I have been noticing an awful lot of Green Lantern hate in the comments lately as well as on twitter. It seems to stem from a combination of disappointment in the trailer, and the fact that we are not seeing continual images, interviews, posters, or new trailers (ala Thor and Cap). Now the haters and the skeptics will tell you that this is because the movie sucks and the studio knows it. They read comments from Blake Lively's agent (yes, people actually believe hollywood agents) and other forums, focus on some ill received one liners in the trailer, and are either becoming worried about the movie, or downright think the studio is hiding it because it is so bad.
Now most of this comes from people who are just super Marvel fans and don't like DC. These are the people I refer to as the haters. They will never be convinced that the movie will be better then their precious Marvel movies, no matter how good the next trailer looks. To be sure that these haters exist on both sides of the Marvel/DC isle, and there minds cannot be changed no matter what. Then there are people who look at all of this stuff and make a logical assumption that maybe its not as good as they'd hoped. These are the people I call skeptics. Their position, I believe, is also fueled by frustration with the lack of images posters etc....And I further believe that they are frustrated because we as comicbook fans have come to expect this type of marketing for a comicbook movie.
And herein lies what I believe is the central issue here. Warner Brothers is not marketing this movie as a comicbook movie, and not directing their efforts to comicbook fans. It is becoming clear that they are treating this as a regular old big budget sci-fi summer blockbuster. More, Avatar or Transformers, if you will, as opposed to Kick-Ass or Watchmen. That means heavy ad blitzing right before the movie comes out to placate the short attention spans of the summer movie going audience.
And when you think about it, that makes more sense with GL. This is a character, perhaps more than any other, that lends itself to mainstream promotion. It is a straight up space/alien adventure. As one reader constantly puts it "the star wars of comicbooks". (shout out to Lee777). It has aliens, spaceships, and special effects galore. That has much more of a broad appeal than say, a World War II movie, or a mythological movie about viking gods. You see, no matter how much you love Cap and Thor, they are a much harder sell to a broader audience. Which is why Marvel is putting so much effort into getting out the comicbook audience by releasing all their images, interviews, and trailers so early. They need to build up the hype so that the comic readers will be dying to see the movie, and might possibly, over several months, convince some of their non comicbook readers to go see it. This is not a put down, its actually very smart marketing. These are movies that appeal to a specific demographic with no big name stars in the leads, and will have a hard time appealing to a mainstream audience. Just look at The Incredible Hulk. A good movie, but did not perform all that well at the box-office because it mainly appeals to comicbook fans. Now I believe Cap and Thor suffer from this same problem, and are more like, and will perform at the box-office more like, TIH than say Iron Man. (Which is actually more like GL in tone and its appeal to general audiences.)
Now compare that to GL, who has a much broader appeal due to the source material (again space opera) and a lead actor who is red hot right now, well liked by the general audience, and specifically can draw in the ladies. Based on all of this, Warner Brothers has decided to market this movie like any other blockbuster. Which means heavy promotion in the month and weeks leading up to its release, not a slow build in order to generate buzz and excitement amongst it's rabid fan base.
Take a movie like Avatar, nobody even knew what the blue monkeys looked liked until basically the movie came out. No images, no teaser trailers, just a standard trailer about a month before the movie then heavy marketing blitz on t.v., talk shows etc....Like it or not, that is the route WB has chosen to take with GL. Its the same route they took with The Dark Knight and Superman Returns. (yes TDK had some weird viral campaigns but no real photos or trailers till right before release). They want mainstream Avatar money, not dedicated TIH/Watchmen/Kick-ass fan money.
Now I'm sure the haters will say that this just proves that Marvel cares more about the fans than DC. And that may be a fair point, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily good. After all this is a business, and the bottom line is box-office. And comicbook fans alone don't equal box-office (Kick-Ass, Watchmen, The Incredible Hulk). There will be no sequel to TIH because of its poor performance, which is disappointing to all of us. Warner Bros. knows this and wants GL as a franchise for years to come. As a result it has focused its marketing on profit (thats why you see all the merchandise photos) and will spend its movie advertising like all other studios, heavy last minute saturation to placate the short attention spans of the general public. That doesn't mean in anyway that the movie will be bad, just that they are playing it safe and attempting to get as much profit as possible so that we can enjoy GL movies for many years to come.
But then again who knows,...........maybe the movie sucks.
The battle will continue :)
This ones for Lee77