Increasingly it seems as if DC is putting a lot more juice behind Green Lantern to join the company’s “trinity” of lead characters (the other two being Superman and Batman). The recent work by Geoff Johns is great, and the movie is now on track. The loser in this seems to be Wonder Woman, who has great brand identification but it always seems DC doesn’t know what to do with her – I think in part due to her being a female character and also because her comic book rarely has buzz.
And let’s not forget she had a TV show that while being pretty brilliant, was also very campy. A movie for her would either have to indulge in the campiness (and go against the grain of oh-so-serious comic book flicks) or pull a Dark Night, which either way would disappoint lots of people.
DC has done a very, very good job with WW in “Justice League: New Frontier” and in the separate “Wonder Woman” direct to video animated releases.
Overall I think GL’s a silly character, simply because of the ring and the green and the colors, though DC did a good job (not great) with many of the JL:NF scenes, but on the other hand, it involves a lot of space stuff.
In recent superhero movies, only the intro credits of Superman Returns and the Silver Surfer section of FF4 II had any significant space scenes, so, GL could offer a different setting.
I haven’t seen the WW animated movie yet, so until I do I have to say that the Bruce Tim version has been the been the best I’ve seen on TV, including the live show.
The problem with WW is that she’s the only original hero as far as females go; every other popular one is a feminine version of a male: Supergirl, Batgirl, etc. In other words, a majority of the writers have been looking at DC females through the prism of a male. There is no male counterpart to WW and as a result they’ve gotten really lazy with her as a character (hence the ever-changing background, the lame rouge’s gallery and weird mixture of technology and the supernatural).
Once DC decided to make the GL’s power more based on cosmic power and less on magic, it opened a lot of doors. They’ve got four decent human Lanterns to do stories for, and a really good excuse to make the movies sci-fi by nature.
The potential problem with a GL movie is that non-comic-fans (and some comic-fans as well) like to see superpowers on human scale. I’m not sure there is a ready audience for a character that flies off to different worlds and has a magical power ring that can pretty much create anything, and is only vulnerable to yellow. Still, a solid script and good performances could bring people out. I wouldn’t have guessed Iron Man to be as good a movie as it is.
I honestly believe that the reason Green Lantern was selected to be fast-tracked for a movie and higher profile was due to the success of Marvel’s IRON MAN movie. It showed that even second-tier superhero characters can attract an audience. No one expected Iron Man to do as well as it did. After the last Superman movie floundered, DC had to look at some of its other properties, which is why the Flash is being green-lighted. Batman can’t carry the entire company alone.
Maybe DC should, ya know, hire a woman or two. Or at least try to have a conversation with a few.
@ El Cid,
GL is a silly character and WW isn’t ? You must be on crack. There is a reason why they are replacing her….SHE SUCKS. Every thing about her is stupid, from her origin to her “mission”. I think it says a lot about a character’s magnitude of suckiness if you have to constantly have to make up new powers for them to mitigate how much they suck(she is invulnerable now but still needs bullet proof bracelets, or let’s give her a sword that can freakin’ split electrons cause the lasso is pretty lame) or shoe horn them into stories that where much better without them, or insist on printing their title when no one buys it for the sole reason of “she’s a marquee character”. Jeez, just kill her off like they did Poochie on the Simpsons. You don’t even need an elaborate way of doing it. She could make like Judy on Family Matters…trust me, no one would notice.
Unless Green Lantern has 42DD cups, he will never replace Wonder Woman!
Tim,
DC has no control over what is done with its characters as movie properties. That’s all Warner Bros. DC has hired women; the “Wonder Woman” comic book is currently being written by Gail Simone, and they’ve hired Felicia Henderson and Angela Robinson to write “Teen Titans” and “The Web” respectively.
I think it’s because WW is a pretty boring character, personally. Her suite of abilities is your generic B-grade, gender-swapped Superman: strong (but not as strong as superman), difficult to injure (but not so much as Superman), flight, blah blah blah. Even her name is just a gender-swap from Superman. There’s not really anything interesting or unique about her apart from being female, so she’s always come across as just a bone thrown to female comics fans to keep the marquee lineup from being 100% male.
Which is not to say I can think of any examples of better female characters, but that’s only a further indictment of comic writers’ inability to create (or comic fans’ inability to appreciate) a character that’s compelling in its own right, who also happens to be female.
One hurdle to a successful GL movie is the whole “imagination” angle: in pretty much every situation, the audience is going to come up with something far better suited than whatever your on-screen hero is doing (the Justice League animated show suffered a lot from this). It’s hard to like your protagonist when he’s busy making salad tongs or something.
I think the whole idea is silly. (Caveat-I am a Marvel reader, first and foremost.) There’s always been more of an association between GL, Green Arrow and the Flash in the comics. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are the characters who have been largely continuous since the Golden Age and weren’t given new counterparts in the Silver Age. (well, Aquaman too, but there are too many jokes there, and speaking of someone barely anyone can write well. . .) It wasn’t that long ago the character was turned evil and then killed off, just so he could do something interesting. GL lacks the iconic value and connection to mythology that Wonder Woman provides. I think a lot of the reason he’s getting a push is that he’s a good springboard for more cosmic stories.
It strikes me as pretty cynical, anyway. “We can’t write well for women, so we’ll just reduce the importance of our main female character.”
GL was really well done in New Frontier, though.
I think it’s an okay interpretation of WW as the warrior goddess who dwells among humans.
Marvel has had a successful 3rd tier character for years of Hercules, and as awful and ditzy as it was there were years of commercial success with the Zena warrior princess TV show, which is pretty much along the lines of the more recent interpretations of WW.
I’m on crack? I find that character, basically an Artemis or, literally, Diana, more interesting and worthy of exploration than a guy who has a magic ring that makes green stuff.
I can already tell you how the PUMAs are going to react . . .
LulZ @ teh PUMAs
God help WB if the GL is John Stewart.