There are at least a hundred million little green reasons not to make Green Lantern 2, but Warners is ignoring all of them. That’s as true now as it was after the film’s release.
“We had a decent opening so we learned there is an audience,” Warners President Jeff Robinov told the LA Times. “To go forward we need to make it a little edgier and darker with more emphasis on action…. And we have to find a way to balance the time the movie spends in space versus on Earth.”
Forget edgy and dark. Just make a good movie. Let Reynolds have fun, stop being so mopey, and make us care about what happens to him.
What they really need is a script that doesn’t have the same lack of energy or second act problems. On the one hand, it’s a dangerous financial move that doesn’t earn much fan credit because the movie was so bland. On the other, as I’ve argued before, this is another chance to get it right. Warners already has a script from Green Lantern writers Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, although they may make significant changes to it or scrap it altogether.
Regardless of what they choose, the lesson they have to learn is the same one that freshman college students taking their first class in screenwriting are about to learn this fall: how to tell a story. With any luck, the box office beating that the first film took will be a lesson to everyone at Warners that no amount of CGI can make up for lazy writing and stale acting. The hero’s journey model has survived for thousands of years for a reason. Maybe it’s a lesson that will benefit the next movie in a franchise they’re trying desperately to build.
