...In Blackest Night

I was going to rage about the stupid guy who decided it'd be a good idea to lunge out in front of my car in order to flip me off. I presume that it was to signify his displeasure with my car being too close to making contact with his stupid, stupid body, and the only time my car was remotely near him was when he jumped from the side of the road to flip me the bird. But hey, clearly I was in the wrong here...

No, what I really wanted to talk about was the upcoming Green Lantern film. I'm too lazy to research my own writing, but I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it somewhere on this blog before. This week saw the release of the first trailer for DC's quote "space epic." My problem with that is that very little of it appears to take place in space. But hey, it was just a 2:30 trailer. And we did get to see a lot of the cooler Lanterns that everyone was hoping to see (Kilowag and Tomar Re come to mind). Abin Sur and Sinestro also look pretty sweet.

That said, I do have some problems with what we've seen so far. First, Blake Lively was terrible in that snippet from the trailer. Second, Hal's characterization just seems...off. Could be Reynold's portrayal, could be the material from given him, I don't know. I'll wait to see if the wise-ass, doubt-ridden Hal works for the movie. Third, and this is the one that I've seen most complained about, is the special effects. The biggest one that I've seen is the mask. It just looks painted on, it makes Ryan Reynold's look cross-eyed, etc. Hopefully, the rumors about it being unifinished CG work prove true and it's either fixed or reshot with an actual mask.

With the argument about the costume, and I've said this before, is that the filmmakers side is that the costume is meant to look alien, because the ring is from outer space, etc. But, and this is my reasoning, is that the ring constructs the costume based on the user's preference, so wouldn't it stand to reason that at least Hal's costume would be cloth or even some kind of armor akin to the uniform from First Flight.

But my BIGGEST problem? It was revealed today that WB and DC have been sending out replicas of the Green Lantern ring from the film to celebrities and editors of websites that have been promoting the film. Allegedly, these rings are actually wearable and of much higher quality than the promo rings DC has been giving away at Comic Conventions. WHY? Why do companies do this? Give away expensive gifts to celebrities that could easily afford them that could care less about the product being advertised? Yeah, that's a good way to promote your product/film/whatever.

I said it on twitter (you can follow me at http://twitter.com/#!/klynchmob) and I'll repeat it here: I hope that DC/WB put these rings (or an even higher quality ring with selectable sizes) up for sale some time before the film comes out.