Since it's release on June 17, the film adaptation of DC superhero Green Lantern has divided the fan community. Many very vocal viewers have hated the film. Many have loved it. A sizable majority have walked away with mixed feelings. One thing, however, seems obvious, the film was a major misstep in Warner Brothers plan to launch a fleet of superhero films the way that DC's competitor Marvel Comics has.
The question is why?
What went wrong? Why has a film that seems to calculated to make big box office dollars divided fan community in a way that Marvels films (at least the ones Marvel has had creative control over) generally haven't? DC comic has been a subsidiary of Warner Brothers since around 1969 so in house creative control shouldn't have been a problem, should it?
What follows isn't going to be a review of Green Lantern, it's going to be a genuine analysis as to the creative decisions that have led Green Lantern to make it perform well under studio expectations, and how Warner could have done things differently and not left themselves a hundred million dollars in the red on a movie that should have been a success:
1) One thing that Marvel Entertainment has done exceedingly well with it's Avengers properties, and was very fortunate to have done on it's Spider-Man and X-Men film series (excluding the Wolverine film), was that they have largely been able to hire creative and well regarded film makers to helm their properties who have has a genuine vision for the film they were about to make. These were nor typically writers and directors for hire, they were people with a passion for the character, as well as a knoweledge and talent for film making that led fans to believe the film was in good hands as soon as a director was announced.
With the X-Men film series, 20th Century Fox hired director Bryan Singer who saw passed the title characters to the larger theme of discrimination within the series. Singer turned what could have been a cheesy film full of over-the-top fight sequences into what many viewed as an allegory for homosexuality (the "coming out" scene in the second film was a bit on the nose making the allegory obvious to just about everyone). The film dealt with issues of fear and ostracization. We got some emotional depth from it's characters as the grew and changed. Elements of the comic book were altered and/or dropped in order to play to the films themes, which loyal readers recognized as reoccurring themes from the comics.
In their in house produced film Iron Man, writer/director Jon Favreau took the film and structured it as a character piece. The film is not as much about a superhero in an armored super suit as it is about a genius playboy who realizes that there is more to the world than wine, women and song. We follow and believe in the main characters emotional journey into a man taking responsibility for his actions, and trying to make up to the world all of the ills he has brought to it. Favreau also took the extra step in crafting the piece with the truely inspired casting of Robert Downey Jr., an actor who just a few years before the films release was virtually blacklisted in Hollywood for the type of irresponsible behavior that Tony Stark relished in during the films first act.
With the Green Lantern film, the script went through four separate writers, three of whom are also given story credit. While it's certainly not unheard of for multiple writers to handle a script, and still have it come out as a solid clear film (the above mentioned X-men script has numerous drafts, such as an early draft by current Avengers writer/director Joss Whedon), putting four separate writers on a script can often indicate that the studio continued to ask for revisions because the film was not meeting criteria that it had in mind such as toy tie-ins (a famous example of this involved Kevin Smith's doomed Superman film, where executives... Warner Bros. executives, nonetheless.... asked him to have Superman fight a giant spider, because it would make a great toy). The fact reports indicate that the first draft was done by two writers, while a third writer also received story credit, also indicated that at least one of the rewrites was pretty major, changing the direction of the story enough to warrant the extra credit.
If a film has a smaller set of writers who have a clear vision for the film, a great example are Christopher Nolan's Batman films where the same three writers will have written all three parts of the trilogy, then the direction and core of the film will be much clearer, especially if the writers have a strong relationship and good communication with the director. When additional writers are hired on to a project that's already being pushed through the studio system, they are often given little time in which to implement major changes, changes that often leave themes and character arcs from the initial draft dangling and unfulfilled. This is often why in a film, characters will set up an important item, or recall an event from their past, and then it is never brought up again.
The last of these examples actually happens within Green Lantern. Hal Jordan recalls the death of his father (an event with long lasting impact on the character in the comic books) and it impacts him in an early scene, however his fathers death, and it's affect on him is never mentioned again once Jordan joins the Lantern Corps. This strongly indicates that the film was not the subject of a strong vision, but was instead the product of studio group think that paired the film down to what executives felt were the important elements, and left what the did not sitting on either the writing or cutting room floor.
Because the final film reflects this group think, audiences (and it obviously angry reviewers) seemed unable to grab on to the film emotionally, and were instead asked to sit back and simply enjoy the films visuals.
Why did Warner Bros., after the success of Christopher Nolans's Batman films, which were all appear to be relatively hands off films, return to the studio group think mentality that helped doom it's 90's attempt at relaunching Superman? Likely it's Warner's desire to launch a new franchise. With Harry Potter set to wrap up in a few weeks, and the final Nolan Batman film scheduled for next summer, Warner Bros. are looking at a future without a bankable franchise. This gloomy perspective probably led WB executives to try to produce a "calculated hit", which caused them to try to make a film that would appeal to the lowest common demoninator.
We'll come back to the notion of needing a franchise a few times, but for now, let's move on.
2) With Marvels franchises, and even with it's own successful Batman series, the films were helmed by directors who, not only loved the characters, but had prior experience with the type of film they were going to make. No, this doesn't mean that Jon Favreau had directed a superhero film before Iron Man, or that Kenneth Branaugh had done one before Iron Man. However, both directors had experience with films that shared similar themes and ideas, but minus the super powers.
Jon Favreau first came to the publics attention with the comedy film Swingers, which followed a group of 20-something men, one of whom just got out of a long term relationship and his friends who are trying to get him back into the swing of life on his own, and outside his old comfort zone. On the surface, the film is very different than a story about a billionaire with super technology, but at it's core it's really dealing with male pathos and men realizing that they need to move out of the shadow of their failings and reclaim their lives for themselves. Both films have a snarky sense of humor, and handle even their most dramatic scenes with a light touch.
Branaugh is best know for his Shakespeare films. These are films that often deal with kings, queens, princes and soldiers who bear the weight of world on their shoulders. In Henry V, which Branaugh both directed and stared in, the title character is a king who, before the events of the film, had rejected his throne to run around with brigands, until he is changed by his experiences and assumes his role. This is not all that different to the arc given to the title character of Thor, who is irresponsible in his actions and cast out from his home, until he too is changed by the world he experiences and realizes he must return to his home and assume the role he is destined for. Branaugh himself said in several interviews that he was approaching the film as it related to his Shakespearean work (what with kings and their duplicitous children trying to take control of the throne).
However, on the current Green Lantern film, DC hired well regarded director Martin Campbell. The problem with this choice is that Campbell is most well known for films like Casino Royale, Edge of Darkness and Goldeneye. While initially an observer could point out that these are all films with elaborate action scenes, genuine consideration of these films begs the question what any of them really have with the Green Lantern. At it's heart the Green Lantern property is either a science fiction film dealing with alien worlds and impossible threats, or it is a film about willpower triumphing over all other forces. Neither of these elements seem at all something Campbell has directed well in the past. It must also be considered that Campbells work shows a director who favors practical effects and physical stunts over computer generated or aided scenes. (Compare how Campbell handled the initial chase scene in Casino Royale compared to how Sam Raimi handled the initial chase scene in Spiderman, you'll notice an abundance of GC in Raimi's work and none in Campbells) and yet this was a film that was destined from the start t be dominated by computer effects and feature very little in terms of practical stunts or effects.
Campbell would have been a fine choice to help a follow up to The Dark Knight Rises, if Warner wanted a fourth film and Christopher Nolan declined to return, because the film series fits his style and themes he's handles well before. However, it seems obvious that Green Lantern, by it's very foundations, was not a film he had any experience handling in any respect.
So why pick Campbell? Perhaps WB intended Campbell to bring a gravitas to this film, or a dark edge, but neither seems to fit with the screenplay that they had him handling. Perhaps they simply wanted a well regarded director to usher in the franchise. Regardless of their reasons, and despite his past success and ability as a director, Campbell seemed an odd and inorganic choice to direct.
3) While WB's previous cinematic superheroes are two of the most well known characters in the world, Green Lantern did not have the benefits of world wide name recognition. Most people who have a passing familiarity with the character have it from various animated versions of the Justice League (to make matters worse, the modern Justice League cartoon features a different Green Lantern from the feature film). To make matters worse, until the 2005 relaunch (which advanced Green Lanterns profile to the point where he has one of DC's top selling books every month) Green Lantern was an "also ran" sort of hero, whose book never had strong sales figures and, for the longest time, shared a book with another green themed superhero.
This by no means meant that Green Lantern was doomed to box office failure. Before the release of the Iron Man film, few in the public had a real grasp on that character past his various brief cartoon appearances, and Thor was even and even more low profile character have never even headlined a cartoon. The solution to this, at least as Marvel approached it, was to make the films marketing focus on the most simple nature of the character, and sell the possible audience on that simple solution. Iron Man was marketed as a playboy in a supersuit. Thor was marketed simply enough as a god.
Green Lantern is, at his simplest, a man with a magic ring that makes his thoughts real.
Instead of this simple sales pitch, DC launches the films marketing campaign around the complex notion of an intergalactic space protectorate. We were given extended looks at the Green Lantern "homeworld" of Oa, as well as pieces of exposition explaining the nature of the Corps. While this may have exhilerated hardcore Green Lantern fans, to people who had never opened the comic book, the explanations of the Corps served to distance the audience from the simple concept of a man with a magic ring.
Yes, the film did feature a ten minute stretch on Oa which featured the protagonist, Hal Jordan, learning the ropes of his new abilities and being given a brief history of the Corps, but this is well after we have seen what the ring can do, and are ready for a more thorough explanation. By offering the explanation of the Green Lantern Corps as a major theme in the promotional campaign, the studio complicated a simple concept that many people could grasp, and presented an element of the film as if it were the core of the film. It would be like someone explaining at length the position of the shrapnel in Tony Starks chest, or the miraculous science of the Arc Reactor in the Iron Man trailers.
Posters emblazoned with various members of the Corps such as Kilowog and Tomar-re complicated matters by making audiences think that the majority of the film would involve these strange looking creatures, instead of conveying that the film was almost entirely about Hal Jordan, with the aliens playing a fairly minor role. While Avatar proves to be a box office blockbuster, audiences have traditionally shied away from films with non-human central characters (and it has been explored in great depth how James Cameron specifically designed the Na'Vi to look appealing to people, unlike members of the Lantern Corps who are designed to simply look alien). It really begs inquiry as to why Warner decided to so prominently feature characters who had so little time in the film in their ad campaign.
4) The most concrete point to why Green Lantern is truely a box office failure is the most obvious- the studio spent far too much on both the film itself and it's promotion.
Public estimates list the actual production costs of Green Lantern as $200 million dollars (up from an initial budget of $150 million) with a domestic promotion cost of $100 million and an international promotion cost of $75 million. For those of you counting at home that's $375 million dollars.
First lets look at the notion that for a film to be considered successful, it generally has to gross at least double it's budget- for this film, you're looking a $750 million dollars. That figure instantly seems out of reach considering both the relatively obscure nature of the hero and the genuine lack of a well known box office draw in it's cast (none of the stars of the film has proven that they can open a film, which is normally a critical factor in big budget films). While The Dark Knight grossed roughly a billion dollars worldwide, it is the exception rather than the rule, and, the exception of only the top grossing superhero films, the genre tends to top out between $400 and $500 million worldwide.
Yet Warner put out a film that would require it to be one of the exceptions in order to be considered a success.
The second point to the budget bring fairly ridiculous, is that not only have all of Green Lanterns fellow superhero films cost less (normally coming in with production budgets around $150 million), but it's $200 million dollar budget is only $37 million dollars less than Avatar (which not only was an hour longer and featured more completely digital shots, but also had to invent most of the technology used to bring the movie to life). How did Green Lantern's budget run so high? How did it cost them so much to render CG what was not even (according to numerous reviews of the film) top tier?
To put things in perspective, the Lord of the Rings films, which featured one of the most memorable and (agreeably) most well rendered CG characters each had a production budget of less than $100 million dollars.
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Now, with those things said, it seems like there were major missteps inside Warner Bros. They ignored the patters of superhero success films by having multiple writers handle the script instead of a single writing team shepherding it through to production, they picked a director who had no comparable films on his resume, they failed to market the film by it's simplest concept and instead chose to advertise a complex plot point, and they allowed the film itself to have a budget that it would be nearly impossible to recoup.
I applaud Warner Bros. for working hard to try and bring their superhero stable to the screen in the same way Marvel has, however I think that they ignored the lessons that Marvels films have taught us about superhero films. They also seemed to forget the lessons they learned when trying to relaunch their Superman franchise in the 90's- forget the merchandising, let a strong writer and director make a strong film and the merchandising will worry about itself. They also (to comment on the final product for a moment) failed to see the maturity that has been rising up in current superhero films (gone is the goofiness of The Shadow and the Phantom... both box office bombs by the way).
There is talk that Warner Bros. still plans to move ahead with a sequel to Green Lantern. Financially, I'm not sure how they can justify it. However, if they do move ahead, I hope that they look at the follies they've made on the first film in terms of production teams, promotion and budget, and use it to make the second film a much stronger more focused endeavor.
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