Fans flocked to the Green Lantern panel to see the preview clip that Warner Brothers brought to Wonder Con 2011.The footage was a tremendous surprise, a far cry from the first trailer that aired many months ago that left many apathetic. That crucial first impression was damaging because it was shown so early that none of the big action pieces had been completed yet. Now, DC/Warner Brothers is doing damage control, trying to build the confidence back up as the release date closes in. They took a solid step forward at WonderCon 2011.
Spoiler Warning:
The following four paragraphs explain the footage with my reactions laced in. If you don’t want to be spoiled, skip ahead. If you read the spoiler understand that this is probably not how the final sequence will be seen as some of the scenes containing exposition were cut out. Roughly ten minutes were shown, most of which was from the first act.
Sinestro makes a call to Abin Sur who is patrolling Section 2814 of the universe in a large spacecraft, looking for Parallax. Suddenly he’s ambushed by Parallax and engages in a brief but spectacular fight while destroying Abin Sur’s ship. The wounded warrior narrowly escapes on an escape pod, but not before he is severely wounded. Immediately, Sur begins the process of finding a new Green Lantern. This action sequence was the most impressive piece of footage of what was shown; it was fast, it was ferocious, and it quickly sucked me into the clip.The spacecraft crashes on Earth, in water, (a change from the typical desert set that readers have grown accustomed too as seen in the comics and Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier). Hal Jordan goes in to rescue Sur who instructs the brash air pilot to take his ring, the lantern and say the Lantern Oath before dying.
Jodan fumbles with a makeshift oath and is instantly hurtled into space, summoned to Oa. He is able to pull his arm up and the ring is pulling Jordan to Oa and is surrounded by a green glowing flame. It’s an iconic image (minus the civilian clothes) of Jordan flying through space with the trademark green glow. He lands in Oa with the suit, which is made of energy-as it is in the comics-and is greeted by Tomar-Re who welcomes him to the planet.
The footage cuts to a large meeting between all the green lanterns, led by Sinestro declaring a war against the Parallax. All of them hail Sinestro, shooting beams from their rings straight up in the sky. As the camera pans out beyond Oa’s orbit, large columns of green spoke out from the planet. When I saw the first images of Oa, it was more impressive than Pandora in Avatar. It was unlike anything I had seen for a space set. The reel cuts to a montage of what follows in the film is shown, or it might be the footage for the latest trailer, which shows Hector Hammond (Peter Skarsgaard) prominently in two scenes, Jordan as air pilot, and some of the film’s other action pieces. Again, visually it’s impressive.
The guardians of Oa were not seen, or at least I didn’t notice them in the footage that was shown. So again, footage was edited out for the purpose of giving the hungry fanboys and fangirls (who were in full force that day) something to chew on. My gut reaction was the I enjoyed what I saw, but I couldn’t help but notice the few scenes we got to see of Reynolds talking were moments of levity, raising my fears that the film would feature an overabundant amount of his shtick. (See what he said about my fears in an upcoming story.)
End of the Spoiler Zone.
If you’d like to see an abridged clip of the footage shown at WonderCon or the new Green Lantern trailer, links are at the bottom.
Given all of the attention to the supporting and obscure characters, I have small doubts that this will satisfy that niche crowd and that those ready to scrutinize will be pleasantly surprised. However just to be wary of setting expectations to high, audiences unaware of the Green Lantern mythos will have to take that leap of faith, that openness to take in a film in that is aiming as high as this. If they do, then this is a blockbuster. I do think all of the space-related action and the heavy amounts of CGI work is necessary to tell this particular super hero story right; it’s what happens and how those non-action scenes that play out is what is going to make or break this movie.
Everyone involved with this movie knows how big it is. Think about how Iron Man opened the door for the Marvel Film Universe. Tony Stark was a B-character at best until he struck a chord with the audience, and now we’re talking about an Avengers movie. If Green Lantern does well, coupled with the recent success of Batman, that puts extra pressure to make sure Superman is rock solid as well and then everything falls in place for the Justice League.Whether they’ll admit it, Green Lantern is a pivotal film for Warner Brothers.
It’s only one extended clip of footage but it showed loads more potential than that first trailer and visually what was shown honors the comics well. I’m a firm believer that if a proper balance between the Chuck Yeager and Han Solo in Reynolds’ Hal Jordan is achieved (i.e. more Yeager), that Green Langer will find a larger audience than most expect. However if that balance leans too much towards Reynolds’ funnier side then I think he does Jordan a disservice and sinks this ship. We’ve yet to see the more dr/amatic moments and once we do, even if we have to wait until its releases, we’ll be able to see if the Green Lantern will indeed shine in its Blackest Night.
Click here for an abridged version of the footage shown at WonderCon 2011.
