MIKE GOLD: Green Lantern Trashed – Three Times!
I’ve been trying to make it through the Green Lantern DVD. I didn’t see it in the theaters – nobody I knew actually liked it, although to be fair few totally hated it. But when a close friend who happens to be in the intellectual property racket told me the best way to see it was to download a bootleg, I got dissuaded. So now ComicMix reports there’s an “extended cut” DVD out there. Hot damn! 360 seconds of more mud.
Bobby Greenberger, who writes under the name “Robert,” reviewed this dachshund a couple days ago and he did so with all the eloquence and joie de vivre one should expect from a comic book editor turned Star Trek writer turned politician. All I can say about his review is that I agree with his observations and, damn, he’s a lot more polite than I am.
Green Lantern deserves better than this. There’s a reason why the guy has been in print for all but about eight of the past 70 years. The character actually deserves a real movie, not ten tons of CGI squeezed into a ten-ounce can. He’s survived countless reboots – and I mean countless; you can play the Monty Python Cheese Shop game with GL reincarnations. There’s something there there, and it’s something the filmmakers missed. Or avoided completely.
Now I see the clips for the new Green Lantern animated series. It’s from Warner Bros. Animation – go figure – and once again, they seem to have missed the boat by driving to the wrong ocean. This is the same company that did brilliant adaptations of the character in two solid, entertaining D2DVD movies as well as on their Justice League and Superman animated shows. Heck, they even did a great job with the guy on their Duck Dodgers show. So why they decided to abandon all of this for a diuretic dump of overly modeled CGI crap is beyond me.
Well, it isn’t quite beyond me. They’re simply following in George Lucas’s footsteps. Personally, I would have picked Bruce Timm. Or even Jay Ward. Tom Terrific looked better than this.
Maybe the writing will be so fantastic it’ll overcome their clunky, awkward and cheesy animation approach. I’m more than enough of a fanboy to give it a shot. It goes up on Cartoon Network on Armistice Day.
And, please, don’t get me started on the New 52 Green Lantern.
They DID pick Bruce Timm. He's in charge of the series.
–Daryl
It's Timm's design and direction. The look is OBVIOUSLY a nod to the immensely popular clone wars series. So long as the STORIES they present are good, well, I abstain from judgment. DC Animation since 1991 (especially the TV serieseseses) have never swayed me wrong. JLA, Batman, Superman, Teen Titans, even the not-around-long-enough Legion cartoon were all really well done. It's because of this track record I have high hopes for the animated series.
They say GL is getting a sequel. I don't think Ryan Reynolds was bad, per se, it was all scripting/special effects that caused the train wreck. Make a strong character piece with Hal vs. Sinestro, and just maybe, they'll salvage things.
Or, it'll be Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer and the Big Far Cloud all over again.
I liked the Green Lantern movie. I liked it more than Thor but less than Captain America (didn't even bother with the new X-Men movie). I don't know why everyone else seemed to dislike it.
I'd certainly like to know where this "extended cut DVD" is; the only format in which I've seen the "extended cut" version offered is the BLU-RAY format. The two are NOT mutually interchangeable options. If you've got a Blu-ray player, you can play regular DVDs; however, if you only have a standard DVD player, you CAN'T play Blu-ray discs.
The Extended Cut is in a Blu-Ray Combo Pack: you\’ll get a Blu-Ray version, a DVD version, and a digital version for your digital viewer of choice. You can also get it through iTunes.
I can't even get myself to watch GREEN LANTERN on my Cablevision's ON DEMAND…and I've watched some crappy movies ON DEMAND! :-)