Taking "Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch" to a new level

[seriousfic]

So with the Green Lantern, aka Ryan Reynolds Is A Superhero Part 3: The Search for Spock in Japan, coming out soon, I have thoughts. Now, disclaimer... I'm not really a Green Lantern fan. It's not that I have anything against it, I've just never had time to really get into it (and in my defense, how great can Hal Jordan be if his best friend is Ollie?). But it seems to me Ryan Reynolds is a weird choice for the role? Just by comic book osmosis (a process by which someone who's only a Wolverine fan can find out the Wrecking Crew's origin), he seemed to me to be a sort of Chuck Yeager throwback... more "The Right Stuff" than "Van Wilder." It's a fine line to walk between levels of smugness, but there you go. Maybe I'm just bitter we can get a Reynolds!GL but have to put up with some God-awful Frankenbarry for a Flash movie.


Without even the saving grace of marshmallow bits.

I wonder if anyone appreciates the irony that HEAT was so vocal about Hal Jordan being the King of All GLs that there was no more mainstream choice to be the official Green Lantern of the movie... only the GL they're used to is a middle-aged patriarch and the logical option for the movie is to start him out as a young hotshot... so in effect, it's a Kyle Rayner movie with jets.

So my take on it, speaking as someone who's just a movie fan, is to get away from all the Campbellian "smug doubchebag/superhero origin/crisis of faith/eventual triumph/second movie where he quits" arc and just do Lethal Weapon in space. Get Kyle Raynor (or John Stewart, if you don't mind a billion "and now we go to senior space cop correspondent Mo Rocca" jokes) as the young'un who just got a power ring, with Hal Jordan as the seen-it-all-before vet. With that dynamic, you could skip Hal right over the "young actor we see in everything" phase of his life and get right to one of those badass silver foxes that used to rule Hollywood back when men were men and if Roman Polanski wanted to sodomize a young girl against her will, people were cool with it (oh, wait, that's still the case). Kurt Russell. Harrison Ford. Mel Gibson (if he hadn't... turned into Mel Gibson). Then put them on the trail of whoever murdered the last Green Lantern and viola, the plot writes itself.

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Dennis Quaid as Hal Jordan.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

...damn you, that's better than Kurt Russell. I do not say that often!

[mcity.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is that Reynolds can act, but they're writing Sam as Generic Irresponsible Guy On A Redemption Quest #4263.

Oh, and the movie you're proposing is basically GL: First Flight. I only saw half of it, but it seemed pretty awesome. Though it was closer to Men In Black than Lethal Weapon. Ever wanted to see Victor Garber as Sinestro chewing an informant out in a creepy and aggressive manner? Michael Madsen as Kilowog? Tricia Helfer and Juliet Landau in any capacity whatsoever?

[tgirl78.livejournal.com]

I agree with box_in_the_box. I think Dennis Quaid as Hal Jordan would have been awesome (back in the day). I quite like Ryan Reynolds though as GL. He's got the body and I think he can act. I'm not a HUGE GL fan- my guy is- but I think this movie is going to be badass.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I kinda want to see Sinestro as an outer space corrupt cop. Since, in essence... he kinda is.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

Yep. That's exactly what Garber portrayed him as. Cynical, jaded mentor type secretly working against his superiors. Like I said with Gotham Knights earlier, DC doesn't like to repeat approaches, at least not in the same franchise. Which is a shame, because the Space Cop approach would've worked really well on the big screen. Heck, Wizard Magazine--no, wait, come back!--thought of a potential GL movie as Hal Jordan trains Kyle Rayner vs. Sinestro, which would satisfy both groups of fans.

...Actually, that's probably the third movie.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I'll see your Quaid and raise you Bill Paxton.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

For WHAT? Jack T. Chance?

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Guy. Fucking. Gardner.

[90scartoonman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what is it with the smug douchebag archetype these days?

Haha, Frankenbarry. I see what you did there.