In Contention

Tag: Martin Campbell

  • Hero takes a fall

    In coming up with an idle, pop-related title for this post, I was faced with two choices: the one I eventually went with, or “We don’t need another hero.” I decided against the latter — partly because I’m sure other writers have already exhausted it, partly because The Bangles can always do with another shout-out — but in This Our Summer of the Superhero, it’d certainly be apt. With “Green Lantern” following “Thor,” “X-Men: First Class” and, earlier, its troublesome near-namesake “The Green Hornet” on the 2011 release schedule, and with “Captain America” still to come, casual moviegoers could be forgiven for wondering if their local multiplex has been part-colonized by ComicCon.

    It stands to reason that with so many darts being thrown at the same aesthetic and commercial target, some will hit their mark more squarely than others. If “Thor” managed to widely surpass expectations, the law of averages decrees that at least one of its Spandex-clad rivals will likely fail to meet them — or at least live down to expectations that had already been lowered. Critically, at least, it seems “Green Lantern” is taking that bullet: Kris may have appreciated Martin Campbell’s revival of one of the DC library’s dustier properties, but the first wave of reviews has been largely dismissive, with even the film’s vastly expensive effects work taking a beating from both high-end print critics and more genre-friendly bloggers like Drew McWeeny.

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  • ‘Green’ means go see it

    It didn’t really hit me how excited I (still) was for “Green Lantern” until the lights dimmed and the green hit the screen. It can’t be understated how much of a long-time-coming type of thing this is, a theatrical version of such a vast cosmic comic book creation. And given the mechanics of the world, the amount of digital wizardry needed to conjure it, not to mention some dense continuity that never presented a clear-cut story for the screen, it’s understandable that it took so long.

    But things started to change in 2004. Geoff Johns, a long-time DC guy who had written on a number of the company’s books (and already had a nice film education under his wing from his time as a Richard Donner mentee), started re-tooling the DC universe, beginning with one of his favorite characters: Hal Jordan. The “Rebirth” storyline led into a revitalized line of books featuring the Green Lantern Corps, a more than 3,000-member strong organization of intergalactic peace keepers, with Jordan right in the center of things. The elements Johns began tinkering with and re-envisioning — which were themselves building toward the “Blackest Night” and “Brightest Day” comic events of the last two years — began to reveal a way into the material for the screen. And now, “Green Lantern.”

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