“Green Lantern,” we saw, we left the theater.
The movie managed to turn off casual viewers and hardcore comics fans. Despite that the producers have announced that there will be a sequel.
So what to do now? This summer proves a movie doesn’t have to be great or even good to be a hit. But in a genre that includes “The Dark Knight,” “Thor” and “Spider-Man 2,” it might be a good idea to aim a little higher. So what do they need to do differently?
1. Make it a reboot. Take a cue from the “Incredible Hulk.” The Ang Lee version didn’t do that badly at the box office. Still, Marvel didn’t throw good money after bad. They re-shot, re-thought and did it right the second time. The same thing is happening with Superman. A new reboot is in the works after the failure of “Superman Returns.” You’re only tied to successes, not failures. Start all over again. Re-cast if necessary.
2. Understand that Green Lantern can be kinda ridiculous. I still have (somewhere) a vintage Neal Adams-era Green Lantern comic. In it, Hal Jordan saves a planet from a comet by creating a giant hand and trampoline to bounce the planet’s moon into the comet’s path. Green Lantern is a lot like Superman at the time of the Christopher Reeves movie. He can be so ridiculously powerful (or just ridiculous) that you have to edit him. Could Green Lantern prevent a helicopter crash by creating a giant Hot Wheels track? Sure. Should he do that in a multi-million dollar tent pole movie? Probably not.
3. Understand that Green Lantern can be awesome. Recently Geoff Johns took the complicated mechanics of the character and made it work. He took the green, yellow and violet power rings that were floating around the DC Universe and made it all make sense in its own terms. The Green Lantern universe today is a lot like the "Star Wars" universe of in the original trilogy. That multi-colored energy, that’s the Force. They touched upon it briefly in the “Green Lantern” and that’s one of the biggest flaws. The filmmakers brushed aside one of the biggest assets they had. At no point in the movie do they say, “This is the Force only color coded.” That would have at least given the mass audience an entry point into this world.
4. Make it mysterious. Why was the Force amazing? Because at first they kept it mysterious. They didn’t try too hard to explain it. The second they introduced the midochlorians, the series went completely off the track. In “Green Lantern” there was an utter lack of mystery. They wasted screen time with layers of techno babble and sapped the story of any sense of wonder. They basically depowered the power ring. There was hardly any mystery in the way things were shot or edited. Your main character finds an alien, gets transported to a distant planet, and is given a ring that turns his imagination into reality, yet these beats are shot and preformed like they were an inconvenience for both the actors and the director.
