Hope for Green Lantern?

Yes, the CGI looks like shit. I think at this point it's an accepted fact at this point that this, like The Incredible Hulk, was rushed out and will enter theaters looking unpolished at best. In this era of CGI over-saturation that happens more than it should, but hey, what're ya gonna do?

Nonetheless, this clip gives me hope, mainly because it seems that the film is getting a lot of the important stuff right. For one thing, it's well-shot, bad CGI not withstanding. You can clearly see everything that's happening, which shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. The shots are steady and at a good distance, the editing is natural and un-intrusive. Even in the good action movies these days, I'm sick of wanting to reach out and steady the damn camera myself. Not really surprising in retrospect. Martin Campbell did direct three of my favorite action films of the last few decades (GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro, and Casino Royale).

But the thing that really excites me is that it actually feels like the way a Green Lantern fight scene should. If you've ever read the Green Lantern comics, you've probably given yourself a headache trying to picture any of it playing out in live action. Every other panel the rings produce a different shape or item. Even the Justice League animated series struggled with this, which is why they gave Jon Stewart a more no-nonsense tough guy attitude, not prone to complicated and elaborate constructs. Mostly he just used the ring to fly, shoot lasers and erect force fields. Later in the series he would flex his creative muscles and give us the occasional giant drill or set of fists, but that was about it.

Compare that to this. In the space of less than a minute, Hal Jordan pulls out no less than four different constructs. Jon Stewart would've just blocked the flaming Parallax lugie with a force field, threw the truck with a simple tractor beam, then shot it with a laser blast. Not Hal. Catapults, springs, gun turrets, that's the way a Green Lantern handles things. This shows a real grasp of and respect for the source material. Fingers crossed folks. This could be a good one.