I had fun with Green Lantern.  More fun, I dare say, than Super 8 (which I still don’t get why people are peeing their pants about).

Probably because the team that made GL had FUN with it and give knowing winks to the fact that, hey–this is a COMIC SUPERHERO with a MAGIC RING from SPACE whose MASK doesn’t do shit to conceal his identity (yep they take that out on front street).  I’m sure people will bitch that the effects are too much, too obvious–but really, how else could one represent these other worlds, other species, and all those ring effects?  Reynolds was just fine, IMO.

Even so, part of me still thinks it’s even beyond the preposterousness of comic books that Jordan can “construct” devices / machines with moving parts and chemical components, like machine guns and rocket launchers.  SO this is a BIG step beyond all those giant green baseball bats, fly swatters, and catchers mitts he used in the Superfriends cartoon back in the 1930s or whatever.  I’m glad his constructs are more elaborate than those, but at the same time I feel the Lanterns should be bound by the T-1000 rule:  “It doesn’t work that way.  Bombs and guns have chemicals, moving parts.  But it can form knives…stabbing weapons.”  I don’t care how imaginative you are, or how much willpower you have, if you’re going to generate a magical green machine gun, you probably need some rudimentary knowledge of said weapon’s moving parts and shit.  You can’t just vaguely imagine all the assembly into existence and expect it to work.

But in short, GL a FUN movie.  Other people can insist it isn’t—but they’re mistaken. I liked it as much as THOR.  Director Martin Campbell does what Favreau did for Iron Man, which is to say, he took what I’d always considered a B-list hero and nudged him A-side, so that kids will not only know who he is, but will also buy his lunchbox, pillowcases, pajamas, cereals, etc puke puke. Reynolds hasn’t the gravitas of Downey, but he done good.

Maybe it’s cuz Tony Stark is older and a “heavier” character than Jordan to begin with.  He’s a billionaire CEO playboy with his father’s legacy, he’s captured and nearly killed, has a change of heart about what the company has been doing, and is a borderline alcoholic

Jordan is impulsive, a little reckless.  He’s younger, but a skilled pilot.  He’s a womanizing bachelor too, but makes no pretense that he still wants his old girlfriend, and at the end of the day he goes back to some nondescript loft apartment.  In the movie, he’s actually in TEARS after Sinestro and Kilowog “haze” him during Lantern training and tell him basically that humans suck.  He’s convinced he’s been selected by mistake, whereas Stark “chose” his fate himself by consciously drawing on his skills to craft a suit.  But Jordan is more like young Peter Parker as far as enjoying his powers, flying, making shit and improvising, etc

So I found Reynold’s snarky little asides to be kinda spot-on.  He had a good balance of humanity, humor, and–at the end, when it was called for, severity about his new gig, responsibility and all that fiddle-fuck.

The movie starts off really well, you feel like you’re watching some other world, as Parallaxative terrorizes a threesome of alien astronauts who DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH (subtitles).  It’s very stylized and sets up the “look” of the costumes, sets etc.

It’s only on Earth, when Hal wears the suit and does shit, that your eyes and brain have to reconcile the two extremes of fantasy and reality. I was okay with it because I simply turned off the part of my brain that would have scoffed at it.  I went in knowing to turn it off.  Because like I said, how else can you really do a live-action movie about a superhero who does that kind of shit?

If they’d stuck with a simple, non-glowing spandex suit, some fanboys would have bitched about THAT, too:  “OH GAWD, he does all this WHACK SHIT with the RING, yet his costume looks like it came off the rack in a K-Mart!”

Mark Strong is tits as Sinestro.  The right mix of smug GL Corps leader and self-serving wannabe warlord.  He’s deliciously diabolical.  The red face, Vulcan ears, and David Niven stache / widow’s peak help.

The voice roles by Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan are so small that you can get past the way their handful of lines sound phoned-in.  Angela Bassett also has an unmemorable bit part.

The weirdest thing about Oa is how everything is “outside.”  The GL corps have their meetings outside.  The training is outside.  Even the hallway where Hal first appears / wakes up in the suit is half-exposed to the outside.  The ancient guardians spent the whole of their immortality balanced atop a circle of pillars.  Oa is a planet without interiors.  The chemistry between Geoffrey Rush’s fish-bird GL character and Hal was a little homoerotic–albeit in a fun way.

It’s like: “We’re going to fly now…join me, won’t you?”  as if he’s inducting a newbie cocksucker.

When Sinestro does his thing during the credits, he’s not in some secret chamber or at home.  He’s just standing around, “outside” again.  Apparently since there AREN’T interiors on Oa, all the GLs just loiter about.

GL also fares well on my “DVD at home with the kids” scale.

I don’t see myself watching Super-8 more than once ever again, but I imagine my kids will watch and RE-watch Lantern on DVD when it comes out–and I’ll be quite okay sitting through it with them a couple times.

Me and my son sat next to THIS guy and his son at GL.  He’s entitled to his opinion, but you’d think for the ‘price’ of his free ticket he could have written more than these five sentences:

http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/blackest-day/Content?oid=2630771

(Oh my God, I just went back and counted them.  It really is just FIVE sentences long.  FUCK—I was only exaggerating.)

On the other hand, the girl across from me kept jotting notes using a pen that lit up–TOTALLY TRASHING MY SCENE.  I was this close to killing her, but my kid would have overheard my rant (once I start, there’s zero containment).  It’s like, hey bubblehead, can’t you retain ANY information in that pretty but thick skull of yours?  Need the actor’s names?  The cinematographer?  It’s all ONLINE, dippy.  If you want to quote a line of dialogue, just REMEMBER it like I do.  If you can’t, it probably aint worth remembering.

FUCK!

This random shit just came to me:

PALPATINE:  They wanted you to spy on me, didn’t they?

ANAKIN:  I don’t know what to say.

Doesn’t know what to say?  And he SAYS that?  haw haw haw Lucas you kill me.

PADME:  I love you.

ANAKIN:  No, I love YOU.

Haw haw haw

I think Rotten Tomatoes should take the meta-scores for Lantern and Super-8 and swap ‘em.  I know everyone is jazzing over the “tribute” JJ did to Spielberg.  But the fact is, if I’d done that kind of “tribute” in grad school, I’d have been expelled for plagiarism.  Don’t wanna encourage that kind of behavior.  It IS possible to be original and tip your hat.  You don’t have to literally follow someone’s footsteps.  FUCK!  I dug Green Lantern.  After checking the RT scores for GL and Super-8, I’d say swap ’em, and that’d be about right.

People are REALLY CONFUSED.  Goes to show how much we (Professionals) are needed, to correct the course on this planet.

Helicopter crash / race car track scene from GL?  Totally memorable set piece.  A little corny?  Sure.  But I can’t really remember much from Super-8 except “those kids were cute”

Now, had GL used some Cars / Blondie / ELO in its soundtrack, I would have SHOT A LOAD

After seeing Buried and GL, Reynolds is okay in my book.  His “Deadpool” in Wolverine was choice, too

“Okay…all the people are dead!”

The proposal?  Who cares, never seen it, fuck it.

Sometimes at work when I ask people to do something, I pull an “exorcist” and keep chanting “The power of Christ compels you!” while making the sign of the cross until they walk / run away

It really freaks them out.

 

GREEN LANTERN