Hank McCoy (Before the Fur)

So they blew it. This was it. This was their chance. To get somebody out there besides Batman and Superman. And -just- they blew it. Again. Like they always do.

I haven’t even seen the movie. I’ve been so excited for so long I almost can’t handle the disappointment now. What is it!? I’m not sure if the problem is with DC, exactly. I think maybe it’s Warner Bros. or something?

You can hear about Kevin Smith’s legendary exploits with the infamous Superman Lives project that never quite came to be on his Evening with Kevin Smith collection to get a better sense of what’s going on. I don’t know why DC movies can’t take a hint from the DC animated films, but it’s kind of like the WB studio just doesn’t do it…RIGHT. Or something.

It’s the wrong people working on it, with the wrong ideas about the characters…I don’t know. It’s like Joss Wheedon bailing on Wonder Woman. A move I respect, kind of, if he really didn’t feel like he could make a good movie. But at least the movie didn’t get MADE. Leaving the door open for somebody, somewhere else to do so. I don’t know if we’ll recover from this.

If you had asked me ten years ago if I thought a Green Lantern film would ever- EVER- be made, my answer would have been no. So the idea that a relatively under-appreciated DC character could jump off the page guns blazing and sort of launch a new mythology for moviegoers to love and appreciate was incredibly appealing to me. Hal Jordan deserved it. Geoff Johns deserved it. It could have been great.

But it just never quite is, is it? Okay, yeah, The Dark Knight. Great movie. Of course we only had to get through Batman (Adam West one- which I do love, I admit) and Batman and Robin (Arnold Schwarzenegger one) to get there. Over the span of about 30-40 years. But we got there. Finally.

You think Green Lantern will get the same overhaul? Not soon, anyway. Chances are your children’s children are more likely to get a look at a good Green Lantern film than we are. Maybe if they screen it at the old folks home, or something. It just doesn’t have to BE this way, DC.

I mean DC Universe Online is a step in the right direction, I think. You can tell that the creators took a page out of Bruce Timm’s book. They really made the DC universe feel like a ‘place’, kind of like the Marvel universe. Everybody lives there together. And interacts with one another. They made it work.

Not that DC movies need to have some huge mash-up of crossovers (at least, not until you crank out a couple and get a Justice League movie a la the upcoming Avengers film going) to be good. Maybe DC is just overthinking here. I mean Superman Returns did NOT need to happen. Everyone was going to SEE the new Superman movie. We didn’t have to link it to the old movies in order to get people to go see it. It’s Superman. They’ll go see the movies. Just make a new movie. See what I mean? Overthinking the problem.

What went wrong with Green Lantern? Like I said, I haven’t been out to see it myself. But I worry that everything everyone warned me would happen did happen. Maybe Reynolds wasn’t the guy for the job, although I saw potential there. If Ryan could be less-funny-more-risky because Hal IS risky. And he could have pulled that off.

But maybe they showcased Reynolds too much. Put a big actor up there and tried to get people into the movie on that alone, instead of giving it substance. Maybe they just got too into making Oa and special effects. Or maybe (which, of course, I totally suspected) they tried to cram too much into the first movie. Which is the most likely scenario, I’m thinking.

The thing that kills me the most? Green Lantern is -and continues to be- the best comic on the rack right now! It’s one of the few things that I’m still dying to get my hands on whenever an issue comes out for the last five years! But sometimes we need to just let a good thing be. Anyone else have an opinion of what went wrong?