Green Lantern — How to Fail at Iron Man | Anatomy Of A Failure

[Music] wow [Applause] [Music] in 2011 dc and warner brothers released their new cinematic universe beginning superhero blockbuster green lantern which became a massive overnight success it was adored by critics and fans everywhere it earned record-breaking billions at the box office it launched the new dc cinematic universe into stardom in such a powerful way that the whole of mcu was reduced to dust before it even fully began oh wait sorry wrong alternate dimension yeah it was pretty for real though the interesting thing about green lantern is that it really was intended and billed as the dc equivalent of 2008's iron man in more ways than one both of them were comedic solo films about a lesser known character in their respective franchise rosters both of them were meant to begin wider cinematic universes both of them starred funny fast-talking actors as arrogant good-looking funny fast-talking fly boys now stay right there and look real pretty you ever lose an hour of sleep your whole life be prepared to lose a few with you but intention is where the equivalence is stopped because the actual results are the exact opposite iron man became a global fan favorite character as well as an amazing widely enjoyed movie that still for me at least ranks as the second strongest entry in the mcu whereas green lantern the movie and character was instantly forgotten by pretty much everyone except green lantern himself why did i agree to this [Music] and the question then is huh if both of these movies were meant and built as the same thing why did green lantern fail to become a hit like iron man what's the difference between them well to be honest i'm sure you could spend all day listing them out individually for example green lantern by default is a much more difficult film to make because it features such a massive amount of complex necessary backstory which of course means that there's gonna be a lot of this in order to be chosen by the ring it was said one must be without fear muscles and individual muscle fiber assumed by the yellow power of fear the guardian became your will turns thought into reality just a gravitational pull of your average son i don't need to tell you who we are let's say that the most central source of all the problems with green lantern and the differences it has to the first iron man comes down to just one thing the characters themselves tony stark is what made iron man work hal jordan is what made green lantern fail and so let's dig deeper into that let's compare hal jordan to tony stark and examine the main differences between them in terms of who they are what they do and who they do it with and against in order to pinpoint the most central problems born out of them here's how not to iron man [Music] the first major problematic difference with hal jordan compared to tony stark is that he never earns our respect in terms of the thing he is given and therefore never receives our support at the beginning of iron man there's a very likely chance we dislike tony stark because all he is is an arrogant rich kid who has what he has and is who he is because that's who he is that's what he was given at birth which is why if he just used his massive wealth to create the iron man suit like that it's not gonna work because he's done nothing to show us that he earns it but instead gets it just because of who he is and what he has and that's why immediately the movie knows to take all he is and has away from him the entire point of the first act here is for tony to perform actions and choices to prove to us that he isn't just the sum of what he is and has but instead of what he does and the iron man suit he builds is the embodying result of that which is why from now on we respect him why from now on we always support him because he earns it from us it's impossible tony stark was able to build this in a cave with a box of scraps and in green lantern it's less of that and more of the opposite one day our hero hal jordan is just strolling down the street when suddenly not bad huh you're super essentially it goes like this the previous green lantern guy is dying and so he sends his ring of power out to find the right person to replace him a person of great fearlessness and willpower and courage and so on so on and hal jordan is who the ring chooses but the problem is hal has made no actions or choices whatsoever to even hint that he might actually earn the ring there is one sequence at the beginning of the movie where hal is dogfighting these automated drones his aviation company bus wants to sell to the military and in order to beat them he decides to take the fight out of bombs eyeball rules of engagement set ceiling at 50 000 feet yeah that's because the savings will stall if they go any higher right tom and so will you the intended purpose of the sequence is to show us that because hal dares to take his plane so high up that it stalls he clearly must be very fearless and brave and so he clearly must have some grounds to earn the ring right wrong firstly his entire action seems mostly kind of unnecessary and douchey because it's just a simulated test flight for the company to showcase their own drones not a real life and death obstacle like the one tony has to overcome secondly there's a difference between bravery and being downright pointlessly suicidal and thirdly i'm not so sure stalling with a fighter jet really is such a big deal nobody else on a planet would ever dare to try i mean i used to do it in gta online all the time bro and i've seen people do it for so much closer to ground and even though in here i guess it's a more severe compressor stall the movie itself then later states that it was totally fine you want to tell me what happened up there your control's locked don't give me that hal you had a window when you could have recovered did you choke and to be clear your hero doesn't necessarily have to earn what they get beforehand peter parker earns his powers after getting them by immediately having to overcome obstacles that come with them but in here neither of these ever happens hal doesn't do anything to prompt the ring's selection he doesn't do anything after it has selected him he doesn't earn it through actions and choices but instead seems to be gifted it for free just because of the genes he was born with the ring chosen it wouldn't have done so if it hadn't seen something oh yeah something you yourself don't yet see the ring never makes a mistake and that's not a great message that's not something that will receive the audience's respect and support and willpower to watch the movie it just makes them wonder why the hell did this dude get dealt such a great hand and not me if you give your hero something make them earn it because if tony stark was able to do that in a cave with a box of scraps you really have no excuse well i'm sorry i'm not tony stark [Music] the second key issue separating hell from tony is that he never generates clear established goals and destinations he is actively and strongly moving towards in iron man after tony has escaped captivity and gone back to civilization he immediately generates two very important new main objectives that he starts driving towards which are captivity for three months there are two things i want to do i want an american cheeseburger and the other that's enough of that that's not what you think i want you to call for a press conference now for a press conference cheeseburger first right after completing his first mission of fighting a cheeseburger tony sets his size on ending his company's weapons manufacturing and building a new iron man suit that can disarm weapons like his as a whole which quickly then develops into a strong need of disarming his own weapons and because tony has this clear established goal he's always moving towards we always know where the movie is headed we always feel like the movie is headed somewhere the scenes aren't just pointless boring visual noise but instead always carry that underlying goal-driven purpose which makes them worthy of our interest but in green lantern it's quite different like i already mentioned before getting his powers hal is doing pretty much nothing of importance because he has no goals or destinations in life he goes to his nephew's birthday party not because he's on a mission to make his nephew like him or something but just because there's a party and that's where he goes this is the worst 11th birthday party i've ever been to no dancing girls what a car you've got out there did you have a seat he dog fights these drones not because he has to beat them to get a promotion to the same rank as his dead dad or something but just because doing so is his job a job he isn't even required or expected to succeed at i thought this was a dog fight i was under the impression the objective was to win the objective was to show what the sabres could do in actual combat okay then why does any of this matter and the result is that we're watching all these different scenes play out but without any purpose whatsoever which just makes them come off as pointless visual noise that is getting us nowhere but luckily once hal is given the ring and the powers he finally generates a new main objective just like tony and this problem is finally fixed right wrong even after getting the ring the issue of hal having no objectives he's moving towards remains just the same in fact here's everything he does and why he tries to figure out how to use the ring and his powers not because he needs him for something but just because this purple alien told him to do so then he fights his co-workers not because there's some big childhood bully obstacles he's always wanted to overcome but just because they happen to show up to fight him for the first time never to be seen again then he goes to listen to exposition about the green lantern core not because he needs that information to do something but just because this orange alien told him to do so after the ring had forcefully flown him there then he trains his powers not because he needs to improve them to achieve something but just because this buff alien makes him do it then he quits the green lantern core all together not because there's something else he wants or has to use his new powers for but just because it's what it is what it is yes he has no choice he has no choice it isn't until like 70 minutes into the movie when hal finally generates a goal of saving black lively from a freak accident but even that is limited to the scene itself and lasts for a total of maybe 30 seconds then there's also the finale objective of saving the earth which doesn't work for reasons we'll get to next but it doesn't matter in any case because at this point our boredom has long eclipsed our ability to care like hal has all these amazing powers but nothing to use them for he's not trying to make money to buy a car to impress a girl he's not trying to stop crime because crime killed his parents he's not even trying to conjure himself an endless supply of cheeseburgers to quench his hunger he's doing absolutely nothing because he has no overarching goals or objectives or aspirations or anything to move himself and us towards which is why the whole movie feels like it's stuck in place which is why it comes off as just incredibly boring pointless visual noise [Music] thirdly there's a difference issue where the other characters around hal are so poorly constructed and developed and connected to him that it makes this movie world he lives in feel very shallow in iron man the main set of characters around tony is kept very small and deliberate and always connected directly to him representing the different sections that make up his world he has his devoted driver and caring assistant his only real military friend his personal ai he has his most trusted mentor who ultimately turns out to be the villain and so even though the finale bad guy opponent for example isn't really the biggest strength here and at the end of the day is just a big hunk of cgi for us to punch and kick at least inside that big hunk of cgi there is a real three-dimensional person with clear established motivations and direct personal ties to tony that gives the whole thing depth and power because now the big bad cgi villain is actually a personal physical embodiment of tony's past sins of creating weapons of mass destruction ironic tony time to rid the world of weapons you gave me this best one ever and now i'm gonna kill you with it and in green lantern this is actually also handled very well because a movie knows to prioritize creating a small deliberate set of direct personal connections when it comes to house relationships right no see with this movie the mentality is more about the amount of relationships hal has rather than the quality of them he has this close family belonging to who i assume is his brother that after the first meeting we then never see or hear from ever again he has some work enemies who show up to rough him up once and then just vanish forever he has an army of potential green lantern relationships but instead of developing a single full one like with sinestro for example the movie chooses to go with multiple half-assed ones instead and then there's also the strongest relationship of the movie that hal has with blake lively who is a childhood friend who really cares about him which we know because in one of their very first meetings this happens that's the way a child looks at things and we aren't children anymore i just don't want to see someone i care about getting hurt least of all you but the best way to explain this problem is to showcase the relationship hal has with the villain of the movie this guy see at the beginning the villain is introduced as just some random scientist guy who has nothing to do with hell or pretty much anything else but the movie does seem to understand this is an issue since at the mid point it then attempts to rectify it and create that missing personal relationship link between him and how by way of one magic word what can i do for you right so essentially the emotionally packed incredibly strong personal connection between the villain and hell is this the villain has a dad who knows the owner of the aviation company who is the dad of blake lively who is a childhood friend of house hi as in the relationship isn't even close to direct but instead the sum of all these proxy relationships between all these different people that mean nothing to us which makes the relationship pulled about as much power and depth as your argument that you've had sex with the entire german football team because you shook hands with obama and then instead of even trying to develop this relationship into something the movie chooses to rely solely on this multiple proxy connection and pretty much the only real interaction between hal and the villain before their finale face-off is this rough night huh hector how are you doing what are you been up to i'm also me too hal jordan worst pilot i've ever seen or the best i'm not sure there's also some stuff where the villain apparently has the hots for blake lively and is jealous of hell because of her which could work great if we had actually even seen the villain with blake lively in more than one scene beforehand but of course we didn't and this whole relationship with him and hal overall feels like extremely shallow nothing which doesn't really matter anyway because at the end of the second act just guess what happens [Applause] as if there was ever any doubt all of a sudden the human villain is just tossed aside altogether and the third act becomes all about fighting this evil cgi space worm that oh sorry wrong movie this evil cgi space cloud that has pretty much no relationships or connections or anything it isn't driven by clear understandable motivation it isn't personal to hell or anybody else it doesn't have a human villain inside it to give it depth it doesn't come off as anything but two-dimensional artificially created digital noise because that's exactly what it is challenges with parallax was actually a scale issue we worked on him originally really close up and then as soon as we got wide on parallax he became more of a grey blob that's exactly what this whole movie feels like it is the people around our hero that make up this world he lives in might not all be artificial cgi clouds but they may as well be because that's what they feel like [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Filmento

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Keywords: green lantern, green lantern 2011 movie, ryan reynolds, deadpool, video essay, iron man, mcu, marvel, tony stark, hal jordan, how to fail at, box office flop, green lantern bad movie, green lantern parallax, honest trailer, everything wrong with, mistakes, why green lantern failed, deadool green lantern, robert downey jr, batman, dceu, superman, justice league, avengers, screenwriting, movie analysis, official trailer, blockbuster flop, dc, film, blake lively, tom cruise

Id: KTsif46SjOA

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020