Escape to the Movies: "Green Lantern: Extended Cut"

Because Paranormal Activity 3 and Three Musketeers weren’t shown to critics, that’s why.

Intermission is about animal movies.

15 thoughts on “Escape to the Movies: "Green Lantern: Extended Cut"”

  1. Sssonic says:
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    To be fair, the movie actually DOES offer a little in the way of explanation vis a vis Hector's turn to villainy: the resentment he feels towards his Father, combined with the naturally corruptive influence of the Yellow energy (and thus Parallax). It's not much, of course, and much like everything else in “Green Lantern” it's communicated poorly and ineffectively, but it's at least there for whatever little it's worth.

    Honestly, though, the unfortunate implications you mention here are sadly rather inherent of the Hector Hammond character from the comics (with the addition of frustratingly Ableist implications to boot), which is one of the big reasons I feel he was just a god-awful choice for this movie to begin with. I'm hard-pressed to think of a way you could do Hammond without running into the problem you mention here, to be honest.

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  3. Robert Garlen says:
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    @MovieBob, two comments, 1.) Why isn't there a Warrior review, not even a written one, it saddens me. 2.) There are other films to review that would at least be a new topic, why not let sleeping dogs lie, should we have a constant reminder of a let down? Would you give Avengers this much grief if it sucked?

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  4. Anonymous says:
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    Bob, before The Avengers comes out and there isn't anything worth reviewing during the week with you do a double feature of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk? That way you've reviewed all the Marvel Avengers movies. Plus I want to know what you thought of them. If you don't mention the F***ING FANTASTIC musical score from The Incredible Hulk though you will lose 2 respect points.

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  5. TheDVDGrouch says:
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    Could not agree with you more on the douchy Hal VS Nerdy Hammond thing. I would even go a little farther and say Hammond was always a better person than Hal. There was that but where Hal got a bunch of people fired and didn't bat an eye. But Hammond almost breaks down when he hears some scientist might have been passed over for him

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  7. Taylor says:
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    No, Bob, you really DON'T need to do an extensive post-mortem on Green Lantern. The horse is dead, and you are beating it. Speaking as a fan of your show, this episode was a major disappointment. I learned nothing. I got no new opinions. I mean, I understand that there may be a slow release schedule but could you really not pull out a retro review from somewhere instead of rereviewing a movie you already did?

    What does need to happen, though, is you need to start looking back at some of the awful Marvel superhero movies that keep getting passes for being connected to the Avengers project. (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, etc.)

    I mean, Hollwood is abusing the hell out of the geek fanbase and you're letting them get away with it. “We're geek fans Marvel, hold up a nice fat fanservice carrot and you don't have to give us decent movies. We're walking wallets who want nothing more than a reference.”

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  8. Mads says:
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    Call me a king-size nitwit with extra dumb-sauce on the side, but I didn't mind green lantern.

    It wasn't great by any stretch, the opening act was trite, and the script had too much conincidense but…well…I didn't think it was worse than the first hulk movie, for example. And it felt a lot better than the silver surfer movie.

    I also didn't read anything into the subtext…ultimately, Hal was really brave, his friend wasn't, so Hal was selected. Then his friend got a space-virus by accident, and he turned into a big meanie, in spite of being a fundamentally good person.

    It was by no means great, but in this case, I really feel like the rose was a rose was a rose.

    I think the massive shitstorm was largely unfair by comparison to other movies of similar ilk, but I _do_ like the fact that nerds signal that they demand the depth and meaning of Captain America, and discard the dude-bro action flick Green Lantern.

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  9. lemonvampire says:
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    I, for one, really enjoyed Bob revisiting Green Lantern. There's always more to be said with really bad films like this, which is why I never get tired of hearing new discussions about why the Star Wars Prequels suck.
    I don't agree that GL was as bad as Batman and Robin or Catwoman or Johah Hex (sad that all the absolute worst examples of bad superhero movies are from DC). It was definitely awful, just not entirely that awful.

    The first time I saw the Star Wars 3D poster my first thought was seriously that I was seeing a fake poster someone had thrown together as a joke about how bad Lucasfilm's Photoshopped posters are.

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  12. Dan Cmil says:
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    I have to say first and for most i love your series Movie Bob. it's nice to see the view points with serious geek creds. I enjoyed all of your Escape to the Movies and agreed with most and disagreed on some.

    I am just curious why so much venom on this movie. I can understand that you did not like it but you almost deem it to be the worst movie of the year. I watched it with my wife (A non-geek) and we both agree that the movie was fun, not fantastic or even note worthy, but it was a fun ride. The plot was solid, sure they didn’t go into a deep explanation for everything and everyone but considering that it was better in some ways (SOME Ways mind you) then Thor, who’s character growth was god (Heh heh no pun intended) awful, I have to say your critique seems to be overly…well…critical.

    It almost as if you were the one offered the Ring and Ryan Reynolds pushed you out of the way at the last minute and then laughed as he slipped it on and flew away. True the aliens were cartoony…they were based on comic characters. True the special effects were not phenomenal though they were better than some movies I’ve seen. You have a guy who flies around space in a skin tight suit…the fact that they made this look good deserves some recognition. They could have given him another superman suit with tights and get another epic fail.

    Though I will still “read” your movie reviews I think your judgment is somehow tainted when it comes to the Green Lantern. You have some unknown animosity to the film or the actors or something along the way. It was, by far, not an Oscar winner in any aspects and it deserves to get a poor review but the review you gave was, for lack of a better word, scathing.

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  13. Anonymous says:
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    “…the awful Marvel superhero movies that keep getting passes for being connected to the Avengers project. (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, etc.)”

    Are you seriously trying to say Iron Man 1 and 2 were bad films? C'mon, man. You may not have liked them but they were great, well-made films.

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  14. Taylor says:
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    So, let's take Iron Man 1. I will say that the first half of Iron Man 1 was good, but then the plot just crashes to a complete stop and it has no idea what it's doing. The Iron Monger made no real impact as a villain other than to just have been kind of a jerk who suddenly shows up with a robot suit. Overall it just had really awkward and stilted pacing.

    Then Iron Man 2…oh Iron Man 2… that whole movie was like a slap in the damn face to everyone who paid admission to see an actual movie and not a 2 hour trailer for the Avengers. The plot started out with some level of conflict but then just kind of meandered around and was resolved with Nick Fury just HANDING stark the solution.

    Granted, neither of these touched the level of wretchedness that GL had, but still, they had major problems in overall pacing and structure, but IM2 was given more or less a complete pass in Bob's review, since it is so obvious that he's just so excited that Avenger's is happening.

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