Despite the frothing hatred of other critics, I decided to check out Green Lantern yesterday. I should probably start by mentioning that I'm a sci-fi nut and a fan of the comics. So, critics be damned, I was paying to see this one. It was worth it. It seems most of the critics found the simplest description of the plot to be ridiculous. Pilot gets a magic ring with the power of green to fight the evil of yellow. Any plot sounds stupid when simplified to that level. For instance; orphaned teen trains to be swashbuckling monk with psychic powers and teams up with a homeless drifter to destroy a super space laser. Yeah, I went there.
Back to Green Lantern, it isn't like other heroes. It was the first series to work on a mythos and continuity. In a Superman comic, Lois gets kidnapped, Jimmy says "Gee willikers", Lex gets punched in the face. Then they'd do it all over again in a month. Green Lantern changed that around so that there was character development. Then they went into the galactic stuff, and things got pretty expansive. That was the problem of making a Green Lantern movie. Just how much of the sixty years of history do you provide for a two hour movie? Unfortunately, the film makers went for a little too much info. Aside from that, it served as a pretty good adaptation. It's just not as good as the animated flick Green Lantern: First Flight.
On the note of adaptation, I don't understand why superhero movies get held up to others, rather than their source material. For example; the Fantastic Four movie. It was unlucky enough to come out about the same time as Batman Begins. So of course people called Fantastic Four a steaming pile because it wasn't Batman Begins. That's because Batman and the Fantastic Four are two different heroes. Both of them fit in perfectly with the mythos of their respective franchises.
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