That was their biggest mistake. When you're trying to introduce the world to an unknown super hero... you HAVE to go with the big guns. Saving Sinestro for a sequel that never happened was the stupidest decision they could have done. It only worked in Batman Begins with a Joker tease at the end... because we've already been drowning in Jokers. But Green Lanterns first time out... he needed his Lex Luthor/Joker main primary enemy... and neither hammond or parallax fits the bill. Actually, Hammond worked better than I expected it to.
Honestly, I think that and the cgi suit is to blame for it's failure. The rest of the movie is okay. It's not amazing... but it was definitely a checklist script. It had the guardians, Abin Sur, Oa, Ferris Air, Carol, Kilowog, constructs, jets, and a bunch of exposition for the uninitiated... everything that i feel a Hal Jordon origin needs... was all there. They didn't miss anything. There just wasn't much heart in it. it was kind of 'by-the-numbers', like they were rattling off things the fans expected to see.
But man... that suit sucked on every level and every scene he was wearing it suffered. Sadly I knew that was the case from the magazines before it opened... so what i hated, i knew i hated before.. and the rest of the plot, script, and actors... was... meh, Okay. Didn't excite me... didn't bore me... it was okay.
Now if Hal got his ring after Sinestro had killed Abin Sur and he was tossed into a civil war with a renegade Lantern.... that would have been more exciting and we would have gotten more construct vs. construct which was really the highlight of the movie we got anyway.
I kinda look at it like Fillion got his shot at Hal Jordan with all his voice work, even if he missed out on doing it live action. But, yeah, Fillion circa 2005 would have been spot on. I remember reading about how Fillion and Reynolds would tease each other about stealing each other's hair stylists and makeup people. When Fillion got the voice acting gig, he sent Reynolds a message saying he's stolen his Hal Jordan.
I don't think your sympathy is necessary. Reynolds as a leading actor of Green Lantern was committed to writing a script for Deadpool with the other two writers during shooting.
"We were breaking the story of the original Deadpool movie in a house that was being paid for by Green Lantern's dime." That's what he said.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ra...eadpool-964223
Well good for him I guess. Glad he was apparently smart enough to use the movie's subsequent failure to his benefit, I just wish he remembered the GL panel from SDCC when that kid asked him to recite the oath. That boy must be a young adult now and he probably doesn't appreciate much that Reynolds has been dragging the character through the mud since then. I don't want to sound like I'm holding him as accountable for the state this character currently finds himself in as I do the people who made that movie, but WB hopped in an all his dumb jokes and here we are today. It took DC how many years and decades to dig Aquaman out of this hole and now they shove Hal Jordan right back into it. And unlike with Aquaman, they won't even need to make the slightest bit of effort to redeem the Hal Jordan character that THEY did dirty because they can just use another GL instead. How convenient. Anyway, I just hope people can see I'm not trying to be a downer for the sake of being a downer, there's clear legitimate reasons to expect this character will never get his due in the future.
Last edited by Johnny; 06-04-2020 at 04:02 AM.
It sounds like the GL movie was created in the worst possible way: to be a product, so it lacked any passion for the material from the most important people involved. (except maybe Johns, but some of the ideas that I think came from him hurt the movie anyway, imo)
I think there were quite a bit of problems with the GL film. The suit, the way the constructs looked, how it started with boring exposition the audience didn't care about. When storytelling, you should make sure your audience cares before you start hammering them with lore exposition. Right from the get-go, GL info dumps with narration and commits the sin of "telling instead of showing". The best way to do that is to lead the audience along and make them wonder and want to know the answers to certain questions. When you open up with that, again, they don't care, because they don't care about your story or world or characters yet.
Also, the villains were very weak, and the movie didn't balance the Earth and space stuff well, in my opinion. I can't remember the musical score at all. I didn't like the way Oa or the aliens looked. The effects were bad all around. Then, none of the performances landed especially well, except for maybe Sinestro. I think the problems it had were too big and too numerous to say if they had done one aspect differently, it would have worked. Even if they had gotten a better villain, the effects still would have held it back, I think. And none of the characters were especially likable to me.
Last edited by Vampire Savior; 06-04-2020 at 02:44 PM.
Nah... A property like Green Lantern NEEDS some starting exposition. If your not familiar with the guardians the corps the rings or anything else... not much will make sense without a quick foundation. It's no different than Star Wars starting with it's token three paragraphs.
That actor from the Limitless TV show. Seemed like a decent actor who could portray Hal.
good article from cbr on how sinestro is better than hal, and vice versa...
https://www.cbr.com/green-lantern-ha...ro-comparison/