dstager-1

Please, please, please get a decent writing team for the next Green Lantern movie. If only the studio pinheads would take the obvious step of hiring the team of great writers Bruce Timm put together for Justice League/Justice League Unlimited. Those guys could come up with a better script in a week just spit balling ideas together than this movie.

You've got 50 years of story material to work with. This is what you picked to make into a movie? Please, just pay Alan Moore a couple of million and shoot his script as written and you'll make the money back hundreds of times over. And it will be a movie that holds up! Everything looks great. But this is total crap. A complete waste of a solid character. This is a big step backward for superhero movies. I was embarrassed that our culture has regressed to this level of banality.

The screenwriter has really come up with clear adaptation of the story and the key issues Ayn Rand was trying to communicate in her greatest novel. The appeal of this movie to me is how clearly the main characters and issues of Atlas Shrugged come across on-screen. The novel can be difficult to read and I think after seeing the movie, new readers will be able to follow the book a lot easier.

Seeing the faces of the characters and the issues that drive the story in context was very special. I think many, many more people will discover and read the book with proper appreciation even if this first part is the only part produced.

I got a huge kick seeing the vague depiction of John Galt in "Part 1" of the movie looking a lot like "Rorschach" from "Watchmen". Nice tip of the hat to the objectivist vigilante by the director.

It's worth going out of your way to see this. The hostile critics just don't get it. You will. It's very clear in the movie. Ayn Rand would approve. Her message is undiluted and not compromised. Great job.

What is being done here is taking all the best plot and character development from the entire history of Marvel Comics and writing it all over again placing the characters into the context they developed into right away without any actual development. Obviously, the writers know their Marvel. It's too bad there is no credit given to the original writers and creators who actually wrote these stories and developed these characters. (In season two a tiny credit now appears in the end titles acknowledging Jack Kirby and Joe Simon as the creators of Captain America.)

The original creators and writers probably wouldn't want to take credit for the cardboard cut-out versions of these iconic characters. They've got all the details, but none of the depth that made them icons to begin with.

Every plot, character, and conflict is from previous material. It is well done and loyal to "history." There are many many obscure references such as using the super-villain's true names when they are addressed - all quite accurate and correct. But the rendition of the old material is heavily padded with chase and battle scenes and only the bare bones of the great original stories remain as a loose framework holding it all together.

Unlike the originals which never insulted your intelligence, this version is written for a very young audience with no appetite for story or proper plotting or character development. The original Marvel Super Heroes cartoons from 1966 used voice actors who had been performing in radio dramas for decades and they acted out Stan Lee's dialogue straight. The old 1966 Marvel Super Heroes voices are unforgettable and utterly professional. The voice performances here are mostly amateurish and forgettable.

Marvel has always had the best characters. I don't think that today they have the best writers in their animation projects. They must write something that goes beyond rearranging classic material. What we're seeing here is more like a tracing over of old material. The plots are tight and the stories complete because the path was paved by the work and success of others.

The theme song is catchy, but the title sequence is poor and mostly confusing they way they edit it in. They changed it partway through the first season, but it's still looks confusingly like an end credit abruptly interrupting the opening teaser. The theme song and narrative explanation of the back story is out of place. They need a real title sequence and a better musical performance of the catchy theme song they came up with and to cut out the unnecessary narrator.

I'm left wondering how many times can the old Marvel stories be updated, retold and presented as if they were new? The only reference to the original artist and writer of much of this material, Jack Kirby, is a dog food commercial the Hulk is watching on TV, "Kirby Kibble." It seemed like it might have been almost an intentional slap in the face rather than an homage.

Disney used to represent the highest quality and they've allowed a mediocre program to be produced. Look at the little details and you know the writers know the material very well. Knowing the details isn't enough. Disney needs to scrap the entire creative team and start over for season 2. It looks good, but it's so superficial when the basis for the popularity of the heroes is their "realism" and their human flaws and conflicts. What we have here isn't even close to capturing the Marvel magic. It's a standard and almost mindless children's cartoon that will be aired and forgotten. And who's fault is that? And don't tell me the standard, "this is what the audience wants." Disney does not know its audience. This should not be kiddie video. Once again, someone has dropped the ball on something that could have been really, really great.