Watch a 4-minute Preview of Warner Bros.’ “Green Lantern”

The Green Lantern (2011) directed by Martin Campbell, starring Ryan Reynolds

The Green Lantern embodies a tremendous gamble for DC comics, who co-produce the film with Warner Bros. Not only does it introduce worldwide audiences to a new superhero, but it also has to compete against 3 other superhero movies this summer. (X-men: first class, Thor and Captain America. All produced by competitor Marvel studios) Should it succeed at the Box Office, DC would have the opportunity to bring more of their projects to the screen.

Adding to this pressure was the negative reception of Green Lantern’s first trailer. The film didn’t seem believable enough to audiences and was already dismissed as the loser of this summer’s superhero-brawl. This was until yesterday, when Warner Bros. showed an exclusive ten-minute preview of the film at CinemaCon. Apparently the producers of the film were so pleased about its performance at that screening, that they now released a 4-minute excerpt from that preview. Here it is:

my thoughts:

I was sceptic at first, when director Martin Campbell said that he was working on creating another Star Wars in this film, but now I understand his point. The preview excites me in a way all to familiar: distant planets, an elite peace-keeping force and a vague dark power. This really does look like Star Wars.

Also, speaking of Campbell, this is the man who resurrected the Bond franchise twice (GoldenEye and Casino Royale) and is undoubtedly very skilled in adapting published material. I think he has indeed found a perfect balance between Green Lantern’s comic book spirit and Christopher Nolan’s (who enabled the making of this film with his The Dark Knight) serious take on superheroes.

Overall, I am a lot more excited for this movie now than I was before this preview. I still think that it will be the weakest of the 4 movies this summer, but I don’t think it will be forgotten soon.