It's a good thing that the lights were low and all were face-front. No one saw the moment when a tear came to my eye and I made the leap from self-aware and light-hearted to enraptured and enthralled. It was watching Hal Jordan, having just recited the Green Lantern Oath, being zapped to Oa, a beam of emerald light reflected in the face masks of two NASA astronauts. And after forty-minutes of watching Ryan Reynolds quip and zing with natural born nightclub talent, I made the final step to full-fledged zealotry.
Yeah, I know when you see footage at an event like WonderCon you are specifically seeing "the best stuff," but I feel confident that this picture will be tremendous.
WonderCon 2011 was treated to a sizzle reel that left the Esplanade Ballroom at the Moscone Center in San Francisco breathless. It was a compression of scenes at around fifteen minutes that gave a decent overview of the film's first act. Here's what we saw:
A strange looking obsidian crystal in space. As we draw closer, we see it is a ship. Inside, it is cavernous and filled with weird glowy sci-fi globes and is somewhat disorienting. Abin Sur, with purple skin and piercing eyes, receives a holo-message from Sinestro. Sinestro warns him to turn back, that the rescue mission he is on is hopeless, when a (yellow!) force (with tendrils?) smashes through the window of the ship.
In quick order Abin Sur is shunted through the interior of his craft in a swiftly generated sphere. He ends up in an escape pod and, if you know anything about Hal Jordan's origin story, it makes its way toward Earth and a crash landing.
It is a blazing sequence, forcefully put together. Director Martin Campbell and editor Stuart Baird have something of a decent track record - I was never that concerned about the dynamism of the action moments in this film.
Ryan Reynolds approaches the strange sight of a dying alien with a mixture of confusion and concern - his instinct is to help first, ask questions later. As Abin Sur dies, his GL suit disappears, leaving Jordan with his ring and some key parting words.
After an ellipses we're back at Hal Jordan's apartment, where he takes his first stab at charging the ring to the Power Battery. With some good humor he reflects on the "purple skin alien" who gave him these gewgaws then begins to recite "the pledge," a half-hearted rewording of the Pledge of Allegiance.
In time, though, Hal lets his guard down and begins to say the true Lantern Oath. As he does, his eyes begin to glaze and take on a Green hue. And then: Holy Crap.
Hal's journey to Oa (at least as shown tonight) was brief as it was beautiful. The truth of the matter is that other than the shot reflected in the astronaut's face guard and some close-ups of a freaked-out Hal, I don't remember it. My head was swimming But I remember the lump I had in my throat. For real. I mean, Green Lantern comics and the big, ridiculous Multiverse they represent mean a lot to me - and to see it all up there on the screen in a no bullshit way that had adventure and humor, well, it was something I haven't felt since I first saw a similar footage reel from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.
Hal eventually lands, in uniform, on Oa. He is surrounded by off-white and iridescent tubers and roots. Here he meets Tomar-Re (who admits that, yes, he somewhat does resemble some of Earth's marine life) and gets an introduction to the planet. Oa looks like a cross between the ice palace in Doctor Zhivago and Roger Dean's cover of the Yes album "Relayer."
Ryan Reynold's natural wise guy-ness may strike longtime fans as perhaps more Guy Gardner than Hal Jordan, but I have no problem with Reynolds making this character his own. If I have any quibble, it's that I'm still not 100% sure on the domino-mask.
Luckily, Tomar-Re explains that Hal will only need it when his identity must be protected, so he doesn't wear it on Oa. Good. I'm down with the CGI suit, but something about the mixture of the mask and the way he's wearing his hair just bugs me.
(Note - although there was no discussion of it after, Tomar-Re sure sounded an awful lot like Geoffrey Rush, in keeping with the leak that hit the Internet two days back. Sadly, we did not hear Kilowog speak.)
After another ellipses we meet Sinestro. He floats down in front of a giant stone carving of a lantern (I don't think this is the central battery) an gives a rousing speech to the entire assembled Corps.
Mark Strong plays Sinestro like a man possessed. He's got the crazy eyes, and mixed with his reddish-purplish skin the effect is mesmerizing.
He talks about the evil of Parallax and builds the crown up until they are all chanting "We are the Corps!"
Quick flashes afford fans an opportunity to play "spot the Lantern." I was kinda' spazzing out at this time, but I definitely saw Hannu, Boodika and Isamot Kol. And one of the ones that's a giant eyeball. I'm sure Kilowog was there, but I didn't see him. (Or Stel or Green Man or Soranik Natu or Princess Iolande or, or, or, or. . . )
As the entire GL Corps raised their rings we cut to a shot in space looking at Oa, green light beaming out of it.
The footage then switched to a quick montage of images, much of which was already in the trailer. But it was awesome to see Hal shoot a projected machine gun again.
After the footage Geoff Johns introduced Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds who whammied the crowd with their good cheer. Jordan zinged non-stop, referring to tight spandex costumes as "his jammies" and Deadpool as "not a villain, but an asshole."
When a woman called him "Mr. Hottie," he responded that that wasn't actually his Christian name, and when another woman commented on the alliterative nature of his name he pointed out that his middle name is Rodney, "for an Uncle that we don't talk to anymore."
When Geoff Johns asked Reynolds if Green Lantern could beat up Deadpool, Reynolds gave an "aw, man" look and asked "why are you doing this to me? Did I piss in your corn flakes this morning?" He then added that if there were another Deadpool movie it should be "hard R," and that Bradley Cooper should play The Flash. (And that The Flash should be Wally West.)
Lively had some zings, too, reminding us that she is well aware of what Carol Ferris' eventual Star Sapphire outfit looks like. That got almost as big of a response from the crowd as the footage did. Almost.
Twenty minutes after the panel was done I noticed that Geoff Johns, never one to shy from fans, was standing in the crowd, signing comics and yapping about the Atrocitus. I approached him, shook his hand and all he said was "what'd you think of the Corps? Did you see them all?"
And those two brief sentences say a hell of a lot about how Warner Bros. is playing their hand with this multi-zillion dollar franchise. Prior to "Rebirth" and "Secret Origin," Green Lantern was a property with its finest days behind it. Now it is on the verge of relaunching an entire fleet of movies. And protecting it as best he can is Johns. He fights for the Poozers.
Green Lantern will be in theaters June 17.
More Green Lantern:
Geoff Johns discusses GL Comics at WonderCon.
Review of Green Lantern Emerald Knights from WonderCon.
The Best and Worst of the first Green Lantern trailer.
Summer 2011: Thor vs Green Lantern.
Our favorite crazy members of the Green Lantern Corps.
Check out all our WonderCon and Comic-Con coverage here.
