In a more serious vein considering superhero movies (as opposed to previously), some random thoughts about where the origin story is appropriate for a superhero movie, and where it just isn’t.
GREEN LANTERN: This is probably the last of the really good “movie is the origin story” superhero movies, because Green Lantern’s origin, when told right, is really fucking awesome. To wit:
1.) Hal Jordan in exciting test pilot plane sequence
2.) Abin Sur “interrupts”, gives ring
3.) Fun stuff with Hal using ring, maybe fighting criminals who have, say, golden battle armor for some reason (so to explain ring’s weaknesses).
4.) Sinestro-as-a-Green-Lantern shows up, starts training Hal on Earth then in outer space. Tentative student/apprentice friendship emerges!
This is the obvious first act. Then you go into the balls-out SECOND act:
5.) Trip to Korugar. OH SHIT it turns out Sinestro is INSANE, because Sinestro thinks the need to keep “order” means you need a fascist interstellar government. Plus, Hal has no way of knowing that Sinestro doesn’t represent the Green Lantern ethos, so now it’s him against ALL the Green Lanterns, he figures.
6.) So Sinestro has an interstellar battle fleet and he’s going to restore order to the universe sector-by-sector, planet-by-planet. STARTING WITH EARTH because he wasn’t impressed with it and because Hal, who is Hal, resists him.
7.) Sinestro reveals that it was HE who killed Abin Sur, because Abin Sur found out what he was doing and was trying to stop him.
8.) Sinestro uses his awesome will to strip Hal of his ring and dumps him OUT OF A FUCKING AIRLOCK into SPACE.
And finally you get the awesomer than awesome THIRD act:
9.) In the seconds before Hal dies of space death type thing, he gets picked up by a stealth shuttle piloted by Katma Tui and Tigorr. (YES FUCK YOU IT IS MY GREEN LANTERN MOVIE AND I SAY TIGORR IS IN IT.)
10.) Whoops, Sinestro finds them on Korugar and Hal Jordan uses WILLPOWER to get his ring back and they have a ring-fight which is AWESOME and Hal knocks Sinestro for a loop long enough…
11.) …for Hal to go into space and really GO TO FUCKING TOWN on the interstellar space fleet with his power ring. I am talking ten-mile-long buzzsaws, swarms of a billion boxing gloves, enormous star-devouring Bea Arthurs, you name it.
12.) But Sinestro shows up for ROUND TWO and they ring-fight EVEN MORE and at this point everybody watching the movie should have an enormous erection because it will be JUST THAT GODDAMNED COOL.
13.) And then the Guardians show up and you play the “wait, what if the Guardians are on SINESTRO’s side?” to the hilt until Tomar Re and Kilowog show up and say “fuck YOU Sinestro” and Sinestro gets exiled to the Anti-Matter Universe and Katma Tui gets the power ring and replaces him and then the movie makes eleventy billion dollars.
I’m of course being exceptionally facile here, but the point stands that the Green Lantern origin story just works in a way that a lot of superhero origin stories don’t because it – much like Iron Man – is fundamentally a movie about the superhero origin story as self-discovery, about the realization of greatness (Tony Stark and Hal Jordan share one thing in common, traditionally – they’re both, as people, way above average on the “ability” scale) and the responsibility borne with it. Origin stories work as movies when the origin makes you want to root for the hero.
FLASH: Now, this is fundamentally the opposite of a Green Lantern movie right here, because Flash’s origin story is shitburgers from a movie storytelling standpoint.
1.) Meet Barry (or Wally)! He’s a decent guy! He’s a cop!
2.) He gets zapped with chemicals and lightning!
3.) So he becomes a superhero!
4.) And fights, I dunno, Gorilla Grodd or Captain Cold or whoever.
Compelling, frankly, this is not. You can layer on stuff about “it’s tough to be a decent upstanding guy in the world” but Christ, that’s a shitty movie right there because every day your audience has their own shit to go through and you don’t want to paint Barry (or Wally) as a whiner when he can run at the speed of something really fucking fast.
Does this mean a Flash movie is unworkable? Of course not, but it means you have to take a different approach. I gave Speed Racer a well-deserved heaping of shit because it was really just a bad movie, but one thing it did right is that it didn’t bother explaining why Speed Racer lived in this crazy-ass world with these crazy-ass cars driving on crazy-ass racetracks, and also why they had a monkey. The point is that if you start your movie with the premise “this is how things are,” audiences will, more often than not, be fine with that so long as you suspend their disbelief and never question your own narrative.
Applying this to a Flash movie allows us to use the strongest element of the Flash concepts, namely the heroic legacy model. In short, a Flash movie has Barry and Wally and Jay in it – Barry as the star, Wally as the sidekick, Jay as the elder statesman. You want Professor Zoom as the main villain, although you can of course throw in any number of Rogues for color. And most importantly, you establish that Barry has been the Flash for years and everybody knows him and is used to him and Jay as the elder Flash and Wally as Kid Flash.
And the movie is about Barry’s last adventure as the Flash, ultimately joining the Speed Force and becoming the lightning bolt that gives Wally his powers. (You probably want to retcon Jay’s origin just to make it closer to Barry and Wally’s for the purposes of the flick.) Wally and Jay can help defeat the Big Bad, and somewhere in there Zoom dies, but the important thing is Barry sacrifices himself to save the world. Then, at the end of the movie, Wally puts on the Flash outfit for the first time, says “The Flash lives again!” and that’s your triumphant ending right there – a hero has died, but the legacy continues.
People will eat that shit up with a fork. It’s the superhero story as Greatest Generation-style narrative of shared sacrifice and shared victory.
(And you’ll note, incidentally, that this sets up the sequel for an almost-straight retelling of Mark Waid’s “The Return of Barry Allen” story, which continues the theme of heroic legacy while being an awesome story that translates incredibly well to a filmed narrative.)
ALSO: If and when they ever make a movie for The Flash, they must set a sequence to Madonna and Justin Timberlake’s “4 Minutes,” because that would be awesome.
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ok, between these and “Why I Should Write the Legion” and everything else you say… whenever you’re ready to tell us to storm DC’s corporate offices in NYC and lead the revolution and take over and restore order in the universe, give me two weeks notice so i can quit my job and sharpen my pitchfork…
I would see that green lantern movie several million times over because of how awesome it is.
I was hoping the “Fantastic Four” movie would open with the Four already Fantastic, and that it starts with Big Krazy Kirby action: the Four fighting a giant monster from Under the Earth. Not only would that have been wicked cool, it would have mimicked the famous Kirby-Lee “insane at the start” comics, set the tone for the world of the FF, and passed over the none-too-interesting origin story. But no. Alas.
The GL story has an obvious sequel, too: the Kyle Rayner story. Imagine that LA gets nuked by aliens and Hal loses his poo trying to bring it back. He destroys the Corps in a quest for the power to rebuild it. The Guardians create one last GL, a guy totally unlike Hal, to put things right. It’d have the generational aspect of your “Flash” story but with conflict instead of cooperation, and the unusual appeal of turning the hero of the original into the villain of the sequel. Maybe it’d work.
>ALSO: If and when they ever make a movie for The Flash, they must set a sequence to Madonna and Justin Timberlake’s “4 Minutes,” because that would be awesome.
This.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a Marvel fanboy or what, but neither movie sounds very good to me. Just the names “Korugar,” “Tomar Re” and “Kilowog” make me not want to see your Green Lantern movie. I don’t really know what you’re talking about, and it really seems impenetrable without a lot of work that I’m not willing to put forth. And as soon as I see that all three Flashes are in a movie at the same time, I just kind of roll my eyes and walk away.
I approve of power rings creating enormous star-devouring Bea Arthurs.
Both of these sound awesome.
So probably will never get made.
Well, I think these are too busy too make viably cohesive films- you have enough here for a set of trilogies (not too mention cost which, let’s face it, is really what the studios are concerned with. Secondly, I can’t see a studio greenlighting a film where the main character dies to set up sequels that may never be made. That said, I would still be first (FIRST! YAY) in line if they did get made…unless either feature any Madonna or Timberlake music, in which case I would have to bomb the theater for the good of mankind. (Jim’s Big Ego’s “Ballad of Barry Allen” seems a natural, though)
Wow! I want you to work for a movie studio!
Seriously, the thought process here is fabulous. Why does it seem that movie studios don’t put this much thought into their films? I’m sure they do, but the end product often doesn’t live up to it. (That Flash movie sounds especially sweet)
And NY Johnny…the main character doesn’t die in the Flash movie…the main character is the FLASH! The audience won’t care who is wearing the mask in the sequel…they get to see more Flash!
Your conclusion to the Flash story idea brought a tear to my eye.
NY Johnny: They’re really not that busy at all. They’re nonstop, but they’re not overstuffed. Describing a movie in terms of action sequences always makes it seem longer than it really is.
karellan: Boy, you’re gonna hate the Thor movie currently in preproduction and scheduled for 2010. “Volstagg” is ten times weirder a name than anything in the GL mythos.
Baal: Well, it should, considering I stole it outright from the last issue of Crisis On Infinite Earths.
do blue beetle next. and also, how would you have made spiderman 3 and x3 not suck a lot?
I like the Flash movie, although I’d have Wally suit up before the end, to be the “official” Flash for the big fight at the end. If there’s one thing that’s good for adding weight to a fight, it’s the Inigo Montoya factor. The second movie can be about Wally and Bart, with Mirror Master or the Weather Wizard thrown in as the main villain — their powers can be employed on a grand enough scale to merit a big budget Hollywood slugfest and audiences probably wouldn’t take Grodd seriously and just moan that Captain Cold is a Mr. Freeze rip-off (which is just a sad fact…). The villain just has be big, not personally involved like Professor Zoom is, because a movie with Bart is ultimately about Flash teaching Impulse how to be responsible with his powers.
You’re probably going too big for the Green Lantern movie. I’d keep it tighter — Hal gets the ring, of course. Sinestro shows up to train him and starts preaching to Hal about putting the world in a bottle and using the ring to maintain order on Earth with an iron fist. This lets us showcase the rings against military hardware and provides a more believable in for the ring’s weakness — government scientists, trying to figure out how to wrest control of the planet back from the “invaders” do science and blah blah blah disruptive properties of certain wavelengths. Hal, being intimidated by the ring’s power, goes along with Sinestro until primary love interest confronts him about the kind of person he’s becoming and the world he’s helping to build and blah blah blah “this isn’t him.” (Maybe to add to this effect, have Sinestro chew Hal out for being “silly” with the ring and use only practical ring forms, so it’s a big expression of rebellion when Hal busts out the lawn mowers and Bea Arthurs.) Hal confronts Sinestro just as scientist big-wigs (who have studying Abin Sur every since his crash) reveal that OMG he was murdered by Sinestro. This sparks be awesome endcap lantern fight, initially with the government helping using yellow lasers or whatever, Sinestro gets a turn around and starts to win, and then finally Hal is contacted by Oa and properly recharges his ring and turns his willpower on Sinestro blah blah blah victory. Then, as the government peoples are debating what to do with Sinestro, they receive a signal from space and ZOMG there’s a Green Lantern Corps?!
That’s how I’d do it, anyway.
Fortunately, a Doom Patrol movie practically writes itself. [/sarcasm]
That Flash Movie pitch
Perfect baby, Perfect
I think Mirror Master should be Flash’s first cinematic enemy and also that Sam Raimi should direct. He always does well with mirrors in his films.
“Applying this to a Flash movie allows us to use the strongest element of the Flash concepts, namely the heroic legacy model”
If this is the strongest element of the Flash concept, then his race is well and truly over, isn’t it?
//\Oo/\\
That’s more or less how I would make a Flash movie, except I would have Wally as the star.
But I’m one of those anti-Barry people.
karellan: think of Kilowog as a bit of a Little John character, and Tomar Re as an ‘elder statesman’ sort (there’s more to the characters, of course), but let’s just say that a TON of the alien Green Lanterns server very broad stereotypes that people will identify very easily.
That would be the least of your problems with this movie. 🙂
This is soooo last year.
Green Lantern: Here.
Flash: Here.
and how about Aquaman: Here.
And I did trilogies.
So there.
*sob*
So, who would you cast as Hal and the three Flashes?
Hang on, I just came up with a suggestion of my own, for the Flash flick:
Jay — Dennis Quaid
Barry — Gary Sinise
Wally — Ryan Reynolds
I can’t imagine either a Green Lantern or a Flash movie ever working. The Flash TV show (which I watched religiously) barely worked. He’s a guy. Who runs fast. Meh. Honestly, I think time has passed by the entire concept of a speedster. In a world where we can instantaniously chat with several different people from several different continents a guy who can run fast is just not that impressive.
IMO, DC needs to do more than relaunch the character, they need to majorly and permanently overhaul him.
As for Green Lantern, between the alien names and the flying in space without a ship I think you’re looking at a concept that is too far removed from every day life. Shows like BSG work because, no matter that they’re supposedly in a ship millions of light years away, the human condition remains the same. If you pile alien upon alien into the cast and then set the thing in shipless space there’s nothing for joe-blow movie watcher to relate to.
Hell. I’ve been a comics fan since I was 5 and for almost 4 decades and there’s nothing there that *I* can relate to.
*sigh* I wish WB hadn’t put a moratorium on female lead movies because Wonder Woman would have been a workable concept.
Martian Manhunter, IMO, is a workable concept, even though he doesn’t have the face recognition of some of the other film heroes (like ANTMAN has face recognition?!?!)
Get rid of the pastel colored “costume” and Metamorpho is a great workable concept.
However, I think that DC would do *best* to start developing some of their Vertigo titles to the big screen.
Arturo: I would pay to see Ryan Reynolds read the phonebook.
Actually, considering most his work, I already have.
MGK: I’m not a big Thor fan either. I like the Ultimates version of the character, but whenever they use the actual Asgardian version, I tend to get bored. If I want to see mythological warriors battling it out, I’ll just watch those Lou Ferrigno Hercules movies. 🙂
MDK: When you say “That would be the least of your problems,” you aren’t kidding. I know very little about Green Lantern other than his ring needs to be recharged in a big green lantern, and his weakness is yellow. Everything else I’ve picked up from the few Justice League cartoons I’ve seen (and trust me, it’s not many at all). I guess I knew Sinestro was the evil Green Lantern too. That’s about it.
Arturo: For Hal: Ben Browder or Josh Holloway. For Jay: Harrison Ford or yes, Dennis Quaid. For Barry: Matthew Fox or Michael Rosenbaum. For Wally: Jensen Ackles or Vincent Kartheiser.
MGK: Ah, more of a Kid Flash version of Wally, I see. As a Whedonite, I’m pro-Kartheiser, of course.
Lady Peyton: Not a fan of Just Friends, I take it?
The thing you could do to Jazz up the Flash is take advantage of the big budget special effects we have now that the television series didn’t have the opportunity to even look at and reject for cost issues. Clark Kent on Smallville does a better Flash than the Flash on the old show did.
Seriously. Bullet-time the hell out of it. You could have one Flash super-speeding people out of a building while the other two super-speed dismantle a missile launched at the building. There’s totally ways to do way more.
I really do prefer a trilogy for Green Lantern. And say what you will, I like the yellow impurity and if you leave out the part where Hal goes crazy for no apparent reason and then later it turns out to be Parallax, I think it’ll be just fine.
I used to watch the Flash TV show too (despite my previously mentioned bias towards Marvel). The coolest special effect in that show was one scene where some guy figured out who he was and barged into his apartment while he was standing there drinking a glass of orange juice. The guy tossed a grenade on the floor between them to coax him into using his speed and blowing his cover. The Flash dropped his orange juice, picked up the grenade, picked up the pin, put the pin back in the grenade, and grabbed his orange juice before it fell, and didn’t spill a drop. That was a cool scene even without bullet time. With today’s special effects, it could be totally sweet.
You know what might make the Flash idea even better? It turns out that ALL the lightning bolts that grant Flashes their power are old iterations of the Flash. It’s not real lightning at all, though it looks like it — it’s a hero’s bequest to someone else before he shuffles off the mortal coil. Jay’s dead, having passed his gifts on to Barry, and Wally’s powerless for most of the movie (getting by with speed-related gadgets in true sidekick fashion) until his mentor’s sacrifice. So yeah, Barry dies, but the Flash lives forever.
Obviously, any Flash is going to include some scenes with throw-away villains just to showcase that the Flash is awesome. And a natural extension of this dictates that Mark Hammil cameo briefly as the Trickster. But who does The Piper and Captain Boomerang?
I think I got an erection just reading your description of the Green Lantern movie.
Hollywood needs to hire your ass.
Ben Browder? You’re dead to me.
“Whoops, Sinestro finds them on Korugar and Hal Jordan uses WILLPOWER to get his ring back and they have a ring-fight which is AWESOME and Hal knocks Sinestro for a loop long enough…”
I think I saw this scene in Dark City and it was decidedly not awesome.
RAAAAAAA
RAAAARRRR
ARRRRRRRR
AAAAAHHHHHHGGGH
**WATER TOWER FATALITY**
I don’t know, Dark City was pretty awesome.
and I definitely agree with ladypeyton that DC should really focus on their Vertigo titles. So far I’ve only seen a bastardized version of Hellblazer (although the actual comic, which I haven’t read in a number of years, was far too british for an American audience). I recommend:
PREACHER (should be mad einto an HBO show…this year?)
THE LOSERS(Peter Berg directed, no date set yet, ideally several movies)
Y: THE LAST MAN (high hopes, but needs to be a few movies. I have it mapped out in my head).
HUMAN TARGET
SHADE: the Changing Man
EX MACHINA (fits neatly into the Superhero-movie-that-isnt-really-about-superheroes genre that someone suggested about thor in the other post’s comments)
Either that or actually get their act together as far as film, because right now Marvel is kicking their ass (if it works as planned, we’ll be getting a movie with Robert Downey Junior, Edward Norton, and probably Nick fury. With that cast, I barely care if there are superheroes).
Small nitpick with Sage: Ex Machina is Wildstorm. Both are run by DC, so it’s a non-issue, just saying.
There was once a Sandman movie in the works. But the whole project fell apart because a certain producer was adamant that at some point, Morpheus had to fistfight a mechanical spider.
what I do love is that the film rights to all of these are immediately purchased. I mean, a THE BOYS movie is already in devlopment (well, kind of), despite it being planned for 60+ issues and it being right now on 17. The film rights to Ex Machina, the lsoers, and Y are all scooped up, which means they just sit there.
And as far as wildstorm, I just ignored that detail because then I would have had to type up a lot more Wildstorm titles, including what I want made into a movie more than anything: MIDNIGHTER.
Come to think of it, why IS Vaughan’s Ex Machina with Wildstorm? I mean, isn’t Vertigo creator-owned? just a thought.
Dark City was pretty good. The Epic Battle of Grimacing was pretty lame.
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a Marvel fanboy or what, but neither movie sounds very good to me. Just the names “Korugar,” “Tomar Re” and “Kilowog” make me not want to see your Green Lantern movie.
Could you repeat that, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of NORRIN RADD GENIS-VELL QUASAR RONAN and DRAX THE DESTROYER.
You’re probably going too big for the Green Lantern movie. I’d keep it tighter — Hal gets the ring, of course. Sinestro shows up to train him and starts preaching to Hal about putting the world in a bottle and using the ring to maintain order on Earth with an iron fist. This lets us showcase the rings against military hardware and provides a more believable in for the ring’s weakness — government scientists, trying to figure out how to wrest control of the planet back from the “invaders” do science and blah blah blah disruptive properties of certain wavelengths. Hal, being intimidated by the ring’s power, goes along with Sinestro until primary love interest confronts him about the kind of person he’s becoming and the world he’s helping to build and blah blah blah “this isn’t him.” (Maybe to add to this effect, have Sinestro chew Hal out for being “silly” with the ring and use only practical ring forms, so it’s a big expression of rebellion when Hal busts out the lawn mowers and Bea Arthurs.) Hal confronts Sinestro just as scientist big-wigs (who have studying Abin Sur every since his crash) reveal that OMG he was murdered by Sinestro. This sparks be awesome endcap lantern fight, initially with the government helping using yellow lasers or whatever, Sinestro gets a turn around and starts to win, and then finally Hal is contacted by Oa and properly recharges his ring and turns his willpower on Sinestro blah blah blah victory. Then, as the government peoples are debating what to do with Sinestro, they receive a signal from space and ZOMG there’s a Green Lantern Corps?!
That’s how I’d do it, anyway.
Tell the truth: You’re secretly Ang Lee, aren’t you?
I can’t imagine either a Green Lantern or a Flash movie ever working. The Flash TV show (which I watched religiously) barely worked. He’s a guy. Who runs fast. Meh. Honestly, I think time has passed by the entire concept of a speedster. In a world where we can instantaniously chat with several different people from several different continents a guy who can run fast is just not that impressive.
If by “not that impressive” you mean “the living, breathing metaphor for our modern world,” then yes. A world where villains can coordinate their schemes instantaneously on several different continents a speedster is possibly the single most culturally relevant superhero concept going today.
Dan:
You take that back! And thank you.
Man, if I was Ang Lee, I would totally push a Starman movie. Just to hear the NERD RAGE echo o’er the internets.
I think my favourite Flash stories are the ones where the main focus is on the villains. Flash has a really good gallery of enemies. It would be better if you just made the story in Central City, separate from all the other heroes and villains, and wrote some plot about several of the better villains (say, Captain Cold, Mirror Master, the Pied Piper, the Weather Wizard, Captain Boomerang, and maybe Trickster or The Top) making plans to get ahead that keep being frustrated by short, dazzling encounters with the Flash.
As for Green Lantern, I couldn’t buy any story that had the original yellow object power limitation. That was probably the dumbest weakness in the history of comics. I liked the Justice League cartoon Green Lantern so much better, partly because he’s a more interesting guy, but mainly because you don’t have a tortured “oh my god, he’s using/wearing something yellow, so I can’t affect him!” crisis in every appearance.
I remember one issue that started with the death of a Green Lantern. We didn’t know it wasn’t our Green Lantern until a couple of pages into it, which was the cheap selling point of the issue. Anyway, all the villain did is show up, draw a pistol, and shoot the alien Green Lantern with a yellow beam weapon, which effortlessly pierced the Lantern’s shield and instantly killed him. Then the villain left without a word. Simple and to the point. Always wondered why that never happened to Hal. Hell, you could even do it with earth technology. Just use yellow painted bullets, or gold bullets, or whatever. Totally dumb weakness.
Von Rex: It seems to’ve been ret-conned into a representation of fear, so that a sufficiently skilled Lantern’s only weakness now might just be running out of energy. Though this is coming from a guy whose only Lantern reading recently is the Sinestro Corps War, and before that just the run of Rayner issues from 100(?) to Winick taking over.
Sage: I must second the Midnighter movie being potentially awesome. If they find the right story (I’m fond of the Ennis and Vaughn issue(s) of his title), the public may find itself surprised to love the adventures of a badass gay combat computer. Hell, people would see The Authority just for the ultra-violent-political-JLA-parody-with-Batman-and-Superman-married aspect.
I remember one issue of midnighter where a villain picks up a car and throws it at him. so he jumps through the windshield, out the back windshield, and punches his face of his head. That pretty much has to be in there. And honestly, I would love to see garth Ennis screenwrite ANYTHING.
And Mirror Master is by far the coolest flash villain, he’s got my vote for chief.
If you want to retcon Jay’s origin a little, how about the chemicals that made him the Flash were the same as Barry and Wally’s. Except Jay’s was an intentional experiment and injected into his veins, while Barry and Wally were absorbed through the skin with an electircal supercharge.
As for the GL movie my concept is Sinestro has already gone bad and has recruited/created an army of Manhunters. Abin Sur is in a ship to avoid detection as the GLC is having trouble and is attacked by the Manhunters. He crashes to Earth and finds Hal. Hal has to fend off two Manhunters with yellow weapons as soon as he gets the ring(when the Manhunters create two yellow forcefields that surround them on all sides and Hal finds out it won’t work he immediately yells “then go under the damn things!” and two missles bury themselves in the ground and emerge inside the field) Sur is still not quite dead and is impressed with how quickly Hal figured it out.
We then cut to Oa where the Guardians send some Lanterns to find Abin Sur and Sinestro does the same with his Manhunters. As for why I think in this version Sinestro has a Yellow Lantern he needs to recharge just like the GL’s have Green ones and Sur managed to steal it in a battle that left many Green Lantern’s dead.
Of course I’d be to tempted to toss in other GL’s to prevent it. In this Ferris Air is just one company in Ferris Industries. An architect named John Stewart has designed their new headquarters and an artist named Kyle Rayner. As for Guy he could portray his tough guy character by being a bodyguard for a Ferris official. Or he could be a teacher calming down kids as a bus hangs off a bridge while GL tries to save them.(Incidentally my Hal is smart enough to know you save the bus by grabbing the non-yellow parts.
If by “not that impressive” you mean “the living, breathing metaphor for our modern world,” then yes. A world where villains can coordinate their schemes instantaneously on several different continents a speedster is possibly the single most culturally relevant superhero concept going today.
Honestly, I’m not that convinced. I’m trying to picture how that would be presented cinematically and it still comes off as kind of lame. However, if Josh Holloway was cast in the role I’d see it 6 times and buy the DVD.
How about a GL movie with Kyle? Think of it this way…you’d save a few million from not using CGI dogfighting footage.
The prologue: Ganthet does the voiceover as we zoom in on Oa from space, zipping through the landmarks before going in on the Book Of Oa and the story of Kyle Rayner.
Kyle’s a freelance artist who moves to New York for a job, but things turn sour quickly. He loses his gig when his would-be employers find somebody better at the last second, and he gets into a fight at a club. He’s not a schlub…he’s just having a bad day. As he gets thrown into the alley by the bouncer, he staggers around…and almost gets killed by a dying Abin Sur, who crash lands nearby. Before Kyle can truly have the realization that he’s seeing an alien, Abin gives him the ring and battery, then passes away.
Over the next few days, Kyle finds out that the ring can create stuff out of energy from the battery. He doesn’t get too nuts with it at first, but then he foils a bank robbery without anybody realizing it. He’s not thinking about becoming a hero like that fella in Metropolis…but then along comes Sinestro, who was Abin’s partner. He teaches Kyle how to truly use the ring, but Kyle starts wondering about his instructor. The turning point comes when an alien comes to Earth to confront Kyle and Sin. In the battle, Kyle refuses to kill the bird-like creature calling itself Tomar-Re. Sinestro shows his true colors, overwhelms Kyle, drains his ring charge and leaves him to die in Earth’s orbit.
When Kyle awakens, he staggers about and finds himself on a weird world — Oa — surrounded by aliens. At this point, Ganthet comes in to give Kyle the skinny on the Corps, and how Sinestro had gone rogue, murdering GLs who attempted to retrieve his ring. Kyle meets the usual cast of Lanterns and gets real lessons from GLs past and present canon. But then there’s an attack from Sinestro and his own corps of baddies on Oa…turns out Sin’s looking to find a way to create his own rings so that he can impose order on the universe. In the end, Kyle and a batch of GLs fly to Korugar, there’s a huge fight, and Kyle actually beats one of the greatest Lanterns of all time using good ol’-fashioned human gumption. Kinda like “In Brightest Day” from Superman, only on a grander scale. The Guardians exile Sinestro to the antimatter universe, the GLs celebrate, and Earth finds a new hero in Kyle Rayner.
And the epilogue: a scarred and battered Sinestro crawls in the wastelands/desert of Qward…and he runs into a pair of legs. A hand comes down to offer him a ring…a yellow ring. Sin concentrates hard, and an image of Kyle appears in yellow light, then it shatters. Cue the maniacal laughter and fade to black.
What do you think, MGK? Would fanboys sprout wood from my idea?
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