Thoughts On The "Green Lantern" Trailer

The first trailer for Green Lantern was officially released yesterday. There's a bunch of awesome stuff in it, and a couple noteworthy problems.

What Works

First, Ryan Reynolds is a great choice for Hal Jordan. There's been a lot of concern as to whether he could pull it off (I recall Bradley Cooper was the fan-favorite), but the trailer gives a pretty solid indication that Reynolds was a good choice. His delivery evokes an excellent blend of plucky troublemaker and contemplative hero. Moreover, the trailer establishes very quickly that this movie isn't the The Dark Knight, and it rightfully shouldn't be. The tone of Green Lantern stories just isn't as troubled and serious as the Batman mythos. Green Lantern should be a fun, action-packed space epic, and that's exactly what this trailer promised.

I'm very glad they didn't skip over the character's origin story. I heard early drafts of the script only glossed over the origin, but I think it would be totally foolish to assume that audiences would already know about Green Lantern as a character. We get a lot of origin stories in superhero films, but Green Lantern's can be one of the better ones if it's done right. We see a great deal of the character Abin Sur and his passing the ring to Hal, and this is a good sign.

The art design for this film looks fantastic. Lovable aliens like Kilowog come to life in full, wrinkly detail in this trailer, and Mark Strong looks totally badass as the cunning Sinestro.

The planet Oa (the home of the Green Lanterns) looks spectacular. Everything looks truly alien - even the planet's architecture. This movie needed to have the scope and grandeur of a modern day Star Wars (no, those ones don't count). This shot of Oa is a great taste of what's in store.

What Doesn't Work

The costume still doesn't look right. It was a bold move to make Green Lantern the first superhero to don a fully-CGI costume. Based on this footage, the effects need to be tightened, because it's looking too tacky and cartoony - even for Green Lantern. I'm glad that they went for a very alien look, and I like that the Green Lantern emblem is always glowing. But some of the muscles are over-emphasized (even though I'm sure Reynolds got ripped like crazy for this movie), and the costume's coloring just isn't quite right yet. I'm glad they ditched those white gloves that he wears in the comics.

I think giving his face an orange, fake suntan hue might be a mistake, which was most noticeable while he was flying. By the way, the flying didn't look great either - it reminded me a lot of the Human Torch's cheesy flying in Fantastic Four 2. There's still a lot of time to work this out, but I'm just surprised the flying doesn't look good, since we already nailed computer-animated flight in Superman Returns.

Overall? I'm psyched. Now when is this movie coming?