Let´s face it, the hype for the Green Lantern movie, up until this point, was kind of underwhelming. The first trailer was released November last year, actually earlier than footage from ‘Thor’ or ‘Captain America:The First Avenger’. But, while trailer for those movies were received with praise and enthusiasm by fans, the GL one had a mixed reception. Mostly, people were dismissing the CGI, although at that point many FX shots were not 100% finished. It also had a tone problem, relying too much on Ryan Reynolds doing comedic stuff, maybe trying to capitalize on the success of Robert Downey Jr. humorous touch to Tony Stark.
Even though there was praise for the Thor and Cap stuff, there was a sense that we still hadn´t seen a new CBM franchise that was a clear frontrunner to be a champ of the summer, like TDK, Iron Man, the Spider-Man movies, and so forth. It clearly felt like Transformers: Dark Of The Moon was going to walk away with it, but that´s because it´s a known quantity, an already established and successful franchise – in spite of its pretty poor storytelling, but that´s another story… You still didn´t have that movie that, beyond the expected comic book fanbase, had the potential to blow people´s minds, to make them go, “I GOTTA see this on a big movie screen!”
Then, the Wondercon footage showed up. Some people, of course – particularly fanboys of Marvel, or other franchises – will still nitpick some FX, or other aspects. But what it offered was an amazing world of awesome alien heroes, fascinating landscapes, and a threat of cosmic proportions. It has an epic scale and a grand tone that no other superhero movie has, and few other movies can offer. One of the secrets of a major blockbuster, along with a compelling story, characters, etc., is to offer audiences something they´ve never seen before, something they didn´t believe they would actually see in a movie. In that aspect, GL is ahead of the pack, hands down.
A similar thing happened to a little movie called ‘Avatar’. When footage for the movie was initially released, there was talk that “king of the world” Jim Cameron had a guaranteed bomb in his hands, people complained about how the CGI sucked, and whatnot.bBut then the later, more polished stuff arrived, and the hype started to change very significantly, till the movie became a phenomen. We can argue about decades over the storytelling flaws of ´Avatar’, and no, I´m not saying GL will be the new ‘Avatar’ box office-wise, necessarily, but it´s a good example of how hype for a movie can turn around a lot, and fast, once you get a glimpse of what the final product will actually look like, particularly in this day and age where so much of a movie gets done in post-production.
I´m very optimistic and confident that ‘Thor’ and ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ will be great superhero movies, and successful at the box office. ‘X-Men: First Class’, not quite so much yet. Which will be the best, which will be the most successful? To some extent those questions are always a mystery that only the Gods of cinema know for sure. But looking at the available stuff right now, ‘Green Lantern’ shows the potential to be one of the major champions of this summer, maybe even THE champion.