An Open Letter to the Writers of the Green Lantern movie re: My Deep Confusion
Dear Writers of the Green Lantern Movie who I am too lazy to IMDB:
Some of our regular readers here at The Correctness know I am not an expert on all things Green Lantern. I made a whimsical comment at one point about Hal Jordan getting his powers from being bitten by a radioactive lantern, and a few nerds took offense and sent death threats. As a consequence of my ignorant and insensitive comment, I was shipped away by my fellow contributors at The Correctness to Green Lantern boot camp. I read “Secret Origins”, “Rebirth” and “Sinestro Corps War”. I even got started on “Blackest Night”, which I have had the courtesy not to confuse with the “Dark Knight” which is a different thing in your DC universe entirely. The Dark Knight was the guy who got bitten by the radioactive bat, whereas I am now aware that Hal Jordan’s powers are generated by an immense night-light on the planet Oprah. All sorted.
Having learned so much about the Green Lantern(s), I must say I was shocked when your film strayed so far from the origin story I was familiar with. I was agape (agape? a grape?) – I was a grape in the audience at my local multiplex when the story onscreen was so wildly different that I almost thought I was in the wrong theatre!
In the opening segment of your film, You have elected to do away with the Abin-Sur crash storyline and opt for having a gruff Jim Carrey ignore his family and get cheap laughs. This was the first shocker, because as I understood it another Canadian entirely, notably Ryan Reynolds, was to be playing the lead role of Hal Jordan.
Imagine my surprise when you chose to go against everything in the DC universe and give this particular green lantern the implausible name of “Mr Popper”. I nearly crapped my pants, possibly from the corn starch based nacho-cheese-product I ate at the theatre, but mostly from disbelief. Mr. Popper then began to suck worse than Guy Gardner, John Stewart and Kyle Rayner combined, which is an immense feat in and of itself, and something I’m certain Geoff Johns was trying to avoid when he brought Hal back to the forefront in “Rebirth”.
It was an interminable 24 minutes into the film before Mr. Popper began creating constructs- without a ring or a lantern I might add. And what were those constructs? Huge green fists? Green rocket ships? No, they were almost exclusively penguins.
PENGUINS, you guys. At one point Mr Popper seems to create the construct of a somehow-totally-watertight interior door, which allows a bathroom to fill completely with water and not leak a single drop. I suppose Mr Popper’s greatest achievement was creating the construct of a penguin which would not need to breathe any air at all, and could stay underwater, all day, in a totally sealed chamber. My point however was that The Green Lantern was insufferably full of penguins.
Does Mr. Popper overcome fear? No, he overcomes his self-importance, I think, and I guess I’m supposed to believe he learns a valuable lesson about family values because he teaches some penguins to dance- And I’m not convinced that what you said was a “step-ball-change” was well researched. Where is Parallax? My god, you even gave him a different name and made him a zookeeper. A zookeeper!
I was not surprised by at least one thing: You avoided the whole colour yellow thing. There was no mention of it in the film, which actually kind of saddened me. The yellow-spectrum flaw in the lantern from imprisoning Parallax would have allowed the film franchise to grow in a manner more truthful to the recent GL reboot. Instead, you chose to ignore this intriguing weakness that Hal seems able to overcome on occasion (that wonderful scene in Secret Origin) and have wacky penguin antics. Shame on you!
I await your explanation.
Sincerely,
RobbieRobTown
