(no subject)
So the very first thing that happens in Green Lantern: First Flight is Hal Jordan being inappropriate with Carol Ferris in a workplace setting. Some things will never change, apparently.
The story's...okay. The plot's coherent, the animation's quite nice and filled with all kinds of aliens and spacescapes and expansive scenery, and there's plenty of action, including a huge, chaotic chase scene through the middle of a spaceport. But it's pretty shallow, characterization-wise, and I found Hal in particular something of a cipher, which is problematic since he's our lead. He doesn't do anything terribly un-Hal-like, except for a couple of odd clownish moments, but I never felt very clear on what he was thinking when he did it. It doesn't help that the whole thing is set in his first few days with the Corps, during which time he gets to know maybe three people to speak to, so there's not a lot of emotional connection there to work with.
The person who does get characterization and emotional focus is Sinestro, who really kind of steals the show. Victor Garber does great voice work for the character, who comes off as convincingly charismatic, ruthless, and pretty damn scary in his determination to bring order to the universe if he has to drown it in blood. Several reviews have pointed out that GL:FF is a cop show at its heart, and Sinestro is the cop gone bad because the goddamn rules won't let him do his job and clean up the scum for good; they're not wrong. Of course, this setting allows him rather more in the way of options than just roaming the city at night with a gun...
Then again, if he was a cop you'd like to think he'd at least get a psychological evaluation. Maybe Hal doesn't tell anybody about the informant Sinestro almost tortures to death, but then he actually does kill a criminal in interrogation, and the Guardians' response is basically "we strongly disapprove. Don't do it again. But we're not actually going to do anything about it." And then after that he shouts at a large crowd of Green Lanterns for doing rescue work because everybody, including crowds of innocent civilians, is expendable rather than let the criminal they're pursuing get away. And admittedly said criminal is a huge threat, but...really, Guardians? (And other GLs, for that matter.) That didn't tip you off at all that there was a problem there? The Guardians are played as well-intentioned--foolish, fairly helpless, and in some cases prejudiced, but well-intentioned--but to be honest Hal might want to think twice about joining the Corps if this is the kind of behavior they let slide.
Other stuff:
Hal gets a full-on anime transformation sequence when he puts on the ring for the first time. Glowy lights and spinning in the air and a giant GL insignia in the background. It's actually not a bad sequence, even if it starts some part of my brain wanting to call him "Pretty Sailor Green Lantern."
I know the Guardians are prejudiced against humans, and we're meant to find them condescending and a bit obnoxious when they start lecturing Hal on the importance of the Green Lantern Corps in a tone that suggests they can't be expected to admit him into it. That said, I cannot think that Hal interrupting them to cheerily reminisce about his policeman uncle letting Hal ride in his squad car when he was a kid helped the situation any. WTH, Hal? Of all the characterizations of Hal Jordan I've seen, "ditz" is a new one. (If I thought he'd picked up on the condescension and was doing it deliberately to annoy them, I could possibly see it, but there's no indication of that.)
Okay, I don't know whether the coy, Cajun-accented lady of the night, straight out of central casting, breaks my brain because she's an orange-skinned vaguely-reptilian alien, or because she's flirting with Sinestro (and Sinestro in full-on "I will have order if it kills you" mode, too). Seriously, she's a half-step from calling him "cher"; I don't think I would have dared, myself. (And given what he does to her at that point, she probably shouldn't have, either.)
I am not a stickler about changes to the source material in adaptations, but I'm going to have to take exception to this one: movie, the word "poozer," as spoken by Kilowog, refers to a person, not a part of anatomy. And if for some reason you feel the need to change that, please don't do it after several instances of his using it to refer to a person; it feels very awkward, even if it's technically possible.
I also think Boodikka is probably one of those "this character bears so little resemblance to the original we should have just renamed her" cases, but I'm not really familiar enough with her to say for sure. On her own merits, though, I liked the character quite a bit. Could have used a little elaboration on her motives, though.
SINESTRO: I offer you power, more power than you can imagine. All I ask for is your loyalty.
HAL: (smirking) Now, you see, you had me...right up until that last part.
Okay, no. First, it's more of a Wally line. Second, while I guess a very young, cocky Hal could say it, he's alone, unarmed, surrounded, and has just been confronted with the knowledge that he, the Corps, and the universe are very likely screwed. He cannot possibly have ever been in a situation like this before, and we really need to see an emotion out of him here. Not anything dramatic or hysterical, mind you, just some sign that he gets that this is really bad and that he's worried about it. Emotional connection is your friend, movie!
So when a GL dies the ring automatically returns to the Guardians, who presumably then choose a replacement. So why does Hal still get his in the desert from a dying Abin Sur? Okay, maybe a GL can bypass the automatic return process if he passes it on to a qualified candidate before he dies (and I can see this being very useful if the GL was, say, protecting civilians in a firefight). I'm just wondering why Abin Sur went to the trouble--does he not trust the Guardians' judgment (and one could hardly blame him), is he seizing the opportunity to give one of the unpopular Earth-humans a chance in the Corps, does he just want to accomplish one last thing before he dies on a failed mission? Or, I can't help but wonder, is he specifically here for Hal? He only tells the ring "find him." There's nothing in the movie to suggest this (which is probably as well; there's enough "Hal Jordan Is The Ultimate Hero!" in the universe, and indeed in the rest of this movie); I just wonder. (It's also possible that the automatic return is just a failsafe for those times when no suitable candidates are in range, but if this kind of deathbed transfer was usual you wouldn't think the other GLs would be quite so pissed at Hal when they show up and find him wearing the ring.)
And speaking of the return function, it actually makes for a really good piece of atmosphere--an awful lot of GLs die in this movie, and while it may be a little cheap to keep it all off-stage, watching those rings just rain down on the deck is quietly horrifying; Arisia's stricken expression as she picks one up just underscores the point.
They show up for about two minutes, but the Weaponers of Qward were one of my favorite bits of the movie. Creepy, alien, totally unimpressed by Sinestro, and their chilly warning that the imperfection in every weapon is its user was a very good line.
It is very, very in character for Hal to try to shift boulders with his bare hands to get to a functional ring so he can fight Sinestro (and this after Sinestro has wiped out dozens of far more experienced GLs) and then when that doesn't work to bang on the ultimate source of the Green Energy so hard it breaks open. Points for that, absolutely.
That said, part of me was going, wait, if it's that easy to access more power why didn't the Guardians think of it? Surely they know the setup better than he does? Oh, right, because then we couldn't have a super-charged Hal in a one-on-one fight with Sinestro. Not that a Green Lantern feature film was ultimately going to come down to Sinestro vs. Ch'p, or anything, and it was a perfectly good climactic fight; the Guardians just come off as pretty useless. (Yeah, yeah, what else is new?)
I kind of choked up hearing the assembled Corps recite the oath, I confess. Total fan-moment.
The story's...okay. The plot's coherent, the animation's quite nice and filled with all kinds of aliens and spacescapes and expansive scenery, and there's plenty of action, including a huge, chaotic chase scene through the middle of a spaceport. But it's pretty shallow, characterization-wise, and I found Hal in particular something of a cipher, which is problematic since he's our lead. He doesn't do anything terribly un-Hal-like, except for a couple of odd clownish moments, but I never felt very clear on what he was thinking when he did it. It doesn't help that the whole thing is set in his first few days with the Corps, during which time he gets to know maybe three people to speak to, so there's not a lot of emotional connection there to work with.
The person who does get characterization and emotional focus is Sinestro, who really kind of steals the show. Victor Garber does great voice work for the character, who comes off as convincingly charismatic, ruthless, and pretty damn scary in his determination to bring order to the universe if he has to drown it in blood. Several reviews have pointed out that GL:FF is a cop show at its heart, and Sinestro is the cop gone bad because the goddamn rules won't let him do his job and clean up the scum for good; they're not wrong. Of course, this setting allows him rather more in the way of options than just roaming the city at night with a gun...
Then again, if he was a cop you'd like to think he'd at least get a psychological evaluation. Maybe Hal doesn't tell anybody about the informant Sinestro almost tortures to death, but then he actually does kill a criminal in interrogation, and the Guardians' response is basically "we strongly disapprove. Don't do it again. But we're not actually going to do anything about it." And then after that he shouts at a large crowd of Green Lanterns for doing rescue work because everybody, including crowds of innocent civilians, is expendable rather than let the criminal they're pursuing get away. And admittedly said criminal is a huge threat, but...really, Guardians? (And other GLs, for that matter.) That didn't tip you off at all that there was a problem there? The Guardians are played as well-intentioned--foolish, fairly helpless, and in some cases prejudiced, but well-intentioned--but to be honest Hal might want to think twice about joining the Corps if this is the kind of behavior they let slide.
Other stuff:
Hal gets a full-on anime transformation sequence when he puts on the ring for the first time. Glowy lights and spinning in the air and a giant GL insignia in the background. It's actually not a bad sequence, even if it starts some part of my brain wanting to call him "Pretty Sailor Green Lantern."
I know the Guardians are prejudiced against humans, and we're meant to find them condescending and a bit obnoxious when they start lecturing Hal on the importance of the Green Lantern Corps in a tone that suggests they can't be expected to admit him into it. That said, I cannot think that Hal interrupting them to cheerily reminisce about his policeman uncle letting Hal ride in his squad car when he was a kid helped the situation any. WTH, Hal? Of all the characterizations of Hal Jordan I've seen, "ditz" is a new one. (If I thought he'd picked up on the condescension and was doing it deliberately to annoy them, I could possibly see it, but there's no indication of that.)
Okay, I don't know whether the coy, Cajun-accented lady of the night, straight out of central casting, breaks my brain because she's an orange-skinned vaguely-reptilian alien, or because she's flirting with Sinestro (and Sinestro in full-on "I will have order if it kills you" mode, too). Seriously, she's a half-step from calling him "cher"; I don't think I would have dared, myself. (And given what he does to her at that point, she probably shouldn't have, either.)
I am not a stickler about changes to the source material in adaptations, but I'm going to have to take exception to this one: movie, the word "poozer," as spoken by Kilowog, refers to a person, not a part of anatomy. And if for some reason you feel the need to change that, please don't do it after several instances of his using it to refer to a person; it feels very awkward, even if it's technically possible.
I also think Boodikka is probably one of those "this character bears so little resemblance to the original we should have just renamed her" cases, but I'm not really familiar enough with her to say for sure. On her own merits, though, I liked the character quite a bit. Could have used a little elaboration on her motives, though.
SINESTRO: I offer you power, more power than you can imagine. All I ask for is your loyalty.
HAL: (smirking) Now, you see, you had me...right up until that last part.
Okay, no. First, it's more of a Wally line. Second, while I guess a very young, cocky Hal could say it, he's alone, unarmed, surrounded, and has just been confronted with the knowledge that he, the Corps, and the universe are very likely screwed. He cannot possibly have ever been in a situation like this before, and we really need to see an emotion out of him here. Not anything dramatic or hysterical, mind you, just some sign that he gets that this is really bad and that he's worried about it. Emotional connection is your friend, movie!
So when a GL dies the ring automatically returns to the Guardians, who presumably then choose a replacement. So why does Hal still get his in the desert from a dying Abin Sur? Okay, maybe a GL can bypass the automatic return process if he passes it on to a qualified candidate before he dies (and I can see this being very useful if the GL was, say, protecting civilians in a firefight). I'm just wondering why Abin Sur went to the trouble--does he not trust the Guardians' judgment (and one could hardly blame him), is he seizing the opportunity to give one of the unpopular Earth-humans a chance in the Corps, does he just want to accomplish one last thing before he dies on a failed mission? Or, I can't help but wonder, is he specifically here for Hal? He only tells the ring "find him." There's nothing in the movie to suggest this (which is probably as well; there's enough "Hal Jordan Is The Ultimate Hero!" in the universe, and indeed in the rest of this movie); I just wonder. (It's also possible that the automatic return is just a failsafe for those times when no suitable candidates are in range, but if this kind of deathbed transfer was usual you wouldn't think the other GLs would be quite so pissed at Hal when they show up and find him wearing the ring.)
And speaking of the return function, it actually makes for a really good piece of atmosphere--an awful lot of GLs die in this movie, and while it may be a little cheap to keep it all off-stage, watching those rings just rain down on the deck is quietly horrifying; Arisia's stricken expression as she picks one up just underscores the point.
They show up for about two minutes, but the Weaponers of Qward were one of my favorite bits of the movie. Creepy, alien, totally unimpressed by Sinestro, and their chilly warning that the imperfection in every weapon is its user was a very good line.
It is very, very in character for Hal to try to shift boulders with his bare hands to get to a functional ring so he can fight Sinestro (and this after Sinestro has wiped out dozens of far more experienced GLs) and then when that doesn't work to bang on the ultimate source of the Green Energy so hard it breaks open. Points for that, absolutely.
That said, part of me was going, wait, if it's that easy to access more power why didn't the Guardians think of it? Surely they know the setup better than he does? Oh, right, because then we couldn't have a super-charged Hal in a one-on-one fight with Sinestro. Not that a Green Lantern feature film was ultimately going to come down to Sinestro vs. Ch'p, or anything, and it was a perfectly good climactic fight; the Guardians just come off as pretty useless. (Yeah, yeah, what else is new?)
I kind of choked up hearing the assembled Corps recite the oath, I confess. Total fan-moment.