Green: The No Fun Color!

I wasn’t able to watch the Green Lantern movie until the Tuesday after its initial opening weekend. By then I was aware of the negative reviews, but I was still determined to watch a movie based on my favorite childhood super-hero. Yet something surprising happened to me during the movie --

I began to enjoy it!

Good movie critics explain their reasoning behind why they may like or dislike a movie. Most of the negative reasons are valid (honest!), but they left out one thing I got of Green Lantern: fun!

There was extensive negative press during the filming of Green Lantern and I can’t help but think that the negativity flowed into the reviews. I remember having such low expectations for the first X-Men movie eleven years ago that I was stunned when the movie exceeded them. Now I wonder if expectations are too high.

I was especially surprised at the criticism of the story itself. If critics can embrace the epic (Green Lantern defending Earth against the Fear-Mongering Parallax), why couldn’t they embrace the cornball (The very funny subversion of the super-hero secret identity)? And no one should have problems with the theme of overcoming fear (even the fear of showing fear).

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Sometimes it just turns out that way, but I don’t see it in Green Lantern. And they are making a sequel whether you want to see it or not. Then maybe more people can ignore the bad press and see how fun the movie can be on its own terms!

The Process: Gigi Gutierrez, Attack Angel

(Note: the first of a series giving homage to the process of creating a new twist to an old story.)

Pretty Vacant: Final Repose has the main character Gigi being helplessly plastinated as the body mold for department store mannequins offered by an evil corporation before somehow breaking free to kick major butt! Just when things look bleakest, Gigi's perilous situation is reversed for her to gain the upper hand.

Gigi’s storyline mirrors the Julie character in the “Charlie’s Angels” episode Attack Angels. Thirty years ago this month Attack Angels debuted on television and now is an ideal time to pay our respects!

Charlie’s top three detectives Kelly, Kris and Julie are hired to find out who is trying to takeover/kill the board of Western Techtronics. Kelly and Kris go undercover as junior executives at WT, while Julie is sent to investigate Reardon and Co, a temp firm that loans out temporary secretaries to WT.

It turns out the Reardon hypnotizes their assistants and uses them as secretarial killers-for-hire. Using standardized employee skills tests like typing and light hypnotic indoctrination, Julie is turned into a robotic assassin! Julie attacks Steve Briggs (head of WT), but is stopped after a fierce struggle with Kelly and Kris. Realizing what happened, Julie is quickly deprogrammed and the three detectives turn the tables on Reardon.

Julie looks completely helpless for much of the episode, but proceeds to beat up everyone: bad guys (Reardon), neutral guys (Briggs), even good girls (Kelly)!

Gigi has that same resilience in Pretty Vacant. The Still Life corporation has smarts, money and science over Gigi, but she is tough enough to take whatever they throw at her and make them pay for what they did! You can cue the “Charlie’s Angels” theme now…