I had not paid attention to this before…but I realized this week, some of the same people that gave us the Ryan Reynold’s Green Lantern brought us Arrow, Flash, Supergirl. This includes Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim. And I have to say, in some ways it is very obvious.
The film draws heavily on characters from the comics, though sometimes to poor effect. Amanda Waller, for example. She is simply a scientist named Amanda Waller. That is supposed to a cool Easter Egg for fans. But aside from getting her race correct, the film gives us an uninteresting scientist…not the Wall.
Based on the Flash? This would seem mystifying. The Flash does Easter Eggs extremely well. Except, there is also Arrow. Arrow is problematic most of the time. Relying all too much on Flashbacks and a darker tone than appropriate for the Green Arrow…it has gotten by on a likable cast. But from the first season, it was incredibly obvious that the creators of Arrow did not want to make a Green Arrow show, but a Batman show. They just could not get the greenlight for it. The same thing happened on Smallville.
And we see the same problems in 2011’s Green Lantern. There are some great things in the film. Marc Strong’s performance as Sinestro stands out. However, the film was designed to kick off a franchise. And yet, it makes Hal Jordan’s first fight against a universe sized threat. Where do you go from that? Instead of keeping it small, allowing Hal to save the planet, rather save the entire universe right away.
There are no other future Lanterns introduced. I mean, seriously, you want an Easter Egg? Introduce John Stewart in the film(He was cut from the script).
In addition, when this film came out, Marvel was only a year away from the hotly anticipated Avengers. DC and the WB had a very prime opportunity to start building that shared universe they desperately wanted. The script even considered showing Clark Kent in a brief cameo as a candidate for the ring and the film has a sign for Central City. It was cut on the idea of not relying on other heroes. So, we ended up with a closed universe. This could have opened the door and with a better setup than we got from Man of Steel.
I was disappointed, in the end, with Green Lantern because it falls short all to easily. Seeing what Berlanti and Guggenheim have pulled off on the Flash makes me wonder how much involvement they had in the final product.
Tripping Through Gateways 