In Contention

Tag: Ryan Reynolds

  • 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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  • 9/9 Oscarweb Round-up

    • James Rocchi previews the Toronto Film Festival with quotes from co-director Cameron Bailey and yours truly. [MSN Movies]

    • Dave Karger writes up the festival’s top 10 Oscar contenders. [Oscar Watch]

    • Regarding Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” Brad Brevet wonders if Warner Bros. is hiding a stinker. [Rope of Silicon]

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  • COMIC-CON: WB brings ‘Green Lantern,’ ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Sucker Punch’ to San Diego

    One of the most anticipated events at this year’s convention was Warner Bros. Pictures’ presentation of footage from Martin Campbell’s upcoming “Green Lantern” adaptation.  Starring Ryan Reynolds as test-pilot-turned-intergalactic-enforcer Hal Jordan, the film is the first big screen adaptation of the superhero to date.

    Comics writer and head of DC Entertainment Geoff Johns said during the panel discussion, moderated by Hero Complex‘s Geoff Boucher, that there was a time he thought an adaptation would never see the light of day. Working as an intern with Richard Donner over a decade ago, the project had begun to pick up some momentum. When he heard a studio exec ask if the film could be done without the ring, his heart sank and he figured it was a doomed property.

    Today Johns is one of the key architects of the new DC universe on the page, having spent five years re-inventing and streamlining the world of Green Lantern as well, and for him, the film is a dream come true.

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  • Meet your friendly neighborhood ‘Green Lantern’

    (Full version on the jump.)

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  • WB going mo-cap for ‘Green Lantern’ threads

    Remember all that talk last year about how actors saw “Avatar” as a threat to the future of their profession?  Well, it seems the costume designers should be shaking in their boots as well.

    Thanks to Peter Sciretta at /Film, news has trickled down that the reason we haven’t gotten a glimpse of Ryan Reynolds in full dress from Martin Cambell’s “Green Lantern” is that there isn’t a practical costume in effect.  Writes Sciretta:

    The suit that Ryan wears on set is a grey tracking motion/performance capture suit with led lights. I’ve heard that Ryan Reynolds has been joking on set that Warner Bros is going to make him into a Na’vi when the final cut is released. His joke, not mine. The Green Lantern suit you will see in the final film will be almost entirely created using computers.

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  • Fan made art of Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern

    I don’t usually bother with fan art because it’s always a dime a dozen, but this is pretty good.  Of course, the mask is too small/tight and the pleather look is just SO early-2000s.  And the logo should be a littler bigger (or maybe not).  But on the whole, very cool.

    Fan made art of Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern

    (Courtesy: /Film)

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Buried treasure, reading pleasure

    Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams in Shutter IslandEntirely slipped my mind to do this on Friday, but here’s what we (and you) were talking about this week:

    • At 2009’s halfway mark, this week’s list shone a light on the year’s most undersung films thus far.

    • In Page to Screen this week, we eagerly sank our teeth into Dennis Lehane’s “Shutter Island.”

    • As the respective “Ice Age” and “Transformers” rehashes battled for box-office glory, “Up” quietly became Pixar’s second-highest grosser.

    • Meanwhile, soon-to-be titan “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” garnered mixed-to-positive notices.

    • Burton, Lasseter, Miyazaki, Zemeckis … the upcoming Comic-Con just got a lot more auteur-heavy.

    • Speaking of comics, “The Green Lantern” has a lead … and his name is Ryan Reynolds.

    • Away from the big screen, we discussed the joys of bargain-bin DVDs.

    • And stirred up debate with a celebration of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”

  • Ryan Reynolds cast in ‘Green Lantern’

    Green LanternIt all started with a recent Hollywood Reporter piece claiming that Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds and Justin Timberlake (WTF) were up for the lead role in WB’s “The Green Lantern” (a script I’ve had for a while but preferred to satisfy the inner geek in me by reading the Geoff Johns saga in full, leading up to this summer’s “Blackest Night” event).

    Of those three, with a gun to my head, I’d prefer Bradley Cooper, which was tossed into the mix by a Drew McWeeny report a few weeks back.  I love Timberlake and actually think he’s a fine actor, but I don’t buy him as a cock-sure-test-pilot-turned-intergalactic-police-officer, do you?

    But according to this Michael Fleming scoop at Variety’s new industry blog BF Deal Memo, the news strangely being dumped at the end of the week and the start of the weekend, it seems Warner Bros. is going with Ryan Reynolds.  Ugh.

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  • Deadpool will get his own movie and ‘Green Lantern’ might have its star

    Deadpool“X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE” SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS POST.  YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

    If you saw “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” over the weekend, then you know this is most certainly not what comic fans know as Deadpool.  I don’t know what the hell it was, to be honest, but then again, Ryan Reynolds wasn’t the guy playing…it.  Scott Adkins from “The Bourne Ultimatum” was credited as Weapon XI, so there are outs.

    Well, the race to spin off from the spin-off first has ended with Rob Liefeld’s creation getting the solo Hollywood treatment.  The Hollywood Reporter gives us the following, with MAJOR “Wolverine” SPOILERS (via Liefeld’s Twitter page):

    Reynolds is attached to reprise the character for what for now is simply being called “Deadpool.” Lauren Shuler Donner and Marvel Studios would act as producers.

    Deadpool is known as “the merc with a mouth,” a character that under Reynolds lived up to his billing in “Wolverine” until the end, when the movie deviated from the comic book persona, imbuing him with several superpowers and sewing his mouth shut.

    It is understood that Reynolds would regain the ability to mouth off, with the movie going back to the roots of the character known for his slapstick tone and propensity to break the fourth wall. The character also was disfigured in “Wolverine,” though it’s unclear at this time how much the studio would want to mess with Reynolds’ handsome mug.

    The project is out to writers.

    Fox considered a “Deadpool” spinoff early in “Wolverine’s” development process, which is why it cast Reynolds. The actor was brought back in the month before the movie’s release to shoot one of two “Easter egg” scenes that appeared after the end credits. The scene showed Deadpool alive, though when last audiences saw him, he appeared to be dead.

    …which, of course, takes none of the “outs” into the scenario, so who knows what the hell is going on.  One thing is for sure: this is a project destined to lose money if the production budget gets too out of hand.  “Elektra” numbers, maybe.  Unless the film gets some supporting character help.  The general audience doesn’t know Deadpool from a circus acrobat, after all.

    Sigh…

    (Also in comic casting news, it looks like Bradley Cooper, from “The Hangover” and television’s “Alias,” is being seriously considered for the lead role in “The Green Lantern.”)

  • REVIEW: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (**)

    X-Men Origins: WolverineAfter weeks of bad press following an unanticipated work print leak and rampant speculation that the film was likely to be D.O.A., both financially and creatively, the best thing one can say about “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is that it wasn’t as awful as expected.  But positivity hits a brick wall after that concession.

    In a genre that only seems to spark when filmmakers come at the material from a place of passion, Gavin Hood’s prequel to Fox’s “X-Men” franchise comes across like an anonymous, factory-assembled piece of corporate product with no personality and no thematic virtue.

    What it lacks in quality it doesn’t exactly make up for in spectacle, and while it is more centered on character than story, it nevertheless skims the surface where that is concerned.  A film that might have had something for everyone nearly offers nothing for no one.

    Hugh Jackman dons the too-tight jeans and adamantium talons for the fourth time in nine years as James Logan, a hyper-healing mutant with a shady (and lengthy) past.  Screenwriters David Benioff and Skip Woods borrow and manipulate Marvel’s “Origin” mini-series at will, especially in the early portions of the film, to give a vague point of entry that neither gives the audience a nuanced portrait of the character nor Jackman the proper material in which to invest himself.

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