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| Another poster better than the film deserves, by James White. |
Well, by my reckoning I'm about six or seven months late to the party with this one. This film has had the stench of death about it for quite some time. Not just the reviews, which could charitably be described as unkind, but the lead-up to it - there was the muted reaction to the first reveal of Ryan Reynolds' CGI sausage-man costume, then a lack of anything noteworthy at the Comic-Con preview, and the report that Warner Bros had spent $9m fixing up the special effects in post-production, on top of the film already having something like 1300 visual effects shots (according to director Martin Campbell). Several effects studios were working overtime on it until the film's release, and this has, on balance, not turned out well (see the big fat bomb
Last Action Hero).
2011 would see the end of the
Harry Potter franchise, meaning Warner Bros needed to find a new franchise they could print money with. DC Comics, a new subsidiary of Time Warner, also needed more exposure for their label, as so far they've been understated in the comic book movie business as of late. Oh sure
, they had
The Dark Knight grossing $1bn, but for every one major success, they had box office disappointments like
Superman Returns and
Watchmen. And with Marvel quickly dominating the superhero film field with their big tied-in universe, DC chose to throw
Green Lantern in as their best bet. There was a lot riding on this film, so it came as a real shame that the resulting film was
not very good.
