There are five superheroes that anyone in America knows: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the Hulk. The first three of those are DC Comics properties – and while the Christopher Nolan reboot of Batman has been a tremendous success and wiped the slate of those Schumacher abominations, the recent Superman revival was a dud – and let’s not even start in on the development hell of Wonder Woman. Meanwhile, across the aisle, Marvel has taken one of their second-tier properties in Iron Man and turned it into a phenomenon (largely thanks to the born-to-play-him casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark). So now DC prepares to do the same…with Green Lantern.
This is a reach, to say the least. Green Lantern isn’t even part of the regular Super Friends rotation (the aforementioned trio plus Robin and Aquaman, for those of you born after 1978 or so) – so, like Iron Man, you’re going big with a character who is largely a blank slate in the public mind. Apparently there has been more complexity and hogwash around Green Lantern in recent years than almost any other character, with a whole rainbow of alternate lanterns and some sort of zombie Black Lanterns and…oh I can’t even. One of the problems of flogging the same characters for fifty years that the accretion of previous continuity and retcons and plot devices run amuck results in the need to blow everything up and start fresh (thinking of the Ultimate Marvel line here).
So instead, we’re going down a similar road, judging by the trailer: lovable rogue suddenly finds himself in a position of great power and has to overcome his own limitations to become A Hero. We have seen this ONE MILLION times, so the success is in the details. And despite all manner of gadgetry and psychotic foes, the success of the Nolan Batman and of Iron Man – in my opinion anyway – has come from the fact that these stories are explicitly not about Batman and Iron Man, but about Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. Hell, Iron Man is groundbreaking in that when’s the last time you saw a superhero with no secret identity in mainstream entertainment? Part of the thing about the movie version is that everyone knows Tony Stark = Iron Man, and there are issues that flow from that.
Too, Batman and Iron Man have the advantage of being guys in suits. You may have to CGI some of their shenanigans, but these are not things that are totally beyond reason. It remains to be seen how responsive non-fanboy audiences are going to be to an interstellar police force with “power rings” and green Spandex. Then again, the filmmakers have cleverly broadened their appeal by casting the newly-minted “Sexiest Man Alive” as their protagonist and helpfully put him in nothing but his drawz to open the trailer. Setting aside the question of “when the hell did the guy off ‘Two Guys A Girl And A Pizza Place’ become the Sexiest Man Alive?” it will be interesting to see whether Ryan Reynolds can walk the same tightrope that RDJ did without the advantage of being a functional alcoholic playing a functional alcoholic. (Maybe he can get an introduction, since his wife was the one spying on Tony Stark for SHIELD…)
Watch it? Of course I will. Hell, I went and saw Watchmen, didn’t I, and what a load of old shite that turned out to be…at the very least, I want to see whether it’s going to be Iron Man or Daredevil…