade steak dinner... a nice london broil with homemade garlic butter slathered on after grilling to perfection and a homemade Caesar salad (well, maybe I'll buy the dressing) and some steak fries (oil the grates and grill until crispy of course) dipped in salsa instead of ketchup and some homemade garlic bread and a small glass of sweet cherry wine to finish it off as desert... is still cheaper that going to the movies and buying some popcorn and sodas. And having said that, I'm feeling really hungry right now... I can (and have, repeatedly) easily serve four adults that quality of dinner for less than the cost of taking them to the theater. Its not like we're talking "theater" vs "kraft mac and cheese" here. Movies at a theater are really freaking expensive for what you get...

Re:Not my Green Lantern

[Nethead]

I can't figure out how to mod this salivating.

Re:Not my Green Lantern

[Rakarra]

If it were quirky or fun to watch I might go for it, but these very purposeful heroes of today's cinema are so preposterous I can't really stomach it

Oh come now, the original Green Lantern is a pretty preposterous concept. I suppose the only way to do it would have been as a sight gag film.

For that matter, The Mask was basically Green Lantern plus Jim Carry minus Lantern Corps.

$200 million on that turkey?

[Animats]

I can't see how they spent $200 million on that turkey. There aren't that many sets, and the big ones are obviously green-screen work. The alien city (?) is so fuzzy that it looks like bad video game art.

The hero is a jerk. The villain is pointless. The Green Lantern corps meeting looks like a Nazi rally, fist-raising and all.

Wait for the DVD, coming to a bargain bin near you soon. Maybe this will kill off the second-tier comic superhero genre for a while.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[ackthpt]

I can't see how they spent $200 million on that turkey. There aren't that many sets, and the big ones are obviously green-screen work. The alien city (?) is so fuzzy that it looks like bad video game art.

Psst! Hollywood accounting. "Sorry we can't pay your bonus, the film lost money. Lolz."

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's what the US propaganda machine intended, when they started spreading all those "super heroes" stories in the cold war times.
It's the same thing, as the concept of the "Übermensch"/"Übersoldat" in Nazi Germany.
Or those huge statues of "the worker from the working class" is communist states.
Or did you think the US was an exception? ^^

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[localman57]

Maybe this will kill off the second-tier comic superhero genre for a while.

I hope not. If going to next year's big blockbuster requires me to watch Spiderman, Superman, or Batman's origin story again, I'll just stay home. At least with the 2nd tiers, you get a chance to do something new. Iron Man was a 2nd tier after all.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Iron Man is a "second-tier comic superhero" then Green Latern isn't even within the top ten tiers.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Skywolfblue]

It's interesting how much farther the US has taken it.

Comic Books/Superheros became a massive industry the likes of which makes the efforts of the German/Soviet propaganda offices look petty.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see how they spent $200 million on that turkey. There aren't that many sets, and the big ones are obviously green-screen work.

You just answered your own question. CGI is tremendously expensive and almost everything in the movie besides was CGI. Even the Lanterns' suits were 100% CGI (the few played by actors, anyway). Every time Hal Jordan turned into Green Lantern, you could practically hear the budget being sucked down the drain by the CGI costume. It looked cool, but they probably could've saved a few million just by replacing the costume with some made of, you know, actual materials.

Once he got the ring, it was like watching an animated movie with a few human actors wandering around.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Rakarra]

I can't see how they spent $200 million on that turkey. There aren't that many sets, and the big ones are obviously green-screen work. The alien city (?) is so fuzzy that it looks like bad video game art.

I'm wondering what was created that you never got to see.

Really expensive movies are often "really expensive" for one or more of three reasons:
1) Huge salaries for the actors (this doesn't appear to be the case)
2) Incredible/elaborate special effects where money was thrown at an effects problem and/or the producer couldn't or wasn't in the position to say no to the director (generally a producer watching costs will say to the director "well ok, you can do this sort of effect/shot, but you'll have to give up something else that's expensive, choose which one you want.")
3) The story wasn't working, requiring rewrites that forced them to do reshoots and scrap previously-completed work.

I have a sneaking suspicion #3 was at play.

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Rakarra]

It's the same thing, as the concept of the "Übermensch"/"Übersoldat" in Nazi Germany.

I loved one comparison I saw on a website on a preview for Captain America: "So now, augmented by the Super-Soldier Serum, blond-haired, blue-eyed, square-chinned Captain America fights against the Nazis and everything they stand for."

Re:$200 million on that turkey?

[Rakarra]

I'll say. I got more enjoyment from Iron Man and Thor than I did from many of the 'first-tier' superhero movies of the last decade.

Re:So unimpressed

[MightyYar]

Hmmmm, someone probably shouldn't be reading the "entertainment" section...

The Onion

[Xelios]

I thought their take on The Green Lantern was pretty funny.

Re:The Onion

[Anonymous Coward]

Har. That's great. They could replace the words "Green Lantern", change the trailer clips, and use it for any Hollywood superhero movie of the last 10 years, maybe any Hollywood blockbuster :-)

We liked it

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife and I saw it this weekend and we both enjoyed it a lot. We also enjoyed Thor and The Green Hornet earlier this year. Of the three Green Lantern was my least favorite, but still good fun with visual effects that were quite good.

I'm so sick of people watching a movie like Lantern and examining it with the same lens you'd use for a Woody Allen film or a Scorcese film. That's like reading Dora the Explorer and complaining about the flat characters and unrealistic situations. They are different things with different purposes.

So stop over-analyzing, suspend your disbelief, relax and enjoy the movie. That's why they make them.

Re:We liked it

[guybrush3pwood]

So stop over-analyzing, suspend your disbelief, relax and enjoy the movie. That's why they make them.

That has to be the saddest comment I read this month.

Re:We liked it

[coronaride]

Agreed - I wouldn't read Dora the Explorer to my kids, let alone admit that that's the sort of guilty pleasure that I would pay to indulge in. If you want to turn your brain off, take a nap - it's free, easy, and better for you.

Re:We liked it

[torgis]

That's like reading Dora the Explorer and complaining about the flat characters and unrealistic situations. They are different things with different purposes.

So stop over-analyzing, suspend your disbelief, relax and enjoy the movie. That's why they make them.

So we are comparing the depth and plotlines of a movie with production costs of around $200,000,000 USD to an animated short meant for 4 year old girls? Got it. I knew the expectations for summer movies was low, but never quite realized how low.

Re:We liked it

[wintertargeter]

Yes, because in this case the end result was just as bad!

the other green movie.....

[Spy Handler]

green hornet... was better than this drivel... and that's saying alot considering how green hornet also sucked

Re:the other green movie.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Green goblin was pretty good in the first spiderman. Are they going to make a Green Arrow? A Green Arrow origins story could work.

agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

but its not a "magick" ring its a piece of tech - lol
    and yes they tried for too much and didnt have enough and jordan with Reynolds wasnt as
awesome crazynuff lol especially for a fighter pilot let alone imaginative enough.
the whole daddy issues is too much for the movie concept and i had a lot called before hand
but the "cameo" of the biggest B* in the dcU American Government was actually pretty cool if
drastically underplayed
it reminded me too much of HULK - though i think hulk was better but not good enough lol

It's a middle ground movie.

[indecks]

I saw Lantern on Saturday. I've always liked the Green Lantern since I was a kid but I've never been super-familiar with it like I was with Spider-man or Batman.

Again I'd say it was a mid-grade comic book movie. Good visuals, but it was a tad slow. I'd have liked to see more of Hal being a Lantern on Earth, and of course it could have used a lot more Sinestro (or Mark Strong, for that matter). Also, the reviewer made a mistake - Sinestro was hardly forgettable. He was awesome, because he was played by the talented Mark Strong. I couldn't wait to see more of him and that last bit with him and the Yellow Power Ring was awesome.

It wasn't as well done as something like Dark Knight or Spider-man 2, but it also wasn't horribly done like Spider-man 3 or Fantastic Four. I got my $10 at the theater. I won't see it at the theater again, but I'll likely purchase the BluRay when it's released.

Come on Captain America.

BTW I'm not really a Marvel fanboy. I do 'prefer' Marvel comics to DC, but when it comes to the heavy hitters like Superman, Batman, (and pretty much the entire Top Tier Justice League members) I WAYYY prefer DC. The Avengers WISH they could be as cool as the JLA.

Re:It's a middle ground movie.

[rilian4]

"I couldn't wait to see more of him and that last bit with him and the Yellow Power Ring was awesome."

While it was certainly cool, I didn't see a connection for him using it based in the movie plot. Hal makes the guardians and Sinestro see that Will is good enough and they don't need fear to beat fear. Sinestro even shows up to rescue Hal at the end...there is no plot connection between that and him putting on the yellow ring. Why did he do it? There was no sign of any temptation. No voice in his head egging him on, nothing. He just does it....I don't get it. There is nothing there showing me any reason he would turn at that point in the movie

Guess I'm in the minority

[emeyer]

I loved this movie! I'm looking forward to seeing it again. I guess I'm a sucker for Super Hero movies, but I loved Thor and X-Men first class too. Much better than the Spiderman movies ... those were yawners.

-Eric

Garbage

[redemtionboy]

Before you read this, understand I'm particularly harsh on films, but, with so many good films out there, it's not fair to treat the bad ones with a gentle touch.

Personally I found the film to be quite bad. I went in there expecting nothing and still left disappointed. It's not that they didn't come up with a compelling story (they didn't). It's not that I never felt attached to any of the characters (I didn't). It's not even that so many of the lines and characters felt out of place (they do). It's that the film suffers from fluidity issues from the very beginning. I want to believe that there was a much more comprehensible film originally shot and then some jackass in the editing room decided to take out chunks of the film and slap it together so that it could be under 1:45, because the film feels jerked around and unnatural, not to mention the plot hole issues. There is a particular scene where right before Hal is chilling with his girl. Then, the villain attacks this underground military base where Hal has never been, and all of a sudden he bursts through the wall with no explanation as to how he got there or knew what was going on. After the battle is over, both the hero and villain are suddenly in their home, with no explanation as to how that happened. This is probably the worst it gets in the film, but that same lack of fluidity is what seeped into ever part of the film and made it a complete failure to me. That said, it's not the worst super hero film ever made. It's better than X-men 3 and Spiderman 3, but not by much. I give it a 4.5/10.

Re:Garbage

[pz]

That was a better written review than Taco's.

Thanks!

Re:Garbage

[Quiet_Desperation]

I would have had a much longer and grueling training sequence.

Cut out the romance- I'm not anti-romance, but I get that in every other film. This is superhero fiction. Give me more god-like beings punching one another. It's not like Superman/Lois Lane where it's pretty ingrained into the mythos.

Also cut the whole scientist infected by the yellow goo subplot. That seemed bolted on for no reason at all.

The fallen Guardian as a villain was good idea, but make him less giant monster and more just misguided bastard. Would have been more interesting to have him still be a little old-looking Guardian guy, but able able to drop kick Jordan over a mountain. And give me his motivations. He was destroying worlds... why, exactly? How does being imbued with the primal force of fear make you do that?

There's actually some good, potentially deep ideas at play in the Green Lantern universe. Be nice to see them used. I like the whole spectral approach to the various emotions and facets of sentience. Would red be hate or love? Or both? ;-)

I also would have had the other Lanterns show up to help Hal much sooner. The Lantern Corps is supposed to be about unity which implies teamwork. Have Sinestro save Hal's life. That makes it even more tragic when Sinestro turns.

Re:Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

SpiderDASHman? I never seen him named "Spider-man". Not a hyphen.

captcha: dropout. aptly.

Re:Garbage

[indecks]

Um, Spidey's name IS spelled with a hyphen. Spider-man. Not spiderman.

Re:Garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Red is rage. Love is purpley-pink. (Ok, now it is 'violet', but it is based on a character that was originally pink. I guess subtle color shifts over the years led to violet??)

All the colors in the comic.

Re:Garbage

[Rakarra]

Cut out the romance- I'm not anti-romance, but I get that in every other film. This is superhero fiction. Give me more god-like beings punching one another. It's not like Superman/Lois Lane where it's pretty ingrained into the mythos.

When you have a movie that costs as much as Green Lantern does (any movie in that cost class), the filmmakers are under immense pressure to put as many people in the seats as possible. What are the "most (financially) successful" movies? Ones that hit multiple sections of The Four Quadrants. The link goes into a nice amount of detail, but the idea is that the movie-going audience is split into four demographic groups, young and old, male and female. If your movie has great appeal to young men and older women (think Titanic) then you have box-office gold.

So don't expect to see the "romance" angles disappear from action movies. They're just clumsy attempts to appeal to a larger demographic and rake in more money.

Re:Garbage

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yeah, I know, but, OK, how about have him meet some hot alien babe? ;-)

They did that with the John Stewart GL in the animated series.

Re:Garbage

[Rakarra]

Hey, it worked for Kirk!

And for that engineer guy in Galaxy Quest.

Re:and

[Z00L00K]

And the real reason is that most superheroes do have a way too black and white view of what's right and wrong.

Maybe they should have made a movie where Green Arrow was the main figure instead - and look into the character as it were depicted during the 70's. Sometimes it's the darker parts of a hero's mind that has to be reflected too. Very much of the "why" behind something that happened in addition to the act of crime.

Another character that actually shows more than the plastic personality is Ben in Fantastic Four. He is showing that it's not always easy to be a hero.

I liked it.

[TechHSV]

I've been a Green Lantern fan for about 20 years. I can still remember going through the white boxes at the comic book store trying to find any issue that I missed. I liked the movie for what it was. They had to skim and condense many things from the GL lore, but explaining a history that begins at the big bang can really eat into the 2 hours that people will sit through a movie. The OP mentions that the GL Corps is played up to be a big deal and OA as being awesome as bad things. These are freaking awesome things, this isn't the Rascals club house. The cool part about Green Lantern is that imagination and will power can be used to do amazing things. Realizing this as a young geek reading comics was a huge deal for me and many others.

To summarize, I thought the movie was fun enough for your average summer movie goer and did better than expected from the POV of a long time GL fan. I would have liked some more inside type of stuff thrown in (even a mention of Alan Scott), but it was still pretty freaking cool hearing the Oath in a movie.

Re:I liked it.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Actually, I thought the concise introduction to the Corps at the beginning was pretty well done. Short and sweet and told you what you needed.

Re:I liked it.

[archen]

Did Hal actually USE the ring for anything interesting? I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan, but I do have a few of the comics. I don't think a lot of people got that the rings power had to do with imagination, and that Hal's true power wasn't just the ring, but that he used it in such inventive ways. Since that time it seems like he's been reduced to shooting some green death ray from his ring and such instead of problem solving.

I was initially interested in the movie, but had the feeling it wouldn't touch on the theme of using imagination. From the trailers I didn't get that impression either.

Re:I liked it.

[TechHSV]

Did Hal actually USE the ring for anything interesting? I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan, but I do have a few of the comics. I don't think a lot of people got that the rings power had to do with imagination, and that Hal's true power wasn't just the ring, but that he used it in such inventive ways. Since that time it seems like he's been reduced to shooting some green death ray from his ring and such instead of problem solving.

I was initially interested in the movie, but had the feeling it wouldn't touch on the theme of using imagination. From the trailers I didn't get that impression either.

He did at least one thing that I thought was pretty clever/funny with the ring, but I don't want to spoil it. It was more than just shooting green lasers.

Re:So unimpressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to read your post, but your UID distracted me. Does that happen often to you?

Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[macwhizkid]

I was never a comic book fan, and I saw Green Lantern on Friday only because a group of friends who are fans wanted to see it. I knew I was in trouble when a dramatic voiceover introduced us to a solid dozen names and places, including the happy planet of intergalactic peacekeepers and the main arch-villain, who's names I promptly forgot.

Not only did the story come with an enormous amount of baggage, but it made quite a mess of a story going forward. It seemed like the setting was driving the narrative instead of the other way around. As if some screenwriter was standing by with a stopwatch worrying that the audience will lose interest since Hal hasn't flown anywhere off planet for over two minutes.

The never-ending fight scenes were made less dramatic by virtue of the fact that Hal's limitations were never really explained or explored. It wasn't even clear whether he knew himself. That really spoiled the movie for me more than anything else -- when Batman was pinned by Liam Neeson in the EL-train car, you knew that he was vulnerable, and it was that collateral of mortality that defined the character. Here, when the main character had no problem flying across the galaxy for a quick meeting with his idiot boss and was literally dodging asteroids in the climax, it wasn't so clear.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[kannibal_klown]

The never-ending fight scenes were made less dramatic by virtue of the fact that Hal's limitations were never really explained or explored. It wasn't even clear whether he knew himself. That really spoiled the movie for me more than anything else -- when Batman was pinned by Liam Neeson in the EL-train car, you knew that he was vulnerable, and it was that collateral of mortality that defined the character. Here, when the main character had no problem flying across the galaxy for a quick meeting with his idiot boss and was literally dodging asteroids in the climax, it wasn't so clear.

Depending on the era: Green Lantern's vulnerability has been wood, yellow, or the emotion of fear. At one point any of those 3 would either injure them, drop their constructs, or make them ineffective. The "Fear" thing is the most recent one: if you can overcome it with a strong will then you're unstoppable.

That is the problem with the "incredibly powerful super heroes" realm of comics. DC's roster of quite full of these insanely powerful being that might as well be the gods of old.

Marvel's heroes are rather limited: most have only 1 or 2 abilities and it's rare that any one of them are incredibly strong (ignoring outliers like Thor and Sentry). Spider-man has super reflexes and some minor super strength (lift a VW bug), Wolverine has metal claws and healing factor, Cyclops has eye beams, etc.

Sure DC has Batman, Nightwing, the Question, etc. But it also has Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Mahunter... beings that can wipe out entire armies if they want. A LOT of their heroes are really "out there" in terms of powers. And actually, Green Lantern's powers sometimes put him above Superman due to their versatility.

So in the end, DC comics are always dealing with insanely powerful people that are almost unstoppable. So the choice is find someone more powerful than the hero, introduce the hero's "kryptonite" (aka weakness), or have it be a morality tale or some other drama.

If the big antagonist is always the "kryptonite" then it starts to get boring. Oh my gosh he's strong, how's this gonna play out? Oh, they whipped out his weakness to styrofoam and now he's a helpless as a kitten.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Shados]

Wolverine has metal claws and healing factor

In his more recent incarnations and especially in the movies, I don't think Wolverine is a good example of what you're trying to say... regenerating faster than he can be disintegrated by the phoenix force, a billion super powers based on his animal nature, being able to survive an adamantium bullet to the head point blank range and the worse that happens is he loses his memory... He's a bit over the top now.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Grishnakh]

To be fair, his skull was supposed to be plated with adamantium, which is supposed to be indestructible. So what's supposed to happen when you shoot an indestructible (but hollow) object with a bullet made from the same indestructible material?

I would have preferred if they had just avoided that dilemma altogether. Better yet, they should have stuck with Brian Singer for directing all X-men sequels, because after he left they sucked.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Shados]

Agreed, but in the movie's interpretation, they made it pretty damn clear: the bullet goes through and he regenerates with no damage except for his memory being lost. What happens to his skull being adamantium isn't the issue here: its that even after (what was it, 3-4?) a bunch of bullets in the head at point blank through his -brain-, he loses his memories and thats it.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[luther349]

green laturn has always been on the corney side. he was only good i justis leage. mostly due the fact his main story plots where never good.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Grishnakh]

I don't know that that's really over-the-top, given the premise that he has super-healing powers. If any of his tissues can regenerate quickly, the brain should be included in this. So if a bullet bounces around in there, but he's really able to regenerate any damaged cells within, say, 30 seconds, than any damaged neurons should be regenerated too, including those in the brain stem that control respiration and heartbeat (though obviously there'd be a little down time there, but normal humans can survive 4 minutes with no respiration, with no brain damage). Of course, since memories are formed by connections between neurons, that information would be lost by regrown neurons, so he'd be starting with a blank slate.

There's research today on regrowing neurons, and if this turns into successful therapies, it would have much the same effect: you'd be able to "cure" Alzheimer's patients, but many of their memories would still be lost, or very difficult to re-access, though they'd no longer have trouble forming and recalling new memories.

My main problem is the idea of bullets penetrating an adamantium-plated skull. If the stuff is really impenetrable once hardened as they say earlier, then it shouldn't be penetrable at all, not even by itself. But on top of that, the whole Wolverine: Origins movie just wasn't all that great in the first place, for many reasons.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Shados]

I was only answering the skull comment :) What i feel is over the top is the entire character. He's completely immortal in his later incarnation, and can regenerate faster than "instant disintegration" can disintegrate him =P.

And THAT, was just an answer to the post saying that Marvel heroes are not over the top (which I agree with), and sited Wolvering as an example (which i don't agree with).

Thats all. Sorry for the confusion.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, I forgot to address the X-men 3 scene with Dark Phoenix: yes, that was definitely over-the-top, with him regenerating faster than she could disintegrate him with her god-like powers. The bullet wiping out memories I can kinda buy (though it bothers me that his impenetrable skull can be penetrated by an adamantium bullet), but out-regenerating a god's ability to disintegrate everything is just too much. Then again, the whole thing with Jane Grey having godlike powers was over the top anyway. The thing that was so great about X-men before was that, unlike characters like Superman (and now Green Lantern), they were highly limited in their powers. They could do one or two really cool things, but other than that, they were mostly human like the rest of us, with regular human weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Throwing a god into the mix just kinda ruined it.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, his skull was supposed to be plated with adamantium, which is supposed to be indestructible. So what's supposed to happen when you shoot an indestructible (but hollow) object with a bullet made from the same indestructible material?

I would have preferred if they had just avoided that dilemma altogether. Better yet, they should have stuck with Brian Singer for directing all X-men sequels, because after he left they sucked.

well.. i'm not sure, at times the comic writers get over zealous about his healing factor too.
deadpool, a normal person was given a version of wolverines healing factor and he was decapitated 3 times!
it started to weaken his powers, but hell, he got his head removed three times, not counting all the times he got blown up shot up and stabbed, being the merc he is.

then again we have to remember that the powers are there as mechanisms for conflict, they are set pieces to be changed at the authors whim.
look how superman's powers waxed and waned over the years, he had dumb powers for no other reason that the writer thought it would be good to put in there.

i mean super-smell, super-ventriloquism? what dumb powers, but the writers gave ol supe those powers anyway..

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Rakarra]

In his more recent incarnations and especially in the movies, I don't think Wolverine is a good example of what you're trying to say... regenerating faster than he can be disintegrated by the phoenix force, a billion super powers based on his animal nature, being able to survive an adamantium bullet to the head point blank range and the worse that happens is he loses his memory... He's a bit over the top now.

What? None of that stuff happened, what are you talking about?
Wolverine? He hasn't been seen in comic books since the 80s.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do in X-Men 3, if they ever make it.

I'm in denial.

Re:Unless you're a big fan, GL is one to skip

[Rakarra]

Sorry, I forgot to address the X-men 3 scene with Dark Phoenix: yes, that was definitely over-the-top, with him regenerating faster than she could disintegrate him with her god-like powers

I suppose you could make the case that Phoenix wasn't really trying very hard, since Wolverine was appealing to her human side. But meh, the original X-Men Dark Phoenix Saga played out so much better with Professor X and Phoenix holding a psychic duel while Jean struggled to regain control.

The American

[bsy_at_play]

If Hollywood is getting to the lesser-known superhero comics, I'd like to see The American made into a movie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_(comics) It's darker and has more room for serious stuff. As well as fun....

Re:The American

[vlm]

If Hollywood is getting to the lesser-known superhero comics, I'd like to see

"Black Hat Hacker" and "Megan" from XKCD? Now that I would actually pay to see...

Thor, I loved the movie

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time comic book collector I thoroughly enjoyed Thor as a movie. To be frank I was a little concerned when I heard they were making it and hoped they would not ruin the the story or totally redefine the character as is often the case with Hollywood.

green lantern

[Anonymous Coward]

if I used the same logic as everyone who commented on their comments
then they all are blowing it out their &&ss
same whiney drivel trying to apply real world logic to a comic book

Just to Clarify What I Was Begging For

[eldavojohn]

I like unpredictability and misery in my movies. I like my comedies dark. I am a big fan of unhappy endings.

While I prefer unhappy endings, I should point out that there's such a thing as a happy but flawed ending. Where the hero wins but must make some sort of sacrifice. It might be their life, it might be someone they love ... hell, I would have been much more satiated with Thor's end of communication with the woman he loved. It's undoing the sacrifice that has made the hero what they are that bothers me. Many of my personal heroes in real life have made such drastic sacrifices through their lifetimes and it's made them better people because of it. When faced with adversity and loss, they have become what I love. Why is this absent from fantasy and fiction?

My wife likes predictability.

To me, her movies seem like watching the same movie over and over. To her, she can't possibly see why I'd want to watch something that isn't relaxing and removed from reality.

Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.

I don't want anyone to think my post was arguing against all happy endings or against Campbell's monomyth, it was more so a desire for diversity in film. Yes, predictability is bad but if the norm was for movies to have sacrifice, you shouldn't know what's coming next.

Other than causing endless conversations about how much each other's tastes suck, it's not a big deal. Just taste.

If you enjoyed all these movies, I'm not telling you your tastes suck I'm telling you that they are not very diverse. I can very much enjoy the occasional flawless ending if it's done in a novel or new way like Groundhog Day. What I can't deal with is the same old same old with not only a predictable ending but a flawless diabetes inducing ending. There's one or two directors (Aronofsky) I can cling to and that's about it. I just wish the big movies were more diverse. With movies like the reboot of Batman (as another reply noted), I got glimmers of that but it seems lately we're moving back to 100% happy 100% of the time.

Re:Just to Clarify What I Was Begging For

[MightyYar]

Heh, you are preaching to the choir. She likes the predictable rush of insulin. And it seems so does most of the American audience. We're in the minority, but there are still plenty of films out there for us. :)

Radioactive Swamp Ass

[ohnocitizen]

I thought Pajiba nailed it.

Re:and

[localman57]

What really makes or breaks a super-hero movie is how well the non-superhero section of the movie goes. In green lantern, I felt like any time the ring was off, and Ryan Renolds was acting like Ryan Renolds, we were just marking time waiting for him to use the ring. The love interest was boring and pointless. Contrast this with iron-man, where they cast a lead actor who could carry the character when he wasn't in uniform. An Oscar caliber actress also helps a great deal. This same formula helped Thor, but to a lesser degree. Despite trying to make us like her because she was a cool fighter pilot, the girlfriend character was a drag on the movie.

Plus, there was no logical reason for the Lantern Core to change their minds and show up at the end and save his bacon. The movie would have been better if he had extricated himself, then flown back to Oa with a big heaping bag of "I told you so", followed by some "We'll consider that" by the Guardians. Not great, but better.

"Phoenix Tears Cure Everything"

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... I can't speak for the Potter films, but in the book a number of good guy characters die by the end. I mean, geez, the story starts out with the main character's parents being murdered.

Why didn't he just rub some phoenix tears on them? Harry Potter is rife with lazy plot devices.

Re:"Phoenix Tears Cure Everything"

[Anonymous Coward]

Big man to pick on a children's series.

Show another set of books that deals with death that has a target audience of a 12 year old.

Re:"Phoenix Tears Cure Everything"

[Quiet_Desperation]

Well, it heals injuries and cures poison, not death, as far as was ever said in the book.

I'll agree with the time turner, though. You can make up several other magical ways for someone to attend multiple classes at once without time travel.

The only use of time travel I ever *really* liked was Zelazny's temporal fugue in Creatures Of Light And Darkness. Two combatants face off, and begin making tiny hops back in time, building up armies of themselves, setting up attacks and defenses, until they all strike at once in the past. Or future. Or both. It's weird, but completely awesome. :-)

Re:"Phoenix Tears Cure Everything"

[Rakarra]

In the Harry Potter universe, dead is dead, and nothing cures that. No, not phoenix tears either. Throughout the book it becomes increasingly clear that any malady, any ailment, infirmity, or sickness has a magical cure. Just not death.

I'll agree about the Time Turner though, a time-travel device is very hazardous (to the plot), unless it's some one-off device that gets destroyed (though it wasn't). Then you'll always later ask why they don't use the time turner again. Star Trek was rife with this sort of problem. The person making the list didn't understand the nature of the device though. It allowed people to be in two different places at once, not change the past, which the books hinted was pretty immutable. So no, the time turner could not save the Potters' death, or aurers who were killed, preventing escapes that happened, killing/arresting Tom Riddle, etc.

What it did allow them was to save Buckbeak (who they thought had been killed... but he hadn't, that was an assumption on their part) and lead him to Sirius Black, all while giving them a convenient alibi (they were seen in the hospital ward).

DC Animated Studio

[zaibazu]

If you like Green Lantern, watch the recent Green Lantern: Emerald Knights

Oh Yea Gawds YES!!!

[Xaedalus]

And "Incorruptible" for the counter-perspective and analysis of the true costs of redemption. Waid was brilliant in mapping the 12 steps to the theme of super-hero redemption.

Re:Oh Yea Gawds YES!!!

[Quiet_Desperation]

Ssssh! I'm planning to read Incorruptible next month. :)

I would, and did

[axl917]

I don't read comic books...oh, excuse me..."graphic novels"....and what I know of Green Lantern is just from the old Superfriends cartoons of the 70's/80's.

For what it was, a fluff early-summer action movie, it was entertaining. standard comic plot devices...outsider/loner with daddy issues, a girl that is also desired by the nerds soon-to-be-supervillian friend, etc...etc...aside. Kindof a weak fight at the end...flinging prlalax-whatever into the sun just didn't feel satisfying...but you don't go to summer movies expecting Oscar material.

Re:So unimpressed

[Mindcontrolled]

Well, some people view that as positive. To paraphrase Henry Rollins from his Spoken Word Tour: "If you don't wake up with an erect dick and an erect middle finger each morning, you are wasting your life."

Less annoying than the mess up X-Men

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this didn't bother me as much as the totally screwed up X-Men flick with the characters completely messed-up time line wise. Mystique the same age as Xavier? Beast probably 10 or more years older than his regular teammates? Alex a decade older than Scott???

Green Lantern has been retconed by DC so many times and is such a minor hero you can mess with his character with impunity but Hollywood's treatment of the X-Men in all it's attempts confirms my opinion that the sooner the faultline dumps it into the Pacific the better.

Re:Less annoying than the mess up X-Men

[eriqk]

Green Lantern has been retconed by DC so many times and is such a minor hero you can mess with his character with impunity but Hollywood's treatment of the X-Men in all it's attempts confirms my opinion that the sooner the faultline dumps it into the Pacific the better.

A couple of years ago I spent a week at a friend's place reading a big pile of X-Men comics.
I think it's safe to say that the X-Men have been retconned so often that at this point any iteration can be considered canon.

Re:So unimpressed

[MightyYar]

Yeah, it does. What are the chances?

advertising and marketing

[gosand]

This movie is so hyped up, it's everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if the marketing/advertising exceeded the cost of the actual film. Go have a look at the website for the film. The lenths they go to in order to try and establish something as legitimate before it even comes out is astounding.

Liking it less over time

[sjbe]

The first Michael Keaton Batman was great, and still holds up fairly well today.

I actually have been liking it less and less. It's certainly far better than the later abominations in the series. (Batman & Robin and Batman Forever are two of the worst movies ever IMO) But it's not far enough away from the campy TV version for my tastes. Plus it is too obvious that everything was done on a sound stage. Michael Keaton was fairly forgettable in the title role for me. He just didn't dominate the screen the way he did in other films. Jack Nicholson made a valiant effort for the time but didn't really capture the Joker. The Joker is supposed to be rather frightening and his version just wasn't. Tim Burton does fun scary (Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, etc) but to work Batman needs a bit of scary scary and a good dose of real world. Tim Burton's Batman feels like a Broadway play put on the big screen.

Unclear how well the Nolan versions will stand the test of time but for me they are FAR better movies than any of the previous 4 and presently among my very favorites.

Re:Liking it less over time

[Rakarra]

I still think Michael Keaton made the best Bruce Wayne. However, he made one of the very worst Batmans, so it was pretty much a wash.
Jack Nicholson channeled just a little too much of the 60s Joker for me, but he was still good.

I'll agree though that the Nolan versions are head and shoulders above the rest (and above other superhero movies for that matter).

As the one person that enjoyed it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I say go watch it. Shut your mind off for a couple hours and admire the pretty green colours. Ignore the angry nerds who need to berate everything they watch as if that was the worst $10 they ever spent.

Re:As the one person that enjoyed it...

[bughunter]

Admission for Me, Wife, Son: $35.

Popcorn and 3 drinks: $20.

Parking: $5.

If I'm going to spend $60 to go see a summer blockbuster, it better bust something instead of my already tremendous capacity for willful suspension of disbelief.

My 6-year old prefers the DCAU movies and series

[bughunter]

I almost didn't take my son (age six and a half) to see Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern, because it's PG-13 and (according to my son) "it might have kissing." (It did, but that's not what *I* was concerned about.) But it was Father's Day, and it was either that or the damn penguin thing... Cars 2 comes out next week, so we chose a more grown-up film. Or so we thought.

During the movie, I was alternately disappointed in the flimsy plot and shallow characters and worried that the giant ghost-like monster ("Parallax" - what a horrible name, not even scary) would frighten my son. I was reminded of the 2009 reboot of Star Trek -- both evoke very similar levels of disappointment and amazement that such crap passes muster these days. By the end of the movie, I was questioning my own objectivity: Am I just getting jaded in my old age? Or is it really that crappy? I concluded that if they want to spend $200M on something that would appeal to six-year-olds, then fine. I'll stick to Cartoon Network; they do much better plots and characterization for far less. Hell, even Ben 10 and Generator Rex have better developed plots. Crisis on Two Earths was fantastic compared to this superficial crap.

After the movie, I asked him how he liked it. I felt totally validated when he said, "It was good, but I still like the Justice League Unlimited. John Stewart is a better Green Lantern."

I knew exactly what he meant.

Pretty Accurate

[Rhawk187]

I gave it a B- (C being an average film). Your review is pretty accurate. Although, I did seem to like Sinestro more than you. It just seemed really slow. They didn't use their 2 hours well, and the final battle was pretty anti-climactic.

Indy Film

[Zan Lynx]

You know what? I tried watching independent films. What it taught me is that Hollywood knows what they're doing.

There's a reason Hollywood films generally make a lot of money. They're well done and entertaining, they deliver a easy to watch story with characters that are easy to get into and a plot where you generally know the ending will turn out well.

I've decided that I don't want to bother wasting hours of my life watching movies where, once I get to the ending, I as often as not want to throw the characters and plot into the wall and set them on fire. That's my experience of independent film.

It was a blast!

[cbybear]

I went in with good expectations (been reading Green Lantern and DC in general since I was a kid). It was a lot of fun, tons of great lines, and the VFX were interesting. Of course you can always armchair quarterback to say what you think would be better. Instead of watching it with that kind of critical eye, I decided I was going to go along for the ride. So worth it. Saw it in 2D and I want to see it in 3D.

--kev

the application of force indicates you have failed

[Thud457]

I dunno, from the movie previews, looks like the only way dumb American hotshot pilot cowboy can imagine solving problems is with a bigger gun.

Looks dumb, glossy and loud.

"News for nerds, stuff that matters"

[rebelwarlock]

This is neither. Get this crap off slashdot.

Re:"News for nerds, stuff that matters"

[jomama717]

Posts like this are hilarious to me. How better to gauge whether or not a story "belongs" on slashdot than by looking at how many comments it spawns. Have you taken an oath to loyally enforce adherence to some interpretation of the slashdot motto? Do you have a badge, or maybe a cape?

Re:the application of force indicates you have fai

[penguinchris]

So yeah, you would kind of expect that an American hotshot fighter pilot would first think of using a big gun in a fight. Why not?

However, they actually make a pretty strong point in the film when he busts out a huge gun (which I think was twice, once in training and once in a real battle, don't really remember) that guns aren't going to work - and he realizes this pretty quickly, and tries to come up with a better solution to the problem.

I didn't know anything about Green Lantern before seeing the movie (and I didn't see any previews... actually I didn't even know I was going to see the movie) but it seemed obvious from the film that part of the learning process of becoming a Green Lantern is that you have to learn to be imaginative in your solutions to problems, and especially when you're learning, the first things you think of probably won't be right. It wasn't emphasized enough, but this was a pretty big subtext to *all* of the action in the film.

If you've got a scene with a big gun, though (the extent of its use is probably seen in the trailer - it gets tossed aside almost immediately, literally only a couple seconds on screen), may as well throw it in the trailer to attract audiences who like action movies with big guns.

Re:the application of force indicates you have fai

[Thud457]

So you're saying that the movie isn't as stupid as the marketing makes it appear? That's reassuring. About the movie at least.
Kind of makes me wonder about the people selling the film and the audience they're trying to reach.


And the way theaters are gouging for tickets these days, and moving action movies to the shoebox-size screens their second week, and with premiums they charge for IMAX & 3D, I'm not about to plunk down my $$$$ on something that the marketing makes me think it's merely dumb, glossy and loud.
Star Wars episode IV cost $11 million to make in 1977 (~$40 million 2010 dollars). Is this movie five times better than that?!!

Not so bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought they'd NEVER make a Green Lantern film. It would be way too difficult. I went to see the film hoping to enjoy it but expecting it to be bad. I actually enjoyed it. I do agree that it should have been longer and explained some things better, by way of story. I understand that the ring alerted GL that there is a problem and thats why GL showed up at the military base, however it was easy to miss.

    Regarding Thor. I didn't care so much for it. I guess chicks liked it for the abs.

    The two best superhero movies, IMO, would have to be Spiderman (whom i've always liked) and Ironman. (whom I didn't know much about)

    I also enjoyed Ghost Rider and was surprised that I liked Nicholas Cage in the role.

    Superman Returns was horrrrible.

    Sorry guys...I didn't like Watchman at all !!