No Evil Shall Escape My Sight

It still bothers me, that GREEN LANTERN was something of a box office disaster. I’ve since learned that plans for a sequel have not been consequently scrapped, so there’s that much, and anyone who saw the ending of the movie knows that one of the big complaints has theoretically already been addressed to that end; Hal will have a definite, physical foe to fight, and it’ll be Sinestro (I would also bet on Star Sapphire).

Given the rather extended partisan rant I went on in the last Quarter Bin, it should be no surprise that I generally favor DC over Marvel, not simply out of loyalty, but on basic philosophical levels, which seem to extend between the comics and film realms as well. Where Hollywood sees a rather extended and rather extensive success story from Marvel’s properties, I see a series of movies that more often than not take the cheap way out, and the successes are almost always by accident. For every FANTASTIC FOUR (which itself still managed to produce a sequel), a conceptual failure that was easily on the same level as two Hulk failures (which again, is, financially, on a fairly relative scale), audiences have embraced two Iron Man movies and a Thor that have neither of them been that much better. I’m still trying to figure out just how THOR became a success (at this point, I’d embrace the FANTASTIC FOUR model, or the anticipation for AVENGERS), but everyone knows that Robert Downey, Jr. saved IRON MAN from collapsing in on itself. In fact, almost every single Marvel movie has contradicted the assertion that a strong villain is necessary to make a successful superhero film. Every villain a Marvel movie has featured has been, in some way, either a complete joke or a conceptual nightmare, or for all intents and purposes perfectly ready to confront Adam West in a slanted camera angle. (The rare exception to this rule has either been outright rejected, as Thomas Haden Church learned the hard way in SPIDER-MAN 3, or misused, as Ian McKellen routinely was, when he wasn’t talking, in the X-Men trilogy.)

When DC does a villain, and Joel Schumacher not particularly factored into this equation, you have a character who thematically fits into the rest of the picture, without any real compromise. Heath Ledger’s Joker was already legendary before anyone had properly experienced him in THE DARK KNIGHT, and still ended up producing box office records. Kevin Spacey took what even Gene Hackman reduced to a joke and made Lex Luthor menacing in SUPERMAN RETURNS, a true reflection on the humanist outlook for a movie that also failed to properly fill out the regular superhero spandex. Peter Sarsgaard and the voice of Clancy Brown (!) represented unusually cerebral adversaries for a hero with one of the most unlimited powers in comics and movie theaters, but as GREEN LANTERN stressed again and again, it was willpower that was bound to win the day.

Just not the hearts of moviegoers. Everyone’s been attempting to explain the failure of the movie, but very few people were attempting to make it a success. Aside from an uptake in popularity at comic book stores, Green Lantern is a property that meant absolutely nothing to mainstream audiences, a concept that was either thoroughly illustrative of its native medium, or hopelessly dominated by it. Now it seems we have our answer. Why there was no novelization available prior to the theatrical release is one of the great oversights in recent marketing. To assume anyone who might have cared would simply read up with some of the trades doesn’t begin to consider that no single Green Lantern story has ever properly conveyed the scope of the concept, which is why the movie had to moderately tweak certain aspects. To simply say, Geoff Johns’ SECRET ORIGIN covers the bulk of what anyone needs to know, kind of misses the point. Peter Jackson didn’t have a huge success on his hand with the Lord of the Rings trilogy because there was a huge population hopelessly devoted to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (that would be the case with Harry Potter, or the Twilight Saga), but because he unexpectedly produced a landmark fantasy experience, something no other filmmaker had done before him, or has managed since.

GREEN LANTERN was expected to succeed because of its unique scope, and the fact that most comic book movies tend to be something of a success these days. It was an unknown property with something remarkable to contribute.

But, it was also a comic book movie, with something entirely new to say about comic book movies. Just imagine if Star Wars had originally been a comic. “Come see this awesome new sci-fi movie! It was originally a comic!” Putting aside that many, many imitators quickly proved that George Lucas really did have a singular, unduplicatable vision, Green Lantern as a property developed over many decades a rich tapestry that is completely unrivaled in comics. One might say that if it hadn’t been for the fact that DC did it as a comic book first, a movie version of this mythology would have been inevitable anyway. Anyone who watched Jackson’s movies and wondered what someone else might do with magic rings and complicated histories might objectively look at GREEN LANTERN and easily interpret it as a natural reaction, even if it’s taken a decade to reach. Did anyone object to Sauron being a disembodied eye for nearly the full length of three films, or the fact that even in the conclusion of that story, this main villain never so much as looked Frodo directly in the eye?

I may not be very coherent about this, may not even be very objective, and that’s because I’m just so damned confused and disappointed. I would perhaps sum up GREEN LANTERN’s failure as asking too much of an audience from a property that has existed for decades but in a form that few fans of even its original medium ever bothered to follow. I’m extremely happy that, one way or another, this film does in fact exist, and my own enjoyment of it cannot be dampened by the general reaction of others. Hey, I have a rich history of liking movies other people rejected out of hand, for reasons that are even harder for me to understand. I can handle this. It’s a matter of expectations. With this one movie, I had the idea that Green Lantern would finally come to be embraced on a scale I imagined it always deserved. I wanted a Green Lantern movie back in 1994, when Hal Jordan was a crazy man and one of DC’s biggest villains. I always saw the cinematic potential, even when I myself would never have envisioned quite this way.

I made another trip to Escape Velocity last week, and have planned another this week, and while these are still purely exceptions, I will write about the comics I bought in future columns. I hadn’t even planned on such an extended rant directly solely on GREEN LANTERN, but rather something that would have segued into more direct comics talk, including some relevant material to a starter topic like the movie. Better luck next time…