Film Review: Green Lantern

The term "ridiculous" is thrown around so much these days that I don't think we take the time to truly appreciate its meaning. It's in times like this that it's almost good that films like Green Lantern exist because it allows us time to meditate on the true meaning of the word for almost two full hours.

Green Lantern seemed to collapse under itself within minutes.There was too much going on, and none of it was all that interesting, and its logic couldn't stand up to much scrutiny. GL relies heavily on inspiration from Geoff Johns' Secret Origin (Johns is also listed as a producer on the film), but it only seems to be a tangential relation. There was little reason not to have this movie be a strict adaptation (though certain scenes would need to be broadened, and the references to Blackest Night would probably need to be removed) because the basics of what makes Hal Jordan's story a great one is all there. Instead, GL takes too many pieces from the mythology, adds in ideas of its own, tosses it all into a blender and hits purée. The mash that we get is this movie, and it's not good.


While Ryan Reynolds is likeable enough in the role of Hal Jordan, he never actually seems to play Hal Jordan. That is his fault as much as the writers. Reynolds can do comedy and he captures the arrogant, free-wheeling side of Hal Jordan pretty well, but it's the relationship issues and regrets of the character--that requires an eye for drama that grounds the character and makes him real and identifiable--that Reynolds lacks so he fails the audience as much as the script failed him. His many scenes with Carol Ferris (the story about Jordan having issues with Carl Ferris is strangely missing and pretty incongruous; would he really still be working with Carl after his father was killed on the man's airfield?) is strangely developed: it has signs of maturity and reality--she immediately recognizes him as Green Lantern--but they seem to keep having the same conversation over and over again. Moreover, we never really buy their affection for one another; she's dull and icy, he's a man-child and a malcontent. Their scenes together are shot in extreme closeup--even when there's a whole room of other people involved in their conversation--to manufacture intimacy, but these two don't have chemistry and the script lacks any kind of romance or substance.

Jordan's family issues are given the smallest of lip services. His family shows genuine concern for his health and mental safety (as he has the maturity of a six year old with ADHD), while Jordan just stands there and looks vacuous. The theme of Jordan being irresponsible is brought up but never exactly explored, even though there are more than enough characters to explore this fully. In the end, his friends and family are right to worry and Jordan's less likeable because he never really seems to understand where they're coming from, unwilling to listen and incapable of change. 

"Dude, I'm telling you, Coast City is covered in shit!"

 Hal Jordan is an alpha male type character. He could lead a team into hell without any effort and everyone would be certain they'd all be fine because Jordan said so. He could be serious yet funny (but not the fratboy funny of Ryan Reynolds). An actor who could be comedic and dramatic is needed, and it's a wonder then why David Boreanaz (a noted Hal Jordan fanatic), Nathan Fillion, or Ryan Gosling were not chosen, as they all would have been much, much better.

OG Parallax.

The threat in the movie is Parallax, the manifestation of fear. His origin from the comics is as a being as old as sentience. He is fear and he feeds on it. He was eventually captured within the massive Lantern battery on Oa, which is the only place with enough power to contain him, but at a price: since he's yellow and yellow is the color of fear and Parallax is now within the containment battery, the Lanterns are weak against yellow. The Guardians, afraid that the Lanterns might rise against them like their predecessors, the Manhunters, build their citadel in yellow to protect them. So fear is a major arc within the Green Lantern mythology.

This is anchored even more by Jordan and Sinestro (who refuses to feel fear; who is willing to manipulate it, respectively). However, this Hal Jordan does feel fear. I understand why this was added--to make Jordan less perfect, make him more human and identifiable like a John Everyman type, and the question becomes: If our protagonist needed to have fear and overcome it throughout the movie, and needed to be quirky and silly and a bit young, why not use Kyle Rayner, as the character beats feel more like they come from a Rayner story than a Hal Jordan story? The fact that this version of Jordan is so full of fear we need to be reminded of it constantly and eventually decides to quit the Lantern Corps. is more reminiscent to Rayner's origin story. And speaking of Jordan quitting--why would he be allowed to keep the lantern and the ring? Would the Guardians actually allow the most powerful weapon in the universe to be kept with a quitter and an emotionally stunted derelict? Not to mention the fact that he probably killed that guy in the bar fight when he sent him through a brick wall. Hal Jordan is a menace!

The problem is that in this film, rather than be this scary entity, Parallax seems to be a floating cloud of flatulence, reminiscent of Galactus' appearance in Fantastic Four 2: Rise of Ennui, who in turn looked like the bad guy from Ferngully. He is not scary as he is ridiculous looking, and as great an actor as Clancy Brown is, the dialogue he's given is trite, clichéd and too easily expected. Since Parallax is simply a floating cloud of liquid shit, the fight with Jordan is brief and silly to watch and the overall look of the character is laughable so any kind of intended drama is simply taken as comedy.

The fact is, Parallax should not have been used in the first movie anyway. They could have used Hector Hammond (better written, obviously), Krona (the real one, not the crap one we saw here), William Hand, Atrocitus, Nero (not from the equally feculent Star Trek 11) or Amon Sur. Parallax is too big a villain with too complicated a backstory to use in the first movie. Amon Sur, son of Abin Sur, whose ring went to Hal Jordan, who Amon blames for the death of his father and resents him for having his father's ring and for being a better Lantern, probably would have been the best choice. They could alter the story so that Amon and Jordan are training at the same time on Oa, we could see the rivalry start and eventually have it boil over on Earth where Amon wants to take revenge on Jordan by wiping out the people close to him, so he loses exactly what Amon did. Amon Sur would also be a great mirror for Jordan. They are two sons who lost their fathers and took this loss two different ways. Jordan could look at Amon Sur as the road not taken, the line he has to be careful not to cross. In the meantime, they could set up the Manhunter threat for the second movie, which would lead to Sinestro's disillusionment with the Guardians and decides to start his own Corps.  

Character interactions serve only the story, which is overly complex and leaves too many threads hanging like meat in a cold locker. Considering how heavy the backstory on Green Lantern is and how mythology reliant it is, I'm surprised no one thought to keep using the narration to either help establish setting or give character depth while moving the plot along.

Anyway, for some reason Hector Hammond was a childhood friend of Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris and is jealous of Jordan (better agent, I guess), Amanda Waller (who should be played only by CCH Pounder) has a useless role and Tim Robbins shows up to play a senator for five minutes. I really can't help but feel bad for each of them. They're fine actors and they deserve more screen time in a better film. Of course, I'm very confused by Hector Hammond's (Peter Sarsgaard) role in the picture. Due to nepotism, he got a job working with Amanda Waller's project to steal the set from Stargate SG-1 and is generally considered a failure as a teacher, a scientist and human being. If no one takes him seriously, how is the audience supposed to take him as a serious threat? It doesn't help that Sarsgaard plays him as if he was a pedophile and his makeup makes him look like Rocky Dennis. 

And come to think of it, why wasn't Hammond actually allowed to use Jordan's ring? "You have to be chosen," Jordan says. Even though in the comics, others have picked up rings before and used them--like Batman (great scene) and Green Arrow (meh).  How about that time that Jordan used multiple rings from a variety of Corps.? Maybe I shouldn't bother bringing logic into this.

The other Lanterns don't fare much better than the earthbound characters. While Kilowog (Michael Clark Duncan) is the only beacon of hope in the entire movie (he's the only character that actually looks and acts like his comic book counterpart), characters like Bzzd and Boodikka are seen (barely), and Tomar-Re and Sinestro seem to have roles just for the sake of having them. One of the major problems is that Sinestro is given the proper screen time to develop his character, or better define the complex relationship between him and Jordan. Mark Strong does his best with what he's given, but it's hard to work with so little.

Sinestro was not even given the minor establishing character traits needed to make him stand out from the rest of the cast. In the comics, he was considered to be the greatest Lantern of all, his sector in space was the most orderly, he had a smug sense of accomplishment, and he had issues with the Guardians. In short, he was the best and he knew it. Now, he's just an exposition and speech giver. His taking of the yellow fear ring at the end of the film only confuses matters--doesn't the acceptance of fear now negate its power? And come to think of it: Why would they fight fear with fear? How would that work? And doesn't that strategy disservice the Green Lanterns and make them look weak? Since there's so much left open here, it's possible that we could learn that Sinestro purposely set all of this into motion so a yellow ring could be forged; admittedly, there's enough dangling that if a sequel is produced we could see a Wrath of Khan effect, wherein the a shitty first movie makes way for a near-perfect classic of a sequel.

For a film that boasts itself as a space-faring sci-fi epic, we only see Oa briefly, and it looks like a junkyard. The CGI in this film is laughably bad. The effects on Chuck looks better. Multiple companies were hired to do the CGI on Green Lantern, so the incongruities can be largely attributed to that. But if you see in dailies and early concept art that the CGI isn't working, you'd think maybe someone would say that they should stick with one company and take a few extra weeks in post-production? It's even funnier when you consider that Asgard in Thor looked so much better than Oa (and anything else in the movie) and that film had a smaller budget.

"It's a FAAAAAAKE!!"

Speaking of Oa, it's only in the movie for about ten minutes. Jordan's Lantern training takes up those ten minutes. It's just like Luke Skywalker's training with Obi-Wan and Yoda in the first two Star Wars movies. When Kilowog and Sinestro are going over how to create ring constructs, my friend turned to me and in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "It can't form complex machines. Guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts, but it can form solid metal shapes. Likes knives and stabbing weapons." It was the funniest thing to come out of that movie. At the same time, we see Jordan create two different kinds of Gatling guns and a race car. In order to create a Lantern construct, you would need to know how it works. I understand him making planes--that makes sense--but guns and race cars? Please.

In short: don't bother. God knows everyone working on this film used it as their model anyway.

Walter White's reaction to Green Lantern.

Green Lantern: 1 out of 5.

Next: (Early) Film Review: 30 Minutes or Less.

Literature Review: Green Lantern Rebirth

When Hal Jordan stopped being interesting, DC decided to skew young, making Kyle Rayner (Sinestro: "He's an alley rat!") the only Green Lantern. Jordan became Parallax when Mongul destroyed Coast City and had a nervous breakdown. He destroyed Oa and almost the entire Lantern corps. before realizing he went crazy and died restarting the sun and saving the earth. After dying, he became the host to the Spectre, the spirit of vengeance. Sounds complicated, right? Welcome to comic books.

Now with symbolism!

 Naturally, when Geoff Johns decided he wanted a power ring back on Jordan, he was going to have to contend with all of these facts, and he was going to have to try to make Jordan a true good guy again; something of a problem when you consider that whole holocaust thing he started. The result is Rebirth, and while Johns does not take the easy road to the answers, it is the most satisfying to long time readers.

What establishes Rebirth as an important story to look at when considering the live action Green Lantern movie is because it is here that the modern versions of Parallax and Hal Jordan are defined and brings Sinestro back as his arch-enemy. Originally, Hal Jordan simply called himself Parallax in the miniseries The Final Night, which saw Jordan's decline, his mass murder, and eventual redemption. While the name makes sense in its own right, the decision to call himself that was always out of place. It was simply unnecessary. Now, thanks to Johns, he used this (and Jordan's suddenly grayed hair) as an opportunity to establish Parallax as his own character: a yellow-skinned fear demon, which is the origin on the yellow impurity in the Green Lantern mythology. It tells the story of Parallax, that it is a creature as old as sentience; that all fear felt is created by him and he feeds upon fear to keep himself alive. From time to time he latches on to powerful beings to break them, to feed upon their fear more directly, and that's where we find Hal Jordan.

We established in Secret Origin that Hal Jordan felt fear twice. The first time was as a child, watching his father die, and the second was seeing Coast City, his home, be destroyed (along with most of the earthbound supporting cast of Green Lantern). The fear he felt was that of someone who realized they couldn't really control everything. For once, Jordan felt fear from his own failure, and fear of the future; what might happen next. The profound nature of that happening to Jordan is not lost on the script or on the characters, especially Jordan's best (read: only) friend John Stewart (the African American Green Lantern, not the Daily Show host), who--unafraid of any form of litigation from Matt Murdoch--refers to Jordan as "The man without fear."

The results of having a fearless man feel fear is weighty and well orchestrated. Jordan has to live with the fact that he failed, and his attention to Coast City's rebuilding in the years after this story speaks to his desire for redemption and his endless diligence. Most of all, by the final pages, we see Jordan again able to overcome fear--the true theme of every Lantern story. 

"Hey, Bats, I think you dropped something."

By playing Parallax up as a supremely intelligent being whose plans for Hal Jordan ran over multiple years, while also possessing Jordan over even more years, it always Johns to build up Parallax as his own character posing a unique threat and allows Jordan (in some way) to be forgiven for his role in wiping out the Lantern corps. The big problem with Jordan's return was the treatment of the JLA, particularly Batman. While Johns offered an excellent reason why Bats and Jordan don't get along, Batman is purposely made to be over vindictive and too narrow minded. He's written to show the mistrust that the other heroes have for Jordan, but it's too over-the-top and makes Batman look like he's hoping for the worst case scenario just so he could say he was right. What Johns should have done was keep a subplot from his original script that had Batman--Jordan's biggest JLA adversary and naysayer--become possessed by Parallax, only to see the horrors Jordan had to live with. In that way Batman could be put in his place, and serve as an easier way for Jordan to assimilate back into the group later. I'm not sure exactly why it was that the subplot was abandoned, but I can guess that it was because Batman/Parallax shoots Robin in the arm. But it would be only guessing.


In rebuilding the mythology, Johns did the right thing by bringing back Sinestro. Like any great nemesis, Sinestro's desire for order and his belief in anarchy is mirrored perfectly by Jordan's unstructured life and military experience. While neither one were exactly great at listening to the higher-ups, they both diverged within Jordan's love of freedom and Sinestro's desire for control. And let's face it: having Hal Jordan return without Sinestro is like having Superman without Lex Luthor, Batman without the Joker, or Green Arrow without...without...well, at least Sinestro's back.


We're also treated to the character depth Johns is known for. He adds not only to his characters (the forms created by the Lanterns are created differently reflecting the minds of their creator) but also adds to the mythology (to use a power ring takes strength and willpower from the user; it hurts). In Rebirth, Carol Ferris in her two scenes manages to have a greater impact on Hal Jordan and offer more insight into his character than Lois has been able to do for Clark in the last three years.


The true unsung hero of all of this is Ethan Van Scriver, whose art is nearly breathtaking. The fact that he can make every panel look like it was taken from the cover and still manage to make deadlines is nothing short of spectacular. His characters are evocative and drawn with the perfect clarity of real-life and the fun of the surreal. Every bit of Rebirth's success belongs just as much to Van Scriver as it does to Johns. Indeed, in a perfect world he'd be handling more DC books than he is right now.


While there are less convoluted resurrections in fiction, there are also many, many more complicated ones. At least here, nothing is exactly erased, but smoothed over, and on top of the resurrection of an iconic character we're given great action, strong character development, and what stands as the backbone of the modern Green Lantern mythology.

Green Lantern Rebirth: 4 out of 5.


Sunday: Green Lantern live action.

#100: Rebooting and Renumbering the DCU

Since this is the 100th entry, I thought I'd take a break from Green Lantern (kinda) to discuss briefly the editorial decision by DC to restart (kinda) its franchises.

And just so I'm clear from the beginning: I won't be ranting and raving about how much of a good or bad idea I think this is. As with any story arc in comics, if I like what I read I'll continue to read it, if I don't I won't. When Dick Grayson's tenure as Batman ends in August and his return to Nightwing explained in September, I'll say something about it then to tie everything up. However, this entry will be about possible causes and problems involved in rebooting/retconning, and if this move is really a reboot in the first place.

Every ten or twenty years or so, Marvel and DC like to wipe the slate clean so to speak and restart the stories from the Year One aspect; origins can be redefined and modernized, muddled continuity to be clarified, cleared, or entirely nixed or altered. It's never necessarily a bad thing to do, and considering how muddled the continuity of DC has gotten (and the fact they last rebooted everything in 1987), a reboot doesn't exactly seem like a bad idea. However, it's the timing of it--and the less than sweeping changes that are being made because of it--that make it so strange.

DC's biggest icons--Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern--all have ongoing stories; stopping them isn't a problem; one continuity ends, another begins, but these aren't ending exactly. Everything is being renumbered to #1 so new fans can have a clear jumping on point; sweeping changes (your mileage may vary) are being made to these books--some of which we know about (Dick Grayson is Nightwing again, Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again), while other things are more opaque (are Clark and Lois still married?), but many core story ideas, specifically Green Lantern and Batman will be continuing on. Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison will be continuing on their multi-year arcs on these franchises with only minimal difficulty from the new editorial mandates.

As I said, the idea of a reboot isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's timing is very strange. In 2005, DC released the Johns penned mini series Infinite Crisis which was supposed to do some continuity housecleaning and lead into their One Year Later initiative which would skip the DC continuity one year to change up the status quo a little bit. So why launch reboot? The answers aren't clear, but there are two items worth noting that likely led in part to this decision.

1-- Superman and Wonder Woman stopped working. With Superman backpacking through America courtesy of J. Michael Straczynski, fans yawned. When Superman decided during this trip to renounce his American citizenship, everyone went nuts--and not in a good way. On Wonder Woman--JMS was writing her too--the run was derivative of something Denny O'Neil tried in the 70s with the character. Both arcs are/were a critical and commercial failure.

Add that up with the issues both characters are having in other mediums: a Wonder Woman movie was in development hell for years until it was cancelled; a show was shopped, universally passed, picked up, and then passed again; the Superman film franchise was stalled, the new movie is said to be having problems in scripted and direction, and the whole rights of the estate thing is coming back up soon so Superman may end up taking a very long vacation for all mediums. And you know the only person who ends up happy with this? Lex Luthor.

2-- Sales. Though Marvel routinely beats them in quarterly sales, DC isn't exactly in a slump, and their movies, altogether, are arguably more successful (The Dark Knight). However, with Green Lantern set to debut, a sequel already in development, a Superman movie presumably on the fast track and a new Batman feature already starting viral marketing, now is the time for new readers to pick up a few comic books, get confused and quit after a few issues.

Only DC wants them to stay. And this is where things get very confusing. If most stories are going to be continuing and only the numbers being reset, what is really being changed. You can't wave a shoe in our faces and call it bacon! What I mean to say, just renumbering a series, and not resetting the actual story won't really help the readers. If certain books within a franchise (Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern have multiple titles) are going to be reset and others are to continue on with the old continuity, things will only get more confusing for everyone.

Then there's the art of the retcon. Infinite Crisis worked to an extent to clean things up, but diverging stories, gaffes, and multiple origin stories (Superman: Earth One and Superman: Secret Origin) have led to a lot of confusion among fans. In the last several years, the DC stories and "event" stories have become too cosmic, and the crossing over between titles and all the 52 earths in the Multiverse became too convoluted and often plain weird. But at the same time, a giant retcon--essentially calling it quits with everything and starting from scratch (Clark Kent arrives in Metropolis for the first time, Bruce Wayne first dons a cape and cowl and doesn't return his therapists' messages) seems too blunt of a solution, especially with popular ongoing stories and popularity of certain stories and characters in the current universe like Lois and Clark's marriage and characters like Connor Kent, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne, and a vast retcon would erase these characters and end several titles.

The long and the short of it is that the editors at DC put themselves up against a wall, and at the end of the day, they truly cannot wipe the slate clean without doing major damage to their primary fanboy base. Say, if they went about retconning Lois and Clark's marriage--we all say how well that turned out when Marvel did it to Peter and Mary Jane. As more information is being released, it seems DC is get rid of its smaller, less known titles and refocusing on the core characters and titles that everyone knows. The titles most effected, you'll notice, are Batman, Superman, and Justice League. The reasons for changing the former two are obvious (the aforementioned crazy shit going on in Batman, the lack of focus and bad choice made in Superman), while Justice League is simply an obvious choice. Justice League is supposed to be for DC what X-Men is for Marvel, but in the last decade, the Justice League book has languished with a constantly revolving lineup and uneven pacing and direction; not to mention the fact the stories themselves haven't really impacted the DCU since Flash discovered the Multiverse, which was quite a while ago. Quite a while. And I'd hate to admit it, but it's not like the good old days when Grant Morrison was on the title. However, with Geoff Johns is on tap to write, and is used to ensemble dramas with large casts.

As more information is being released, this seems to be more of a reshuffling than a rebooting, and this is a real gamble. It's not time for the fanboys to start juicing up their nerd-rage because you won't know if it's good until you read it. It's like cigarettes. Give it a try, you might like it--and if you don't, there might be another brand you do.

Next: Literature Review: Green Lantern Rebirth.

Literature Review: Green Lantern: Secret Origin

Considering the live action Green Lantern film is due out this month, I thought now would be a good time to do a GL month of sorts, like we did for Batman back in December. This will be a little smaller and somewhat less nerdy than the seven or eight articles I wrote on Batman. Here we'll be discussing the two pivotal modern Lantern stories, which also happened to inform on the movie: Green Lantern: Secret Origin and Green Lantern: Rebirth.

Secret Origin was Geoff Johns deciding to retell the beginning of Hal Jordan's career as Green Lantern. Hal Jordan fixed largely in his plans in the expanded DC Universe going forward (leading into Blackest Night and Johns' seeming desire to re-create the Silver Age), so the broad strokes of Jordan's story is the same from what we know. What's different--besides the clues to Blackest Night--is the character depth afforded to Jordan.

One of the major themes of the story is fear. It's a theme that belongs to every Lantern story, admittedly, because it's willpower that powers the Green Lanterns; fear and rage weaken the Lantern's constructs. Jordan, in the history of the character felt plenty of rage, but only felt fear twice in his life. The first time, we see here in Secret Origins (and we'll him feel fear for the second time in a few days in Rebirth) where he witnesses the accidental death of his father as a young boy. That perfectly rendered by Johns and artist Ivan Reis, we see a young Hal Jordan ripped apart and forever changed. In that moment he stopped being a child, and stopped all normal feeling. As we see him age, he is fearless--as nothing could scare him worse than this loss--and he becomes distant from his family.

It is the distance that allowed Jordan to be a great pilot--he's dangerous, pushed limits, highly talented--but at the same time, no airfield will take him because he's reckless. It doesn't necessarily come from arrogance, though he is a bit smug--and his sense of humor is dark at best--but it comes from a place resembling indifference. He tests his limits because consequences do not matter to him; death and pain never mattered. He was the alpha male not only because of his skill, but because he was just programmed to overcome. Yet all of this--the indifference, the anger, the distance--were all an outgrowing of feeling fear once as a child.

Jordan blames his father's former boss Carl Ferris for the old man's death and carries a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. We see him become aware of the damage he's done to his family, but totally unaware of how to fix it. Even after Jordan receives his ring, he's still brash and abrasive and dangerous, and it's not until he meets Sinestro that Jordan learns how to become complete. Sinestro plays the role of teacher and surrogate father, without all of the baggage of hints of his later turn as a bad guy. He's a smug hardass, yes, but he takes the role of mentor seriously and Sinestro and Jordan earn each others respect begrudgingly.




The reason Jordan was able to overcome the yellow impurity (yellow symbolizes fear in the power spectrum and the power of the Green Lantern is therefore ineffective again yellow) was because of his willpower--he forced himself to do it--but because if he didn't, Sinestro would have died, and because of his brashness and his unpreparedness; it would be his fault. He was able to overcome the impurity and was able to save the life of his mentor, cathartically being able to save Sinestro the way he couldn't save his father. Being able to this time stop the death (he uses the construct of a plane; his father died in one) Jordan was already starting to change the way he lived, pressing the reset button on his life. 

The primary trait of Hal Jordan is the effect of fear, willpower, and rage and how it makes him into the man he is. When the ring chooses him it says its usual refrain: "You have the ability to overcome great fear" and it isn't just a platitude. Hal Jordan felt the same fear about his father's death twenty years ago as if it happened yesterday. His fear of feeling the loss kept him from developing ties with others beyond that of co-worker or one night stand. It's not until the end of Secret Origin that he finds the true power of the ring and overcomes his fear. In finding what happened to Carl Ferris, the way he lived his life after the death of Jordan's father, and using the ring to bring an image of his father to life, Jordan learns that the dead aren't truly gone. Unable to let go of the past was what killed Carl Ferris and what would have killed Jordan as well; he sees this and in finally bringing about his father's image does he realize that his father lives on in him, his brothers, their children. He finally, then, opens himself back up to his brother Jimmy, to Carol, to the Lantern Corps and begins upon his journey as Green Lantern.  

Geoff Johns later explained why it was that Batman and Jordan never got along. Batman relies on fear to make him successful and Jordan doesn't feel fear. Naturally, their team-ups are highly dysfunctional and entertaining, but it sets a great precedent; Hal Jordan can even be a problem for Batman.


Green Lantern: Secret Origin: 4 out of 5. 

While I understand the complaints of others who weren't happy with Jordan coming back (the Green Lantern field was already overcrowded), his return was done with class, and we'll be exploring it further soon. In the meantime, the next entry will be my hundredth article, so we'll be doing something a little bit different.

Film Review: X-Men First Class

X-Men First Class needed to be a number of things. This prequel/reboot needed to restart the movie franchise which withered slowly in the past, serve as a bridge to the original trilogy, a period piece, and add something new to comic book movies which have, since becoming lucrative and popular, developed their own rules and trappings. While taking some of the rules (the first movie must be an origin story!), the plot and characters seem somehow younger and newer. 

X-Men always works best as an allegory. Originally the mutants were meant to be analogous to minority populations in America; now, they would probably be more akin to the homosexual population: when mutants are "outed" they are often told to "try not being" mutants, groups trying to find "cures" and mutant pride groups that have saccharine slogans that might as well have come from a Lady Gaga song. It's something that the movies kept in mind, but in First Class it was not an important background fact, it was a major theme within the movie.

We see the beginning of how normal people view them--caged animals in the zoo--and considering the young cast, it really becomes a coming-of-age movie. As kids in puberty, these young mutants are rediscovering who they are, and they're afraid of who they are and they're afraid of how others will view them. As ham-fisted as I complained it to be, the theme of mutant pride is needed and effective, and the shame that the mutants feel--specifically Beast and Mystique--is very well captured and acted. It is the collective plight of these young mutants, forced to live a secret life, that is stronger here than in any of the previous X-Men movies. Angel's line about preferring to be looked at as a sex symbol than a freak resonates, as does the themes of war and genocide.

Please enjoy the many glares of Emma Frost.

                                          
Every character, from the mutants, to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, is trying to keep another war from breaking out. Characters, when they reminisce about the war, do so grimly, and for no one is the war more presently minded than for Erik. From his time in a concentration camp (as seen in the first X-Men feature) to his scenes opposite Sebastian Shaw/Klaus Schmidt and his journey for vengeance, it is Erik who sees the fight for mutant rights clearer than even Xavier: if mutants do not defend themselves, they will be enslaved (the camera veered unsubtly to Darwin when this was stated) or wiped out. Erik was finding himself, a Jew and survivor of a genocide, looking at the possibility of another genocide to come. That said, it is his scenes in discussing this issue with Xavier or Shaw where First Class really achieves life.

There is a moment in the film, near the climax, where we could have seen this theme drawn truly home, in which two CIA operatives are looking in at Emma Frost and discussing mutantkind and Shaw's plan. As they realize what it is--the destruction of humankind for the ascension of mutantkind, Frost stands, activates her mutant-skin (she can turn into a chandelier using her mental powers), cuts through the dividing glass and says "I wouldn't call it a war," and she should have paused and said, "It's a holocaust," which would have been the right way to go, especially since in the two and a half hour duration of the film, it seems everyone is trying not to say the word. It would have been powerful. But maybe they were going for subtlety, something I lack from time to time.

 It is Erik's story that drives the film forward. We watch his story unfold; while not an original one--a man fight for his own soul--it is particularly layered and destined for tragedy. We cheered his Nazi ass kicking in the beginning of the feature and cheered his Malcolm X styled problem solving, and we all loved his clever and ironic vengeance on Shaw at the end of the film. The only problem is, as we learn, that we were really cheering the plans of a fanatic; a man virtually identical to Shaw--something Erik even admits to him at the end of the feature, but the setup--even for non-fans--was already there with this line: "Peace was never an option." Erik was not stupid. His demand for vengeance born in his experiences in the camp and witnessing Shaw's execution of his mother, was something that he went about eyes open: he knew that in some way what he was doing was wrong, but it was the only way he could acquire a measure of justice, an eye for an eye.

  As a man I've come to dread yet strangely enjoy receiving this look.

                                

At the same time he knows that fulfilling his role as revenger won't bring any real form of peace, and it won't really change anything for the dead; but that was never the point. The point, for Erik, was always about survival, and the fact that these Nazis survived doesn't work for him. Survival also plays into his feelings for humankind and the mutants. Since humankind so readily wanted them dead--hence their bombing of the beach--Erik sees this as a Holocaust survivor, and now he would risk starting another holocaust (against humankind) to stop another from laying at his feet. Either way, Erik was always meant to be at war.

The other major relationships belong to Erik, Xavier and Raven, which unfortunately suffers a little bit. While all their scenes are well written and acted, we never exactly buy into the closeness of their relations, as (with the exception of Xavier and Raven), they both only know Erik briefly before this trinity is broken. The same goes for Xavier and Raven. While they've known each other for almost twenty years, their relationship doesn't seem as close as it should, and their tearful goodbye therefore didn't mean as much as it should. Indeed the biggest flaw in the movie is a resulted in problems like this: the scenes are too quick, too brief. They feel more like vignettes and snapshots that meant to hurry along relationship and circumstance for the needs of the plot. That's not to say that the scenes or the plot are bad, just too brief; the movie itself will probably be much better upon multiple viewings when the viewer can appropriate digest everything that is happening; unfortunately, however, I don't think there will be any more hidden layers of depth. The speed of the plot (despite taking place over the course of twenty years) requires that too many things happen during the run time.


Scene stealers Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon aside, the rest of the cast is decent in their roles. January Jones' Emma Frost is essentially just Betty Draper with mutant powers, Rose Byrne is wasted in a role too small for her talents. McAvoy, whose most strenuous activity in the film consists of a light jog and thoughtfully touching his fingers to his temple no less than forty times in the movie, fares well in his role as Charles Xavier. He not only has a passing resemblance to Sir Patrick Stewart, but he gives Xavier some much needs lightness and mirth. The over serious grandfatherly role in the past was thankfully, in some part, exchanged here for a kinder, funnier, girl-crazy character who still had the poise and intelligence that his older counterpart does. To watch this movie followed by some Xavier heavy comics, we can see and accept Xavier have a wilder youth, and see the older man as being sober and wiser for his experiences. McAvoy begins to bridge the gap between giddy and intelligent youth to sober and wise excellently throughout the picture.   

But, as I said, it is Fassbender and Bacon that steal the movie. Affable Kevin Bacon's turn as the evil Shaw is dealt with class, and Bacon is equal parts insane and cosmopolitan playing both Schmidt and Shaw differently in many respects. It is a shame that Schmidt was used so briefly, as that role was much scarier; however, the charm that Bacon is known for is perfectly translated into the likeable Shaw; he's calm and cool--a hepcat with an attractive entourage and more money than God--and we wouldn't mind hanging out with a guy like him, outside of his inconsiderate genocidal tendencies. In turn, Fassbender's Erik plays the role of charmer with a chip on his shoulder to perfection. He's intense but likeable, and although we know what decisions he'll make, it's still powerful to watch. Magneto here is more likeable than he's been in the fifty year history of his character. Erik's turn towards fascism is obvious and I was surprised at how surprised everyone seemed by it, and while his turn from victim to perpetrator (killing Shaw quickly and then even quicker replacing him) comes on a little fast, it is dealt with the utmost seriousness. His goodbye to Xavier isn't exactly helped by the economic nature of the screenplay as we haven't had the time to appreciate the depth of their friendship, but it is still ripe with wrong writing and meaning, as Erik realizes that while he does indeed now have his vengeance and found his purpose, it comes at the price of his most important relationship.

If a sequel is made, I hope that Xavier is forced into an important role besides being one of the few cripples in comics. He should have to deal with the guilt that it was his guidance that gave Erik focus and gave him better control and increased power; the Beast/Raven relationship should be furthered developed and complicated, as should the trinity of Erik/Xavier/Raven without Erik being the primary bad guy. We've all had enough of that. And give Havok and Moira something to do. Also, I can't help but wonder: Will Magneto take the bullet out of JFK the way he did Xavier?

Too soon? I don't know.

X-Men First Class may not have the distinction of being the best comic book adaptation of all time, but you'll be hard-pressed to find many more better than it.

X-Men First Class: 4 out of 5.

Next: Green Lantern: Secret Origin.

The "Scream" Film Franchise Part 2: For Love of the Money

With Scream 2 being nearly as successful as the first, a trilogy was on the minds of Bob and Harvey Weinstein as well as Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson. Unfortunately, by the time all the contract negotiations and the allocations of money and the pre-production was ready to begin, Williamson was contracted to another series, and Ehren Kruger (a killer in his own right) was hired to pen the screenplay for next sequel based on a few page notes by Williamson. And so Scream 3 slouched onto the screen as if it were on its way towards Bethlehem, and slouched again at the box office.

If the first two films were fun and hip, Scream 3 was the end of disco. It just stunk. While the story--having our three protagonists dealing with a new killer on the set of the film-within-a-film Stab 3--was still from Williamson, it was Kruger who did all of the writing. And by god it shows. Scream 3 is a slasher movie in its basest form; it was no longer bringing up any kind of thematic point about slasher genre, it was no longer as smart or witty, and relied more so on the cliches of the genre than the actual spoofing that belonged to the first two features.

Watching Scream 3, we see very early on the problems of not having Williamson on board. Killing off Cotton Weary in the beginning, on paper, isn't exactly a bad idea, as it lets the audience believe that in this movie it looks like anybody can die. Unfortunately, the remaining supporting cast--outside of the big three--simply cannot stand up in any useful way to the plot. They exist only to spout exposition or corny lines of unfunny dialogue. (The only exception to this seems to be Parker Posey's Jennifer; but one among almost ten doesn't mean much.)

Scream 3 was a return to the old slasher films. It was straight forward and uninteresting; the franchise had become what it didn't want to be: a common horror movie. Sidney finds out that her mother had a secret life (gasp), and the killers of her mother weren't really behind it--it was really the half-brother she never knew she had (gasp again), and Lance Henriksen appears long enough to get a paycheck and tries not to dose off in the middle of his scenes.

Roman was not competently written and hardly believable as a criminal mastermind, and was fit into the plot because of the "rules of a trilogy" as given by a dead character's sudden posthumous message...because in a trilogy, a character usually comes back in some way, shape, or form. We're even given ghostly visits and nightmares about Sid's dead mother, which Roman somehow finds out about and is able to mimic in real life; psychic powers? Or was Roman a truly meta character, realized it was a movie and asked the editor to sit in as he did the dailies? Roman seems too bookish and toady and his sudden "I'm crazy!" reveal doesn't really do much besides inspire some eye-rolling. By retroactively making Roman the brains behind the first murders actually damages the memory of the first film, as well as the credibility and smart-scary plans of then-mastermind Billy Loomis. Naturally, however, Princess Leia's incredible memory, a picture, and plot devices all help to unravel Roman's plan.

Scream 3 could've been worse, however. It could have had a useless cameo by Jay and Silent Bob.

                                                              Lies!                                              

So then Scream 4 happened because the Weinsteins were bored and figured enough time has passed for all of us to be ready to forget Scream 3. Rather than cover all the bullshit that went on with the problematic scripting, I'll give you the short version: Kevin Williamson wrote everything that was in the film; when he was forced to leave, Ehren Kruger came on to do some rewrites. He only altered the first (actual) murder scene in the film of Marnie and Jenny, and the elongated (read: silly) scene of the publicist, Rebecca, getting killed. So everything else, for better or worse, is the work of Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven. And it really isn't so bad.

The film opens to looks at the different Stab movies, setting up where the franchise within a franchise has been, while also taking ample time to explore the changes that have developed in the genre since the last Scream feature, specifically the very popular Saw features (where the characters complained about many of the same things I did!) and the growing trend of remaking Japanese supernatural horror movies (complaining about many of the same things we all have), and bringing the topic back around to common slasher movie, which has become something of a rarity; and, again, as Chloe said: "There's something really scary about a guy with a knife who just snaps."

In the ten years since the last feature (which is, thankfully, mostly ignored as far as continuity references go), Dewey has become a sheriff in Woodsboro again, Gale is with him and they are having marriage issues (very meta), and Sid has re-assumed a public life, having written a crappy book about her personal struggles--seriously, listen to her at the reading--hack! Sid finds herself back in Woodsboro on the anniversary of the original killings, and reconnects with her family. The move back to Woodsboro was the right one, giving a familiar look the film, while also keeping the scope of the film small and manageable. With Scream 2 and 3, the characters branched out into a college campus and then all of Hollywood, and it made the goings on a little too complex. This is supposed to be about a small group of people and Ghostface.

The changes we see are absolutely fun: Woodsboro, despite all that happened there, has embraced its bloody little history, its residents even have a Ghostface voice app; likewise cell phones and Facebook have all been added to the repertoire, updating the franchise for the modern youth. Appropriately, the film also serves as a passing of the torch: the new Woodsboro teens get a good chunk of the screen time; more-so than Dewey and Gale. The problem here is that with the franchise expected to continue into a fifth and six film (it bombed here in the States, but did well overseas), all of the new teen characters were all killed.

The big problem that this movie has is that it doesn't take the time to slow the pace and make efforts to add character development and death. Sid's aunt and cousin stayed in Woodsboro and had to deal with the immediate repercussions of the killings that Sid and her mother were at the center of. Aunt Kate (Mary McDonnell) and Jill (Emma Roberts) had some obvious baggage because of all of the Ghostface killings that, even when taken out of the confines of the small town, still come back to the Prescott and Roberts families. While we do see that they are in some ways damaged, their interactions with Sid are only base and dry. They could have been upset at Sid for bringing the spotlight back onto the family after all these years, they could have welcomed her back as the last piece of family that they had left. Jill is the only one really given a moment her and that's because she had to lay down the usual expository villain speech. When the creators behind Scream preach about how much they love their characters and the story and how they actually took the time to develop character--and even go so far as to attack the Saw movies for being little more than torture porn and not taking the time to develop their characters, it isn't a good idea to do the same thing in your own movie.

Sid, at one point, even make Jill aware that a cliche will be coming up, in which the bad guy will make one fatal lapse in judgement, leading to her downfall. Considering that the formula right up until now had been unchanged since the original, we had the opportunity to finally break it up a little bit; I mean, it almost is a full on retelling--the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, the damaged young girl, the film geeks, the slutty friend, all of that was back; while they decided to go towards (somewhat) new territory with the reveal and the motives of Jill and Charlie, too much of it was familiar. This is especially disheartening when you consider how Scream 4 went out of its way to bash remakes and re-imaginings and all of that.  

The trio doesn't really fare much better, falling into cliches: marriage troubles, the temptation of a co-worker, the desire to be famous, the weak girl learning to be the strong girl, etc etc. It's all pretty cookie cutter, and at this point, I wouldn't have minded seeing one of the three getting killed off. It would have been a great wake-up call to a pretty jaded audience. We were teased with Dewey being killed for a fourth time, and teased with Gale a second time and even Sid, but nothing happened. It should have been Dewey, who should have been killed in the first place (not Randy Meeks).  

Scream 4 is fun. It's a little bit of a guilty pleasure, but it's fun. I suggest it for fans of the series, and as far as endings go this is a much better swan song (if it turns out to be one) than Scream 3.

Should the franchise continue, and it likely will, it needs to reinvent itself. It needs to be new again.

Scream: 4 out of 5

Scream 2: 3 1/2 out of 5

Scream 3: 1 out of 5
Scream 4: 3 out of 5

Next: X-Men First Class