 |
| His sight doesn't look too great in that crappy mask. I'm sure I could escape it. |
That headline is a little misleading, as you'll soon see. Recently I've found myself questioning whether I'm a DC person at all.
I mean, I love Batman : TAS, JLU, Young Justice et al, but I've never really gotten into the DC comic scene. Even as a kid, as much as I loved Batman and Superman, my exposure was limited to their various film and television incarnations. In fact, I think I may own precisely one Batman comic, yet thanks to the animated series, movies and video games (not to mention Wizard and general comic conversations) I have quite a good understanding of both his history and his mythology, rogues and relationships included. I have fond memories of watching Richard Donner's Superman as a young boy, particularly enamoured with the scenes of baby Kal-El lifting up the Kent's pickup truck, or young Clark outrunning a train. However I'm outright positive I've never owned a Superman comic, and I couldn't even tell you which few I have read. Once again though, I feel incredibly familiar with just about every aspect of his lore.
I mean, I love Batman : TAS, JLU, Young Justice et al, but I've never really gotten into the DC comic scene. Even as a kid, as much as I loved Batman and Superman, my exposure was limited to their various film and television incarnations. In fact, I think I may own precisely one Batman comic, yet thanks to the animated series, movies and video games (not to mention Wizard and general comic conversations) I have quite a good understanding of both his history and his mythology, rogues and relationships included. I have fond memories of watching Richard Donner's Superman as a young boy, particularly enamoured with the scenes of baby Kal-El lifting up the Kent's pickup truck, or young Clark outrunning a train. However I'm outright positive I've never owned a Superman comic, and I couldn't even tell you which few I have read. Once again though, I feel incredibly familiar with just about every aspect of his lore.
Green Lantern on the other hand, well... he's a bit of a mystery to me. You see, when it comes to comics, you can make mine Marvel. I had a brief daliance with Image for a while there (thanks glossy pages and Michael Turner!) and had initially become a serious comic afficianado through the Dark Horse line of Star Wars books. I can specifically remember Marvel comics I had as a kid though, in particular a 'What If' Fantastic Four comic in which the Silver Surfer didn't betray Galactus. It was full of that wonderful Kirby and Lee madness and strange silver-age science-fiction, and I loved every panel of it.
Which is why I'm so routinely surprised that Green Lantern just doesn't do it for me. Surprised and disappointed. When Green Lantern : First Flight came out, that was my first real introduction to the lore. Once again, I was familiar with aspects of it from JLU, but those team shows never really give you the depth of a characters origins and the premise. I thought First Flight was okay, nothing more. I enjoyed Wonder Woman much more, which is a little shocking, maybe because I think there is just something so overwhelmingly silly about Green Lantern. I love Space Opera, so what the heck is going on here?
 |
| See what I did there? |
I've recently found myself in a position to have a vested interest in how the upcoming movie turns out, so I've taken it upon myself to read some of the comics, get acquainted with it all, to better enjoy the nuances the film may have. I wanted to start with Green Lantern: Rebirth, but before I found a copy of that I ended up reading Flash: Rebirth instead.
Wow. Not a fan.
Granted, I've never read a Flash comic in my life, but all of that Speed Force business struck me as patently crap. Superhero comics are often prone to bonkers science or spirituality, but rarely have I read anything as contrite as this storyline. To add insult to injury, it was a 'rebirth' title that was almost completely inaccessible to new readers. Because I've seen almost all of the animated stuff out there, I manage to understand a lot of the references to the extended DC universe, but very little of it seemed motivated or properly introduced. In that short story-line I was completely turned off Johns as a writer. So naturally my pursuit of Green Lantern: Rebirth subsided somewhat.
 |
| Wow, such overwhelming stoicism! I can't take it! |
The Martin Campbell directed Green Lantern did not make a good first impression. By the studios own admission, they put together the first trailer before they were ready. As a result, the tone conveyed in the non-vfx scenes have apparently misled audiences as to what to expect. I'll admit, I was looking forward to getting a glimpse of it (not as much as I was Thor or Captain America though), but was immediately appalled at some of the apparent creative choices.
 |
| Would you trust this guy with a power ring? Me neither. |
And he's kind of a dick. That's the first thing you realise when you watch that footage. From the Iron Man-lite opening to the limp reading of the Corps. Oath. In fact, based on what I've read/watched/heard about Hal Jordan, he's an unrepentant asshole. I'm sure the GL fans would like to point out that all of his issues (blah blah blah) stem from his lack of fear. Well, I think that doesn't matter if the character is always a total buttwipe. For a guy supposedly in love with Carol Ferris, he loves to make her life hell and destroy Ferris Aircraft property. Repeatedly. At least Batman is usually destroying stuff that Wayne Enterprises owns, so he's the one footing the bill. It doesn't get better once he becomes the Lantern and heads off into space, because for every cool sci-fi concept that gets created, I have to put up with Jordan being cocky, or defiantly arrogant in his questioning of authority and the status quo.
Unforutnately, it's not just a dislike of Hal that stops me from truly enjoying Green Lantern. John Stewart, Guy Gardner, the Guardians... they're all assholes. In fact, the only Lantern who doesn't piss me off is Kyle Rayner, and from what I can gather he's like Ernie Hudson, the forgotten Ghostbuster. Some of the other characters are interesting, but mostly in design. Kilowog looks cool, but if he gave me the same feeling as reading Ben Grimm stuff, I'd like him a lot more. Tomar Re is a crap design. I don't care what you say, he sucks. Sinestro is only marginally better. As a character he's interesting, but I never buy into it in execution.
With all of that said, let's take a look at the new Green Lantern footage that premiered at WonderCon last weekend.
Isn't it amazing what a change of music can do? All of a sudden, Green Lantern is looking like a serious (with requisite levity of course) science-fiction superhero film. They've had time to get the vfx a little closer to final, and are now able to include some scenes that demonstrate the scope of the film. I don't think it's an accident that the first shot is Mark Strong's Sinestro, floating in front of the Battery, delivering a speech to thousands of Corps. members.
 |
| Looks like a wierd mashup of Coruscant and Krypton. |
I'll admit, that single scene has sold me on at least seeing the movie. If i'm to understand it correctly, each Lantern is a distinct race (Stewart, Gardner and Rayner excluded) which would mean that there is a thousand different character designs in that scene alone. Consider my interest piqued.
The rest of the opening, with Abin Sur being attacked by Parallax, was definitely cool looking and very nice sounding, but I'm not really sold on any of the other action beats I'm seeing in the footage. The fist construct doesn't work for me, feeling far to disconnected from his actions. The machine gun construct should have me excited, but I really didn't like Reynolds performance as he manifested it. I want to like the detail in the suit, but absolutely hate the look of the mask and the pupils.
 |
| Now this is an epic fantasy world design I can get behind! |
We'll see I guess, but as big as the film make look, it still doesn't excite me in the same way that the trailers for Thor have. The scope and design of Asgard is much more impressive and convincing, in my eyes, than what we're seeing of Oa. It's just so messy, rocky and crowded looking. Asgard is giving me beautiful clean lines and carefully considered design. Not to mention a good deal of physical production design, which is something that Lantern appears to be lacking. If it was just down to those two films, GL would still get the cinema ticket, but it's also got to compete with Captain America and the very intriguing X-Men: First Class.
Like I said, maybe I'm just not a DC person. Does this mean my ability to write about Young Justice will be revoked? Please, change my mind and convince me that Green Lantern and Hal Jordan, are worth another chance.
Yeah man, I agree with pretty much everything you say regarding Hal. But like I said before, don't base it just on Hal and his story.
ReplyDeleteI started reading GL at like issue 36, just after Johns introduced the Red Lanterns and I was blown away by the copious amounts of blood everywhere. Gratuitous for sure, but it suprised me that DC took it's kid gloves off finally and looked like something Image or 2000AD would put out.
When I then went back and read from Rebirth onwards I have to say that the early issues aren't all that compelling, the real awesome stuff happens much later on and I could list them here but it'd be too long.
You might not gel with the whole rainbow brite colour corps, but for epic space opera on a humongous scale I haven't read anything better in comic form lately honestly, outside of Kirkman's Invincible and it's current Viltruimite War storyline. It's always been goofy as fuck and to John's credit he somehow makes it work!