5 Reasons Why GREEN LANTERN Will Kick Your Ass

I'm going to take this opportunity to come out of the closet as it were and admit to you all that I am a massive comic book fan. The kind of fan that cheers when a character I love gets treated with respect (The Dark Knight), and grabs my torch and pitchfork when a studio drops trow and pisses all over one of them (I'm looking at you, Fox). All that being said, I'm the type of comic book fan that gets very optimistic when it looks like a film adaptation of a great character is going in a positive direction. Enter the Green Lantern; test pilot Hal Jordan is inducted into an intergalactic peacekeeping corps after an accident of chance saddles him with the most powerful weapon in the universe, a ring empowered by will to bring to life anything its bearer can imagine. With that premise in mind, let's take a look at 5 reasons Green Lantern will kick your ass in 2011.

1. Ryan Reynolds
Hal Jordan has been cast, and his name is Ryan Reynolds. He's been building a fan base for years but has yet to make the jump to full fledged movie star status, this could be it for him. This guy has charm and charisma coming out his ass as well as being a solid actor with gallons of leading man potential, and while I would prefer it if he actually got to play Deadpool (if you say he did in Wolverine, I will kick you in the shins), he seems just as right to bring the cocky pilot who overcomes great fear to life. Plus, I'm just gonna go ahead and say he's a good looking dude, and that always helps movies.

2. Martin Campbell
Pretty much every franchise this guy touches turns to gold. He's rebooted Bond twice, for Christ sake, and created the two greatest Bond films of the modern era as a result. He's a director that knows how to handle action and character, and he'll definitely give Green Lantern the polished, professional sheen it deserves. It's questionable whether or not he'll be able to handle the CGI effects the story will demand, but at this point there's no reason to doubt him. After all, Jon Favreau had absolutely no action or effects experience other than Space Jumanji (Zathura) when he made Iron Man.

3. The Script
I was luck enough to get my hands on an early draft of Greg Berlanti's screenplay a few months back and it was pretty pitch perfect. It touched on all the right beats and in my opinion tells the perfect introductory story for the Green Lantern and sets up enough threads that any sequels will have a lot of meat to them. At a lean 105 pages, it could stand to be a bit longer and flesh out a few of the characters, but for an early draft it was fantastic and definitely lets us know that the filmmakers are on the right track.

4. Special Effects Potential
We live in an age where anything you can think of can be done with a computer, and done well if you have the money and ingenuity. These days, to excite an audience, you have to give them something they've never seen before, and that's exactly what Green Lantern has the potential to do. Epic space battles, supersonic flight, catching F-22's in giant green fists, this movie is in the position to deliver stunning visuals and action to audiences that will blow away cars turning into robots and shooting each other. If done well, Green Lantern can be our generation's Star Wars.

5. Warner Brothers.
Sure, they're a major studio, a tiny part of a massive conglomerate out to make as much money as they can by reaching as many demographics as they can like any other studio. However, WB has shown over the last few years that they are prepared to take risks with comic book properties that few others would. Just look at Dark Knight compared with Wolverine, and think of the chances the former took that made it so superior in every single imaginable way to the latter. Hell, look at Watchmen. Whether you liked the movie or not, you have to admit it took balls to release an R rated, 3 hour comic book movie. WB has the wherewithal to release comic book films that are true to their characters and treat the source with respect.

All this I point out to you out there in the series of tubes we call the interwebs, so you will have the awareness and spread the hype. Green Lantern will kick all of our asses come 2011, or I will...probably just be really upset.