21Six

So, yesterday I saw the new Green Lantern Movie Colon Movie Film For Theaters. I had gone in a little apprehensive, but optimistic. What little information I had regarding the movie beforehand was mostly around the costume, which seemed to me to be completely fine despite some people having issues with the mask and the oddities of the new suit appearing more like muscle tissue in appearance rather than the flat back/green/white business that existed before, and other things like that. Basically, I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to comic book movies in this regard. I want to be able to look on the screen and see the character in a way that I understand. And I think Green Lantern did that for me.

Ryan Reynolds is a good actor– he was the best part of the Wolverine movie, and I look forward to seeing him as Deadpool again. However, he is not Hal Jordan. His sense of humor, delivery, and everything else about him lead me to believe that he would be best suited as Kyle Rayner. Especially given some of the more outlandish constructs that he comes up with during his short time actually using the ring in the movie. It bore more of a resemblance to Kyle, an artist, as opposed to the more canonically pragmatic-in-construct Hal. There were plenty of big green fists, though, so that’s always a plus.

Ryan helped make the movie so much better. The actress playing Carol felt as though she was spending the entire movie trying to be sexy, and it wasn’t really working out for her. Basically, the entire subplot with Carol could have been scrapped, and nothing would have been lost. It served to derail Hal from what I was accustomed to seeing into something that felt more… well, I’ll use what my wife said, “a more lovable kind of guy”. Green Lantern is lesser-known, as such they had to force a lot on the people at a given point in the movie, and make us care about him. Hal as a character, at his start, was pretty shallow. He didn’t develop into something decent until the O’Neil/Adams stuff. This seemed like it attempted to jump somewhere into the 90s in terms of personality, but without the evolution of the character.

Hal was a deeply flawed man, who was afraid. Which… that bugged me more than it probably should. Hal’s flaw wasn’t that he was afraid, but rather that he had never known fear. Let me explain. People who read my stuff and know Green Lantern know that the ring appears, tells you that you are without fear, and you’ve been chosen. However, they changed that following Green Lantern: Rebirth, and it became “You have the ability to overcome great fear”. This is actually acknowledged in the movie, and I liked that.

But Hal was never afraid, and that’s why all of the shit happened to him. He had never experienced fear before, so he didn’t know what it was. This Hal, Movie!Hal, not only knows fear deeply, but all but bathes in it. It makes for an interesting battle with the weird incarnation of Parallax, which I won’t go too much into because it’s a big plot point. Suffice to say it was rather different, but good in its own right.

The effects of the movie were a little jarring. Green Lantern deals with aliens, and essentially magic powers. As such, there’s a lot of computer-generated stuff. Most of the time you don’t notice it, but there are a few times where it becomes incredibly obvious that it’s all been done on a computer. Like with Hal’s mask. It just looks unnatural on him, and it’s a distraction. The aliens look incredible, and look natural– especially ones like Kilowog, who have a decent voice actor behind them. However, it was still kind of weird seeing Ryan’s head floating around on a clearly generated body at times.

The effects on the constructs were fantastic, though. They kept the transparent-green, as though it was made of glass. And everything was just sort of built as it was being constructed, as opposed to in the comics, where it’s just… there. It was a nice touch that helped really solidify the idea behind the power.

Was it worth the price of admission? Yeah. I don’t really give ratings, but I’d say it’s as good to me as The Incredible Hulk, but not as good as Iron Man, and definitely nowhere near The Dark Knight. So, like a B-minus or so. Watch it, just because there’s clearly going to be an awesome sequel. And while you’re at it, pick up some Green Lantern comics and support the industry. But definitely see this movie. If you’re a die-hard GL fan you might be disappointed, or you might be pleasantly surprised with all of the little nods to the comics in the plot.

I’ll be picking this one up when it comes out on DVD, I know that much. Now they just need to make a movie with Kyle and Alan Scott, and I’ll be satisfied.

So, the knowledge that there’s a Green Lantern movie coming out is pretty old. But I’ve been away adjusting to life as a college student again, and I haven’t really had time to keep up with everything (I mean, hell, I still haven’t even read The Return of Bruce Wayne which depresses me because Morrison is one of my favorite writers) however, I’m still gonna take the time to talk about this thing. I’m pretty excited about it, to say the least.

My overall impressions whenever I saw the Entertainment Weekly cover were hesitantly optimistic. The Green Lantern costume (that is to say, Hal’s) is kind of difficult to work with, I feel. But then again I feel that away about a lot of different comic book costumes. However, I liked the idea that they’re showing with the costume. If you look at it, the thing almost looks like something that’s wrapped around him, and become a part of him. I described the costume as being something between Venom in the vein of Spider-Man 3 in terms of material and Dr. Manhattan. Mostly because I’m bad at comparisons, but it was something I felt like was an apt description at the time. The costume didn’t look complete to me, though, for various reasons.

However, these were still shots from a magazine, and I never give those much credit. To me, it’s kind of like determining how a game will be by watching the cut scenes. It’s just not going to work out that way. As a fan, and as someone who believes he should know what he’s talking about if he’s going to complain about comic books on a website that he barely uses, he should at least wait for a couple of trailers to make a judgment.

Thankfully, in this regard, a trailer has come out and it’s… pretty optimistic.

Reynolds seems to be a good choice for the role– he’s someone who has made mention in the past of being a fan of comic books, so that works for him in the eyes of some people I guess. Though more than a few people are probably going to hold his role as Deadpool in the horrendous X-Men Origins: Wolverine against him. But I think he works it well as Hal. He kind of looks more like Kyle, though, just with lighter hair. But that’s a tangent I’m not going to get into with this just yet. The point here is that I have faith in Reynolds to actually act pretty decently in this movie. Because the minute and a half I have with the trailer is totally an accurate representation of the movie. I’m not sure how the entire movie is, but here’s my thoughts on the trailer, and I’m reserving these to be specifically regarding this particular thing.
Continue reading »

This is one of those comics that, every time I try to figure out the words to start out how I’m going to talk about it, I get flustered, lose my place, and then realize the next issue is already out. It’s a fantastic story, and I worry that no matter what I do I can’t even begin to do it justice in the long-run of things. After all, this is a story about life, about death, the brief aspect of existence that takes place in between those two concepts. We’re just seeing a glimpse, a small moment in time, that shows the fragility of it all.

Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon are brilliant storytellers are artists, crafting for us something that I couldn’t have even imagined reading even a year ago, in terms of the nature of the story. This ten issue mini-series published by Vertigo isn’t the sort of story that tells you everything outright. Not entirely. We’re told a story, a simple story, but we’re told it in different ways, at different times. It’s all part of it.

The two of them, at the end of the first issue, decide to give us a bit of a rundown as to what they came up with whenever they started the idea of “Daytripper”

The first time were asked what DAYTRIPPER was, we simply said, “It’s about life.” To which we heard a blunt “That’s it?”– followed by mutual silence. “You’re gonna need a much better answer than that,” the other person concluded.

[…]

Have you ever realized how our lives can change at any given moment? How you noticed how we can plan ahead all we want, but we’re always surprised by the unexpected? And that, afterwards, we end up with a sum of moments, both good and bad, that really define who we are, what we want, and what we love? Well, such roller coasters of ordinary life happen every day, and that’s what DAYTRIPPER is about.

Cut to one year later, and here we are. Time to stop telling and start showing. Let us all now meet Brás de Oliva Domingos, wannabe writer, and follow him around as he tries to figure out his life. Let’s put ourselves in his shoes and see where they take us.

[…]

Continue reading »

I’ve decided to stop talking about Ultimate Marvel and Batman long enough to bring you a few new bits of stuff for your reading pleasure. One of them comes to me from a little booth in Anime Boston 2010, a five-issue series called “Sky Pirates of Valendor” published by a Connecticut group going by the name of “Free Lunch Comics”. I purchased the trade paperback of this series, which was apparently published in 2009. It was also signed by one of the creators, who seemed genuinely to enjoy his stuff and seemed like a pretty nice guy. I flipped through it a little at the convention, unsure if I wanted to actually purchase it, but some of the splash pages and the general concept intrigued me enough to give a chance, despite being a collection of things I typically disregard.

So, the book itself is something like a steampunk pirate adventure/fantasy story with various anthropomorphic animals. If you were to tell me that alone, I wouldn’t consider this book. Generally speaking, these aren’t the sorts of books I look at, mostly because I tend not to like anthropomorphic animals. Talking animals by themselves are fine, or talking animals that are animals are also fine. However, I’ve never really enjoyed seeing what amounts to buff dudes with fox faces and tails. It’s part of why I never play the Argonian or the Khajit in The Elder Scrolls games, the races, being animal with human builds, make it slightly more difficult to directly relate than an elf or some other archetype of fantasy stories. There were a lot of anthropomorphic animal things in Anime Boston, now that I think about it.

I’m also not particularly fond of Steampunk, just because it’s become trendy, and a lot of people don’t tend to do it right. Pirates are okay.

Clearly this is not the sort of book I should like, but what I found rather interesting was that I kept reading. The story, while not immediately engaging, was something that I felt like I should keep reading. I wasn’t swept up in the battles and things of that sort, but I was still curious, and interested in the characters that existed. They seemed fleshed out, though still hovering close to just being the typical characters that might exist in a story of this level (or just general pirate-fantasy stories). But I read the book, and after I finished it I found myself surprised that I was wanting more of these people. I wanted to know more of their past, and I wanted to know the future. I, simply, wanted to know what was going to happen next. And, best I can tell, I’m not actually going to get to know that.
Continue reading »

[Images and quotes taken from Marvel.com]

Okay, so, I haven’t really been keeping up with Marvel comics. I’ve been busy trying to read the Civil War, while they’re already three events ahead of me: Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and the newest one called “Siege.” From what I can gather, Dark Reign has been about Norman Osborne fucking shit up, and Siege is about further shit being fucked up. If you’ll excuse the incredible crude, and base, description of it all. At some point during this, Tony Stark fell victim to something, and has been out of commission. Which seems kind of odd, but they always have plans for this.

So, to celebrate Tony coming back from the brink of whatever, they’ve decided to give him some new armor, which looks roughly like this

That’s not a particularly bad design. One of the designers, who happens to be involved with both the upcoming Thor and Iron Man movies, Matt Fraction, had this to say:

“The inspiration for the new design came from thinking about a sleeker, leaner, tougher Iron Man,” revealed Fraction. “If technology is increasingly getting smaller and lighter it seems like the Iron Man should do the same: ergonomic and aerodynamic. We were looking for something that felt as sleek and glossy as a sports car Tony Stark would covet. I love what we’ve come up with. It feels like the next evolutionary step in the Iron Man’s design.”

Which is a good idea, really, and shows that they aren’t complete idiots whenever it comes to character determination for things like this– costumes and so forth– it’s an interesting design, I’ll say that much. However, I’m not entirely sure how to react to it as a whole. I feel like the drawing itself that’s been given to people isn’t entire complete in its idea. There’s something about it that’s missing. While it may be true that technology, as it advances, compresses so to speak (look at the evolution of the television from the large rotary ones to the fact that you may very well be reading this on a phone about the size of your hand and thinner than a checkbook) there is still the issue of the armor. Of course, given the fact that Marvel exists in a universe where a fictional, indestructible metal called “Adamantium” exists, this isn’t really an issue so much as it is an inconvenience and an excuse for people to complain. Some of these lights look a little superfluous, but this is comic books and superfluousness is something that exists in large heaping masses.

Of course, there is still Ultimate Comics: Iron Man: Armor Wars and the, what I believe was called “iMan” if you want absurdly streamlined technology for your comic books.

For now, I’ll support the costume change, though I think Ultimate Iron Man probably has the best Iron Man suit.