Green Lantern

Spoiler Level: Medium

Sorry I've been away so long.  I burned out on blogging and it's been a busy summer. But I didn't want any more time to go by without posting my real review of Green Lantern, especially since I went to so much trouble to do my April Fools fake review.

I loved it.

The movie's been completely trashed by fans, and I just really don't get why. This is everything I wanted a Green Lantern movie to be, and I've wanted a Green Lantern movie for a long time.

I was worried that the power rings would only be used like laser guns.  Nope-- the constructs are here, and lots of 'em, and they look great.

Oa is absolutely breathtaking. I was worried that with the crowds of CGI Lanterns that they would all look too much alike; I needn't have worried. Lots of great alien Lanterns stood out, including ones I didn't expect to see, like Chaselon and Olapet.

The story worked great. There's lots of outer space action, balanced out with a very human Hal Jordan. (The scene where Carol meets him in costume for the first time is priceless.) Some people have complained how the action cuts back and forth between Earth and Oa, but that didn't bother me at all. I liked the way Sinestro was handled a lot, and I hope with all the energies of a Blue Lantern that there will still be a sequel so we can see the development of the Sinestro Corps. Hector Hammond's new origin works great with the layout of the movie, and his hyper-intelligence is still alien based, so that's close enough for me. He's the perfect embodiment of Hector Hammond's character, getting creepier and more disturbing as his powers increase and his body decreases.

Just to be fair, there are three things I didn't like about it:

1. The ending of Hal's first battle with Hector Hammond was confusing; I'm still not exactly sure what happened there.

2. Hal sees the helicopter is crashing, runs off to become Green Lantern, and then the helicopter spends a good minute or two crashing and sliding around before he shows up.  What happened? Did he have to recharge the ring first again?

3. While on Oa, Hal recites some information the ring downloads into his brain about Tomar Re's Sector, and how it contains multiple galaxies, which makes perfect sense if you're dividing the entire universe into 3600 sectors.  However, we then see a later scene saying something along the lines of "Sector 1234: The Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy." Well that doesn't work at all. If each sector needs to cover multiple galaxies, then shouldn't the Milky Way be completely in sector 2814?

So there! See, I'm not giving the movie a free pass just because I'm a huge Green Lantern fan.

What I am is a very grateful Green Lantern fan.  I wanted a live action Green Lantern that was able to use today's special effects to make Green Lantern come to life on the big screen just like the comics, and this movie delivered. From Oa to the Corps to the constructs to Parallax, this movie was everything I wanted to see. I'm disappointed that it's doing so poorly that even if it does get a sequel it's unlikely to get the money it would need to look as good as this one, but at least we got this one.

Dressing Up for the Movies

I have no idea how the idea of doing this came to me, but once it did it somehow took over.

The important part to know going in to the video is it starts in the middle of me saying "I'd like to purchase a ticket," and the woman in the ticket booth responding "2D or 3D?"



I almost backed out at the last moment, not out of any sense of real fear of embarrassment (after all, a Green Lantern must learn to overcome fear, right?) but more out of a sense of "I'm getting too old for this." I mean come on, I'm 42, I got a kid... isn't this a little juvenile?

And then I thought, Hell yeah. As the Doctor once said, what's the point in being grown up if you can't be childish once in a while? And really, the fact that I am 42 is what makes it work.  It wouldn't be nearly as funny if I didn't have that middle-aged gut hanging over the underwear.

Kudos to my daughter for having a sense of humor about it and being willing to film it even though she was embarrassed by her old man (and rightly so), and to the ticket woman for being a good sport. 

And yeah, sometimes I do scare myself.

Green Lantern 2-XSteL

2-XSteL, the smartest toy robot of Sector 2814!  In brightest day, In blackest night, no answers shall escape his sight! 

Couldn't make the midnight screening of Green Lantern tonight, but I'm excited enough about a real GL movie finally being here that I couldn't resist putting this picture together of my favorite toy joining the Corps.  I got the idea a month or so ago when I got the 3D mask with an action figure and stuck it on my 2-XL, and 2-XSteL was born!  Note that he's carrying The 8-Track of Oa.

To everyone who was interested in having me continue with the blogging, I just haven't been able to get myself motivated.  I think I need (needed?) a break.  Hopefully this is the start of me coming back to it.  Thanks for your patience!

Green Lantern

Spoiler Level: High

Anyone who knows me knows I don't believe in or advocate illegal downloading, but when I read last night that a work print of the upcoming Green Lantern movie had been leaked to the web I had see it.  Everyone who knows me knows I have become a HUGE Green Lantern fan over the last decade, and I don't think I've looked forward to a movie this much since Phantom Menace, so I had to download this and watch it ASAP.

Perhaps I should have learned from history.  Sadly, this movie makes Phantom Menace look like Empire Strikes Back.

Ryan Reynolds does a fine job, and the special effects that were completed in this print looks decent, but the changes they made to the Green Lantern mythos are just so far off the mark that it makes me long for the days of the Incredible Hulk movies, where Daredevil was a ninja and Thor was two people.  Yes, it's that bad.

I can handle some changes, like Hal Jordan being more manic and cocky than he is in the comics, becuase (a) the character needs to grab mainstream audiences and that's what's popular, and (b) Hal's personality got changed around a lot depending on who was writing him anyway.

Long-time readers know I've always been understanding about changes for a new medium, but the changes here are pointless at best and insulting at worst.  Oa is no longer a planet, it's a now a pocket universe on a "higher plane of existence." I guess so it's easier for the Guardians (who are now also green) to watch the entire universe at once.  Green Man looks nothing like a, well, green man anymore.  Why?  What's the point of that? If you were so in love with your new design, why not just make him a new GL?  Then there's Kilowog, who Dennis Haysbert plays with a Scottish accent.  Well that's just great, a big mostly-green stubby-eared CGI guy with a Scottish accent. Kilowog has become freakin' Shrek! And Sinestro is gay, and constantly hitting on Hal.  Not in a funny, played-for-laughs kind of way either, but in a creepy, look-how-you-can't-trust-this-guy kind of way.  Now Sinestro doesn't become a bad guy yet in this movie, but anyone who knows anything about Green Lantern knows that Sinestro is Hal's number one nemesis, so that combined with the way he's portrayed here makes it come across as homophobic. And I'm all for gay rights and equality and visibility (hell, I'm a card-carrying member of the HRC) but giving Sinestro an extended gay love scene was just too much.

For what it's worth, Hector Hammond is portrayed as a total perv yet totally straight, which I guess was their attempt at doing a balanced portrayal.  And it is consistent with the way Hammond's been portrayed by Geoff Johns in the comics, so at least they got something right. 

Oh, and the musical score sounds like screeching cats.  Literally.  It sounds like James Newton Howard took a dozen cats, stretched them out on a rack and started whacking them with a mallet in a demented desire to get each one to yowl at a precise pitch. What the hell is up with that?  Didn't John Williams totally kill the "space sounds bizarre and eerie" approach in the 70's?  If they're trying to go retro, it doesn't work at all.  Then again, I didn't like the musical score to the Battlestar Galactica remake either, so what do I know.

Other than all that, the film has potential.  Like, say, in the way that Attack of the Clones was an improvement over Phantom Menace.

Lastly, I want to point out that this is exactly why you shouldn't download movies.  This is just a work print, so with some carefull editing (is there time for reshoots?) what comes out in July might not suck this bad.  And it could be that being such a big Green Lantern fan, my expectations were just too damn high. But if you absolutely, positively think you can not wait like I thought I couldn't, then here's the link to the bit torrent for the Green Lantern movie.  But don't say I didn't warn you.

So all in all, it's probably better to not pay any attention to this post anyway.

UPDATE:  April Fools!  I actually like Phantom Menace.

Green Lantern Larfleeze Christmas Special

Spoiler Level: High

For quite a few years I was getting both the Marvel & DC Christmas specials.  And although on the whole I enjoy the DCU more than the Marvel Universe, Marvel's Christmas specials pretty much always beat DC's hands down.  DC's were usually just too damn dark for Christmas, and I often felt I couldn't even read them to my daughter.  So for the last couple years I've just been skipping them all together. 

(And I don't know if I can ever forgive DC for wimping out and changing the name of their 2006 special from "Infinite Christmas" to "Infinite Holiday."  Let me explain this to the editorial staff who makes these PC decisions:  Y'see guys, "Christmas" and "Crisis" sound similar, so that makes for a good joke!  "Holiday" and "Crisis" don't sound anything alike, so that doesn't make for a good joke! And I'm not one of those militant "war on Christmas" types.  I'm about as liberal as they come, and I always thought "Happy Holidays" just meant Christmas and New Year's.  And really, why the hell not include people who don't celebrate Christmas?  We got Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, New Year's, and my friend's mom's birthday.  I have absolutely NO beef with saying "Happy Holidays."  Except when you ruin your own joke just because you're scared of pissing someone off.  Go ahead, have stories about all the holidays, heck even call it the "Infinite Christmas Holiday Special," but don't sacrifice your own joke just for the sake of being PC.  But I digress.)

So being a Green Lantern fan I loved the idea of a Larfleeze Christmas Special.  Then I got it and saw the cover with Larfleeze shooting off his machine gun and thought "Oh dear, they're doing it again. Time for another no-fun holiday special."

Boy, was I wrong.

So get this:  Larfleeze sends the great and mighty guardian of Earth, Santa Claus, his 20-page Christmas list, builds a cottage so he'll have a chimney to come down and leaves out "the offering he damands" of milk and cookies.  (And not just any cookies; Larfleeze's Orange Lantern Cookies, complete with recipe!  My friend Steve at Joy's Japanimation often makes cookies for Free Comic Book Day and other big store events, and he's done cookies with the various Lantern Corps' symbols on them.  Now everyone will be asking poor Steve if he's using Larfleeze's recipe.  But I've digressed again.)  So Larfleeze decides to take it up with the big man himself and storms out to hunt down Santa Claus!  Which then leads into a hilarious game page where you're supposed to get Larfleeze through an Orange Lantern-shaped maze to help him find the North Pole.

This special has what all the other DCU Holiday Specials I had been reading lacked:  FUN.  Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.  Larfleeze's refusal to believe there isn't a Santa Claus, the explanations he comes up with for why Santa hasn't come to him, Glomulus's hi-jinks in the background, the Art Baltazar & Franco short strip... and some good sentimentality about "the Christmas Spirit."  No, not Jesus Christ, we're not going to go that far, but the more secular Christmas Spirit of giving to those who need it.  And it doesn't feel forced or shoe-horned in, it feels like a natural part of the story and gives it a touching ending.

All in all, this is the best holiday special I've seen from DC since I was a little kid.

Green Lantern: First Flight

Spoiler Level: High

Now THIS is one I first saw about a year ago when it was released.  I didn't want to review it until I'd finished watching all the bonus features, and since Rich and I recently watched it as part of our ongoing series of watching all the DCU OVAs, I figured it was long overdue.

The movie itself is AWESOME.  It doesn't adapt any one Green Lantern story; rather, it's a new take pulling from all the various Green Lantern mythos.  But all the key elements are here:  Hal Jordan, test pilot for Ferris Industries, is whisked away by a summons from dying Green Lantern Abin Sur to become his replacement in the Green Lantern Corps, a universe-wide police force run by the small, blue Guardians.  He's trained by a fanatical Green Lantern named Sinestro, who ends up turning on the Corps and becoming Hal's greatest enemy.

The details are different; Abin Sur looks much more alien now, and his reasons for coming to Earth (in a spaceship instead of under the power of his ring) are different, but those reasons get changed every few decades in the comics as well.  There's lots of appearances from other well known Green Lantern Corps members as well.  But this version treats them all differently; just because someone is a prominent Green Lantern in the comics doesn't mean that they'll be bullet proof here.

All in all, it's a faithful yet fresh take on Green Lantern, and a wonderful starting point for more stories.  In many ways it treats the source material in the way a big-budget live action movie would.  Hopefully the actual big-budget live-action Green Lantern movie being made now will do as good a job as this video did.

Being a big GL fan, this is the only DCU OVA I bought, and I bought the two-disc version.  There are some great bonus features on here, including the wonderful "Duck Dogers" episode "The Green Loontern" (talk about a lot of cool GL cameos!), documentaries looking at the history of the Green Lantern comics and the mega-event "Blackest Night," which was just about to start when this DVD was released.  What's missing, however, is anything on the making of this video.  That's because Warner Premiere likes to put the "making of" featurettes on the previous DCU OVA DVD (LOL) as a teaser to get you to buy the next one that's coming up.  Which I suppose I could understand, but for someone like me who is content to just watch the others and only wants to own the Green Lantern one, I would have liked it to be on here.

The bonus feature that I stalled on was the "Bruce Timm Presents 2 Bonus Cartoons" feature.  It's two episodes of Justice League Unlimited, "The Once and Future Thing" parts 1 & 2.   I watched the very beginning and didn't see what it had to do with Green Lantern.  I either turned it off or got distracted before I found out why these episodes were picked.  So now that I've finally gotten to watch them, I can say, "Yes! Awesome! Wonderful!  A great choice!"  Not only was it an episode focusing on Green Lantern John Stewart, it dealt with him meeting a future descendant of his, and featured the Kronos mythology of the hand that started the Universe!  Awesome GL stuff.  Mr. Timm, I apologize for having ever doubted you.

Oh, and I might be totally biased here, but while I think all the musical scores on these videos have been good, this one has been my favorite.   It's the only one I found myself humming the main title theme to.  I've been thinking for a year I should try to make an mp3 of it, and then low and behold, they release it on the "Music of DC Comics: 75th Anniversary Collection" CD!  So someone high up must have agreed with me, right?  Gonna buy that one as soon as I have the extra money for it.

Word has it that there will be a second GL DCU OVA DVD (ROFL) to coincide with the new movie, but from what I hear it's going to be Tales of the Green Lantern Corps as opposed to a follow up to this DVD.  I'm disappointed that Hal apparently didn't sell well enough to warrant his own follow-up DVD, but I absolutely love the Corps so I'm still psyched about this.  And besides, Hal will be getting his own TV show soon anyway.  It's a good time to be a Green Lantern fan, and this was a fantastic First Flight!

Green Lantern Movie Costume

Yeah, okay. That'll do.

My first reaction was, oooooooh!

My second reaction was, what's with all the white lines? I'm wondering if they'll pulse, to try and show how he's full of power. Kind of like how he's drawn with the GL symbol glowing off of his costume these days.

My third reaction was the symbol and the ring look good. I'm glad they're using the mask too, that's good. In this age where the actors are more important than the characters I never take that for granted. The mask actually reminds me of a smooth version of Kyle's, which will probably piss some people off but is fine by me.

The fourth thing I noticed was there doesn't seem to be any black in Hal's costume. It's looks all green. Well, all green and white, anyway. Wonder how that's going to go over with people who are new to Green Lantern? (No point in asking how it will go over with the fanboys; they'll bitch and whine and declare this as absolute proof that The Movie's Going To Suck, like they always do.) But to the average person who doesn't know GL, will the all-green outfit look cool to them? Or will they think he looks like a frozen stringbean, or an electrified Hulk?

The final reaction that went through my mind was, "Hey! Is that Ben Stiller playing Hal Jordan?" But I was being a smart-ass with myself, because I already knew it was Ryan Reynolds.

All in all, since there are many different Green Lantern costumes in the Corps, this is a perfectly acceptable one. Sure, I would have preferred it with the black trim, but this will do fine. I could easily see any member of the Green Lantern Corps wearing it, so why not Hal Jordan?

I'm looking forward to seeing more pictures of it to flesh out my opinion on it. How long til we get a trailer?!?