About that Green Lantern trailer...

It's been a not-so-secret desire of mine to script Green Lantern someday, and actually write it as a science fiction adventure, rather than simply "super-heroes in space" as it's been done for the majority of the past 50 years. Alfred Bester helped re-invent the Silver Age version of the character, so it stands to reason the Green Lantern Corps should be more Lensmen and less SuperFriends. So I've been watching the development of this film closely, and have been rewarded with this trailer:



My reaction, to say the least, is mixed. There's great stuff here--Abin Sur, Tomar-Re, Sinestro, Kilowog (!) and Oa with the Central Power Battery. Hector Hammond looks incredibly creepy and menacing, a distinct improvement over the character from the comics. BUT (and there's always a but), there's a lot that's cringe-worthy. Warners tried for a *very* long time to make Green Lantern into a wacky comedy, even attempting to build the film around Jack Black at one point. The way this trailer opens, with Jordan scrambling out of bed and abandoning the hot blonde, to the miserable "let's get these pants off" line... that setup screams "slacker screwup gets the keys to the kingdom and hilarity ensues." We've seen this a thousand times before, and it never ends well. There's a definite attempt at a wacky Greatest American Hero setup, almost like Bill & Ted's Intergalactic Adventure. The "epic" aspects are really soft-pedaled, and so tonally dissonant with the Hal Jordan background setup, that it feels like two different movies.

But then I remembered--it's a *trailer*. Trailers aren't cut by the filmmakers--they're cut together by ad men who normally don't know or care what the film is about, they're more interested in pigeonholing it and packaging the film as pre-digested and inoffensive. How many times in the past decade has there been a significant backlash against a film marketed as something it isn't? Remember how the trailers and TV ads to The Bridge to Terabithia looked like a soulless knockoff of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, with kids playing with happy dancing fairy creatures? And then how everyone was shocked that it was not only good, but actually followed the book and killed off AnnaSophia Robb?

Remember, this is the same Hollywood that normally tries to set every otherworldly science fiction epic on Earth--Masters of the Universe, Transformers, Aliens vs. Predators etc.--because execs don't believe an audience can grasp a setting anywhere other than the good old U.S. of A. where folks speak American.

The more I think about it (and rewatch the trailer) the more I'm convinced this is one of the most incompetent movie promos, ever. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but the only parts that succeed are the brief glimpses of cosmic dazzle, which come off more as a reluctant afterthought in the trailer, included only because they "had to be there." The guys doing the trailer would much rather be cutting a promo for Hot Tub Time Machine 2: Boogie Wonderland. The filmmakers themselves are saying all the right things in interviews, and the released concept art is powerful, epic and moody, so it's baffling how they could give every indication of grasping the nuance of this property, then turn around and make a movie that misses the mark so badly. The fact that Hal goes to Oa and encounters alien Lanterns who don't look like they stepped out of Club Med is a major break from previous treatments of this property. This alone gives me hope.

The movie could still very much live down to this trailer, but for now, I'll accept it with a grain of salt and assume the tone-deaf elements result from Warners' corporate incomprehension. In the future, maybe they could contract out to Marvel to cut future trailers, because those guys get it.

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