With so many conventions I really can’t follow them all, so I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Wondercon. One of the things I did learn about is the trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern movie. An abridged version has been released online, so naturally I’m going to have some thoughts on it.
The two biggest concerns I’ve seen from fans are Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan (both from the actor and the writers) and the CG use. Personally, I thought from the trailer that Reynolds did a good job as Hal. I was convinced when he spoke the oath. Also, there appears to be a lot more Earth involvement in the story that I thought there would be. I was expecting more along the line of the recent direct-to-video animated movie, Green Lantern: First Flight, which all took place off-world outside of Hal getting the ring.
As far as the CG, it still looks stupid on the costume (which is where I’m guessing the part about the mask only appearing to protect Hal’s identity bit comes from), but the only ring construct we really see is the chain gun Hal broke out. (I imagine Freddie Wong is jealous of it.) I found it a bit over-detailed, actually. I would think Hal would add the detailing that Kyle would, and that’s not my bias talking. Jon would probably do so, although not with a chain gun–I would imagine a military-issue rifle or sniper based on how he’s currently ripping off the Justice League cartoon written, because he’s more familiar with it. Hal is a test pilot with a military background as a fighter pilot. I would imagine he’d give more detail to a jet fighter. Kyle would probably break out an original design or a piece of mecha or something, and Guy would have used a bazooka.
Oa and the space battle with (I assume from what I’ve heard) Parallax looks pretty awesome.
Where I find the CG to be a failure is the characters. Toma-Re actually looks OK. Sinestro, whom I would think would have looked better as an actor in make-up, and Kilowag are so obviously computer generated in the trailer, that I wouldn’t be surprised if I have to force myself not to see it when I go to the movie, even if they clean it up. CG has its place, but so does make-up, sets, costumes, and other tricks of the past that seem to be lost to the digital age, where the solution is “let the computer do it”. Didn’t help Godzilla look any better, although it did work for the Transformers in the Bay movies.
Final analysis: I actually am rather interested in this movie. The computer effects may be overused (they should have tried to save as much budget as possible for powers and ring constructs–how much does it cost to paint a guy purple?) but it’s the story and the action that we’re going to be coming to see in this movie so we’ll see how it all pans out.
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