As I've reported before when Entertainment Weekly released a picture of Ryan Reynolds in the suit, I'm a little nervous about Green Lantern. And this recently released trailer is most definitely not reassuring me, sad to say. Take a look and see.
Look, I love the whole GL mythos. I'm a comic book geek, and this is basically superheroes meets Star Trek, which is very cool. There's a great central character; Hal Jordan, a womanizing test pilot whose fearless quality is what gets him the job as a GL, but that same quality can also make him come off as a cocky jerk at times. The concept of space cops with magic rings that can basically create anything you will them to is great and hugely visual.
So what doesn't work for me in this trailer? Well, first of all, the costumes still look silly. The effect is nice, I guess, but they look.....wrong. Off. The mask looks terrible, and the whole thing looks, well, dainty. Like he should be doing a dance recital, not facing the extremes of space travel and cosmic battle. I thought the idea of a suit created by CG was novel, but the result as far as I can see so far is that they look flimsy. Only one guy has ever pulled off a skin tight body stocking super-suit and that guy is Christopher Reeve. I don't know exactly how he did it, but he did. No one else. And Reynolds is the most fit human being on the planet right now.
Next are the effect themselves. Nothing here blew me away, with the possible exception of the giant green fist, and even that didn't look as cool as it could have. The effects all looked a little too CGI. You all know what I mean. Great CG can create a reality that feels totally authentic and yet still fantastic and unbelievable, resulting in audiences seeing things they had never thought they could see. Cheap or unimaginative CG makes everything look like a video game or a cartoon, and therefore robs the film of any suspense or feeling that these things are happening in areal world. Sad to say, and I hope I'm wrong, but this trailer feels more like the latter to me.
Finally, Blake Lively should get a an award for worst single line reading in a trailer for 2010. She was great in The Town, so I'm not writing her off yet, but man that was godawful.
What did I like? Well, Reynolds seems to have captured Hal's spirit, his attitude and his swagger. He's a guy who's incapable of not being charming, even in the truly awful movies he sometimes does. He also got across some of Hal's awe at being introduced to a larger universe, which is hard to communicate in a trailer. Also, Peter Sarsgaard looks great as Hector Hammond.
So, hopefully I'm wrong. Hopefully, the effects aren't entirely finished, and I'm not getting the whole shebang. Maybe on a big screen that costume will work. I hope all that is true, because it could really be a great franchise.
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