Through an Arrow Greenly.

He’s green. He shoots arrows. He’s – The Hood. Uh, I mean, he’s Green Arrow, um, at least, that’s who he’s meant to be – but no one ever calls him that in ARROW… the CW TV series that is too-kewl-fer-skool or sumpin. (What is it with these “grounded” superhero tales? So it’s not legit to call someone Green Arrow but it’s totally legit to smear green snot over his eyes and pretend like his girlfriend doesn’t recognize him?

Slightly tweaking DC Comics canon, billionaire playboy (where’ve I heard that before?) Oliver Queen is lost at sea on his father’s luxury yacht and presumed dead. He spends five years on a deserted island, gaining combat training from a mysterious Asian warrior, tightening up his pasty doughy richie body, getting Gilligan out of scrapes with headhunters, and talking to Wilson.

He returns to Starling City (Star City in the comics) and resumes his privileged life as a billionaire playboy, but with an alter ego – a hooded vigilante with a bow and arrows who prowls the night, determined to clean up the corporate criminals making his life hell by taxing him higher than Mitt Romney.

Stephen Arnell (who looks alarmingly like Chris O’Donnell) is Oliver Queen aka Green– um, whatever: raspy-voiced, grim as stones, archer extraordinaire, requisite dreamy body covered in TV scars to prove how gangsta he is from his island torment; seared scar tissue not icky or offensive, just to make girls moist (those aren’t scars, they’re aphrodisiacs). The filmmakers have captured the athleticism of the character; Green Arrow was always a-swingin’ and a-leapin’ through those comic panels, and they’ve modernized that skill to make him a “free runner” aka Parkour. (We can also see that the fit Arnell is doing many of his stunts; another aphro.) His father’s list of corporate swine clutched in one green-gloved fist, he dons a faux-vinyl ballet outfit and shish-kabobs everyone.

And that’s the coolest part about this TV series: murder. Green Arrow (uh, the guy from the comics) developed into a real “outlaw,” even for those who advocated vigilantism. He stepped on everyone’s toes, in the comics world and the real world. And the series has steered into the curve by having The Hood (uh, Green Whatever) actually skewer numerous henchmen and crime bosses, actually killing them. They’ve replaced his fruity little Robin Hood cap from the comics with a green hood (as his comics designers did in the mid-70s), because as we learned from Trayvon Martin, anyone who wears a hood is an outlaw.

Willa Holland is Oliver’s younger sister Thea, whom he calls “Speedy” (that ain’t right), which assumes a double meaning when we discover she’s a cokehead; Susanna Thompson is his blond MILF mother (who looks no more than 7 years older than him, and thinks she’s on KNOTS LANDING); Byron Mann is the Asian warrior; Emily Bett Rickards is Felicity Smoak (who lives up to her name by being smoakin’).

Green Hooded Fella recruits ex-military John Diggle (David Ramsey) to help him skewer baddies; starting as Oliver’s bodyguard who couldn’t keep up with him (cos Oliver was so ripped and scarred and sexy). And Katie Cassidy is unbelievably hot as Greenish Hoodie’s casual girlfriend reporter Laurel Lance, whose cop father (Paul Blackthorne) suspects Oliver is The Hood/ The Archer / That Green Guy, because no two men could have butts that perfect.

Why is everyone so goddamned PRETTY?! How hard can life be – morally ambiguous or not – when your features have set in that manner that guarantees you will have the opposite sex pounding at your back door to pound at your back door? Also, how hard can it be to assume a life of crime-fighting when you’re a privileged, enabled billionaire playboy with nothing better to do? Try maintaining your weapons and training regimen and sleepless nights and raspy voice when you have to spend four hours on the phone trying to be assigned a doctor through the limpdicked American health insurance program; try fighting crime when your car needs to be taken to the mechanic three days in a row and you have no money to pay for a rental car to take you to jobs that you are missing; try training your body to muscle perfection when you can’t afford to buy food. And look at how he was “lost at sea” – on his father’s luxury yacht. We should all be lucky enough to have a luxury yacht to get lost at sea in….

Takes a lot to be a crimefighter. Nope. Mainly cash. Just ask Iron Man.

As with all matter in the universe: action/reaction. In the late 1960s, writer Denny O’Neil (with cartoonist Neal Adams) wrote out Oliver Queen’s fortune, turning him into a voice for the poor. Musta paid heed to the voice of the poor, who obviously were not buying the comics (in more ways than one).

How to get viewers interested in ARROW for television? Casting. Man or woman, your groin will hurt watching these pretty people prance. Arrow. Just don’t say Green. Problem solved.

END

The Wimping Of A Superhero.

The new Flash costume. It’s… um…

It’s turning into Superhero TV Funhouse over here…There’s ARROW (Green Arrow) and GOTHAM (young Batman), there’s AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D, and various shows where people are endowed with “super” powers; now CW brings us THE FLASH in scintillating crimson backwash.

Slogan: “The Making of a Superhero.” But the story itself wimps out the Fastest Man Alive at every turn.

Grant Gustin (GLEE) is DC comicbook superguy The Flash, aka Barry Allen (represented here as younger than his comics version, which makes us wonder how many years you don’t have to study to become a police forensic expert, which is Barry’s seemingly veteran job, even though he looks like an embryo). Grant’s got that penciled-in face that only a Jonas Bros. fan could love, and he hits all those Hero-Overcomes-Adversity beats that separate the car commercials, in this average, glazed-eyed origin tale.

But there’s one beat that no one who read the original Flash comics could have seen coming: the “Just Friend” beat.

Is he man enough to ride the lightning? Well, first, is he man enough to conquer the Just Friend Zone? (It’s like the Phantom Zone, only you don’t need a dick.)

Candice Patton is Iris west, Barry’s love interest. (Not so much ‘love interest’ as ‘cocktease.’) Barry was adopted by her father when very young, so they grew up together. Now they hit that beat: “I’ll Still Be Your Friend Even Though I Make Out With My Boo Right In Front Of You Then Ask Why You Look So Down.”

The emasculation continues when Barry Allen seeks Green Arrow’s mentorship (in a crossover that was initiated when Green Arrow met Bazza in ARROW Season 2). Barry whines about being a pussy and Arrow rasps something about pulling the dildo out of his vagina and beating bad guys over the head with it.

As a comics-conscious cucumber, the Flash was one of my favorite superboffos. His powers developed from just running fast to being able to control the ultrasonic vibration of his molecules, vibrating through solids, walking on water, running on air; just about anything short of Superboff hisself.

THE FLASH shows us how Barry, as a police forensic scientist, is doused with chemicals during a lightning storm, and attains his super speed. Over the course of this series he would gradually discover the extent of his powers, aided by a completely manufactured (i.e. not from canon) teen geek squad headed by oldboy Tom Cavanaugh. Danielle Panabaker annoys us as the clinical fembot and Carlos Valdes annoys us by looking like Taylor Lautner with a brain. They monitor Flash’s powers and missions, and search for… numerous “meta-humans” created during that lightning storm that created Flash! Each with a different “power.”

So the series writers have set it up nicely, with the potential for a wealth of villains ergo episodes. Akin to the original Rogue’s Gallery in the Barry Allen series of DC comics. And uh, not one of those fried dim sums said to themselves, “Hey, I could use this unique power to fight crime instead of do crime”?

Maybe the crimefighter costumes were not butch enough. It’s a good job Flash runs so fast – onlookers describe a mysterious “red streak” around Central City – or people might get a load of how gay his costume really is.

John Wesley Shipp (who played The Flash in the lame 1990 series) is Barry’s father here; falsely imprisoned for killing his wife during a lightning storm when Barry was a boy. Barry swears he saw a figure within the lightning, which underpins a motivational throughline for the series: Barry trying to find his mother’s killer.

The most touching relationship is between Barry and his stepfather, Detective Joe West (Jesse L. Martin, the TV version of Idris Elba). It’s the old You-Can-Dooo-Eeet trope, but it swells a tear if you’ve just taken your female hormones.

Production values on the superspeed scenes are visualized well, but how exactly does our scarlet speedster get beaten up by a villain if he can see everything moving as if in slow motion? If he can dodge a bullet, why can’t he dodge a fist? Wimp.

The first Flash was Jay Garrick (created 1940), but to me, the greatest Flash was and always will be Barry Allen (created 1956); unfortunately, the CW are kinda portraying Wally West here (created 1959), ’cause this guy sure is a wally. I don’t even think I want to know what goes into making him a superhero…

How about we stay Just Friends?

END

Ungodly.

The legend of Perseus continues in WRATH OF THE TITANS, with the kidnapping of Zeus, the treachery of Ares, the disintegration of Poseidon, and the slaying of the Titan Kronos, just like it says in all the Greek myths…. actually, not in any Greek myths; matter of fact, I’m wondering whether the filmmakers have read even one Greek myth in their wretched lives.

Writers David Johnson, Greg Berlanti and Dan Mazeau seem to be using the George Lucas method of storytelling – Making It Up As It Goes Along – and director Jonathan Liebesman is just encouraging them by having such a big effects budget.

It’s surely a spectacle for the eyes, but set your brain on standby for the magnificently thoughtless plotline.

Demi-god Perseus (Sam Worthington), the slayer of the Kraken in CLASH OF THE TITANS 2010, is trying to lead an average mortal’s life as a fisherman in a tiny village – until a Chimera (a two-headed, fire-breathing monster) attacks the village, seemingly for no reason other than the special effects team were bored. Perseus defeats it with no help from all the screaming extras.

Then dad Zeus (Liam Neeson) appears to Perseus  and tells him the gods need his help. In his authentic Australian Greek accent, Perseus asks, “Woy?” Something to do with Making It Up As It Goes Along. Then Zeus teleports outa there in case another fire-breathing thing comes along and he might have to lift a finger to help.

Ares the god of war (Edgar Ramirez) and Hades the god of cheese (Ralph Fiennes) team up to kidnap Poseidon the god of beards (Danny Huston) and Zeus the god of Narnia (wait – isn’t this the guy who can teleport?). They hook Zeus to a divine intravenous rock and start transferring his power to Kronos, who looks like the Catholic version of the horned devil, except he’s ten times bigger than a Balrog and 100 times as dumb. (Though he can only moan one or two words – being fused to the stone of a mountain will leave you pretty inarticulate – he has the distinction of being the one and only actual “Titan” in either of the two films.)

Now Perseus is mad, in the grand tradition of the god Rambo: “This time it’s personal!”

Perseus takes his son Helius (wasn’t Helius/Helios the Sun god who drove his chariot across the sky every morning and– oh, why bother?…) to a temple, where Poseidon uses his teleportation powers to appear and tell them all is lost. Lemme get this straight: he always had the power to teleport (as gods do), but he waited until Hades and Ares bitchbeat him half-to-death before teleporting to a temple where he happened to know Perseus was gonna be? Then he turns to dust – like it says in all the history books.

To rescue Zeus, Perseus recruits the tasty blond ringlets of Queen Andromeda (Rosamund Pike) and the arrogant dreadlocks of Poseidon’s son, Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who gets the film’s funniest line when mocking Perseus: “Mighty Kraken slayer. Shouldn’t he be somewhere posing for a statue?” Followed by the film’s dumbest line, when he tells Perseus “Go to Hell!” even though there was no such thing in Ancient Greece.

They sail in search of Hephaestus (Bill Nighy, so whacked out he references his role as Davy Jones in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN to Perseus, “I know you: ‘Release the Kraken’ and all that…”). As the forger of Zeus’ thunderbolt, Hades’ pitchfork and Poseidon’s trident, Hephaestus tells Perseus that combining them will create the Spear of Trium, the only weapon that can defeat Kronus. He also knows the way through the unsolvable Labyrinth to rescue Zeus. (‘Labyrinth’? Did someone say Minotaur?!) In asking for his help, Andromeda bows down before Hep (veeery sexy!) and says something so unutterably stupid that it sounds unutterably stupid even while she’s saying it, with that blind blond ambition glazing her eyes: “…but we humans have hope when there is no hope; and we believe when to believe is idiotic, but sometimes, in spite of everything, we prevail.” Yes, and the “prevailing” is not because of your “hope” or “belief” but due to the actual powers brought to bear on the problem; you prevail not because of hope or belief but in spite of it.

At the head of the labyrinth, Ares appears (teleporting, as gods do) and kills Hephaestus and all the extras, leaving our heroes stranded. But it turns out the Labyrinth isn’t that hard to get through, because they do it in what must be record time, with no jump cuts or dead ends. Oh yeah, and Perseus kills a guy in a BULL HELMET. (Unfortunately, I kid you not.)

As Perseus is rescuing Zeus, Kronos is released, raining lava down on Earth while roaring insatiably, as per Movie Monster Protocol.

Perseus must snatch Zeus’s thunderbolt off Ares’ back to create the Spear of Trium (which is getting kinda Try-ING at this point), so even though he has all Queen Blondie’s warriors at his disposal, why does he afford Ares the “honor” of going mano a mano with him? While Ares shields himself behind Perseus’s son Helius. That’s honorable, right?

Meanwhile, Kronos’s double-bodied demons tear through Blondie’s warriors like the toilet paper they have yet to invent to wipe their terrified asses. Think about it: the demons can only run rampant as long as Kronos is alive. So the *logical* move would be to overrun Ares with a horde of warriors, GET THE SPEAR and throw that bad boy at Kronos, thereby nullifying his armies. Instead, Blondie witlessly battles double-bodied demons (again, we presume, because the special effects department was justifying its budget) while Perseus has to do all the lifting on the spear job.

Perseus eventually gets Ares in a headlock, which proves to be his kryptonite: the God of War can defeat hundreds of men with his big man-club and divine pushing – but he can’t escape a good headlock.

Hades suddenly sees the error of his ways after helping Kronos escape. Now let me get this straight: this entity the size of the Chrysler building promised it would decimate the Earth when it was freed, and now it’s actually doing that. Exactly which part was Hades unclear on?

Kronos is defeated when Zeus and Hades kiss and make up and shoot gay-ass lightning bolts at him to “distract” him, while posing like air-guitar champions. Perseus then does his Luke Skywalker and lobs the Spear of Trium into a hole in Kronos’s mouth not much bigger than a womp-rat.

So the god of war is dead? Who’s responsible for all these wars then? Well, that would be Dick Cheney. And Poseidon is dead? I guess that leaves Aquaman in charge of the seas. And Zeus is dead? Who’s in charge of Everything then? Oh, that’s right, Bill Gates.

Perseus! Slayer of the Kraken! Slayer of Kronos! Not only will we never hear the end of this in songs and legends, he’s got the pick of blond ringleted chicks willing to go GREEK for him!

END

Attack of the 50-foot foreheads.

The main qualification for being a Green Lantern is to have No Fear. Oh, and a high forehead.

What’s with all the giant foreheads in GREEN LANTERN? Ryan Reynolds is Green Lantern’s forehead – and I must say, the perfect visual representation of the DC Comics ring-bearer; the great Mark Strong (SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009) is Lantern Sinestro’s lavender forehead; Tim Robbins is a senator’s forehead; Geoffrey Rush voices the webbed forehead of Tomar-Re the fish Lantern; there’s Jay O. Sanders, legendary character actor forehead; and the powerful Temuera Morrison is lilac Lantern’s forehead, Abin Sur. Peter Sarsgaard is Hector Hammond, a mad scientist – not content with the size of his forehead, so makes it even bigger.

Now that we have that out of the way, shall we talk about how mustaches are evil?…

If you’re thirteen, this movie is as awesome as The Jonas Brothers. Justin Bieber liked it so much, he considered growing a forehead.

Test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds) is “chosen” by the magical “power ring” of a dying alien to be the first Green Lantern of Earth. The Green Lantern Corps is made up of thousands of chosen aliens, one from each sector of space, each a Green Lantern, all part of this intergalactic police force, combating evil throughout the galaxies, overseen by the immortal Guardians of the Universe from their planet Oa. (Hey, you can laugh when you stop believing in a virgin birth or a Tom Cruise spacecraft cult.)

Poffy Lantern (with requisite large forehead)

I applaud the filmmakers for being true to canon regarding the Lantern Corps. Director Martin Campbell and writers Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg could have opted to stay Earthbound, but instead do a wondrous galactic job outlining one of the more interesting superhero legends. A railway lantern to charge a ring that can materialize anything from your imagination?! Creators Martin Nodell and Bill Finger really threw in original twists on something used to flag down trains and something used to quiet down women! (Were they smoking something green?…)

The current evil threat is an entity named Parallax, who feeds on fear, represented as yellowness (good metaphor, no?), and who is moving towards Oa, with Earth directly in his path…

(Aficionados will know that Jordan is actually the second Green Lantern, the “Silver Age” reboot created by John Broome and Gil Kane 1959, after the original 1940 Alan Scott Green Lantern petered out).

GREEN LANTERN follows the yawn flow chart of Discovering Powers, Learning How To Use Them, Being Trained… Hal is told his ring is powered by Will. And works best when there is No Fear. A big dog-thing Lantern named Kilowog (voice of Michael Clarke Duncan) trains him by throwing green CGI threats at him, until Sinestro takes over the training and the green CGI goes bananas. It’s pretty cool stuff, even if you’re not thirteen.

Between Hal’s friend (Taika Waititi), his family life (he’s a beloved uncle, unreliable brother) and work (test piloting with smokin’ tight wingwoman Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), whom we suspect is anorexic when she turns sideways and her slim waist almost disappears), one wonders how he finds time to be an intergalactic policeman.

Well, that’s easily fixed when all the other characters disappear in the second half of the movie, honed down to his whining love interest, Carol. In the comics, Carol is Green Lantern’s Lois Lane but here she’s just a high maintenance shrike not worth the pleasure of that waist you can encircle with your hands from behind. She moans about his irresponsibility at work when he out-flies “unbeatable” robot planes; she moans about his irresponsibility when he takes her out for a drink, she moans about his irresponsibility when he’s just flown onto her balcony as Green Lantern. Just what is it going take to shut her up? (Ironically, maybe a ring–?!)

In the serious, Man’s part of outer space, Sinestro visits the Guardians of the Universe, wizened old guys who eternally perch atop lofty spires, with long robes and longer earlobes, grave countenances and – you guessed it – GIANT FOREHEADS. (In Lantern lore, Sinestro is a rogue Lantern; here, he is still begrudging pal to Hal Jordan, touchingly admitting Jordan’s worth when he calls him by his superhero name, “Good luck… Green Lantern!”) Sinestro outlines his plan to stop Parallax, who has grown so powerful and bloated on fear that he appears as a city-sized octopus-y thing with grainy-gray tentacles, a saw-toothed mouth and – Jesus Christ! Look at that forehead! It must be 50 feet wide!

Speaking of wide foreheads, Sarsgaard actually gets a chance to “act” here – or maybe the word is “overact” – either way, it’s miles more entertaining than his usual dead-eyed Quaalude performances. Tim Robbins plays his contemptuous father (we see the resemblance in the massive noggin).

The character arcing of Hal from being a scaredy-cat to suddenly attaining No Fear is handled as deftly as the PR lie that the Jonas Brothers are virgins. Although I will say that the Green Lantern Oath (“In brightest day, In blackest night…”), as corny and nursery-rhymey as it is, somehow takes me back to a carefree youth when my piles of comics threatened to block out the sky and tying a superhero towel around the neck and swishing about was actually a preferred weekend activity before girls and grog existed. (Another cool thing about Green Lantern: he was one of the first superheroes who didn’t depend on a towel around his neck to be dynamic and sexy. Which meant I’d have to borrow my sister’s leotard…)

Viewers and reviewers alike have to stop creating this gap between fun and quality, as if they are mutually exclusive states. A film like SEVEN SAMURAI is total quality, yet it is still “fun.” Because of its quality. Yet when a film is classified as exclusively “fun” it’s almost as an excuse for its lack of quality. GREEN LANTERN is a fun film (exhilarating, frenetic, bombastic, fast and furious, yet subtle in very cool ways, especially in the visualization of the Lanterns’ organic spandex), but its lack of quality does not stem from it being fun, but rather in trying to cram too much into one movie and sacrificing good editing and storytelling.

There is a grandiose metaphor fighting for primacy in the film’s climactic moments when Parallax is annihilating an Earth city and Green Lantern faces him down. Parallax’s attack conjures memories of 9/11 (his tentacles dustily sweep through avenues, crushing skyscrapers, as people run screaming from the destruction) and Green Lantern must stop him. Now recall that the power ring works best when there is No Fear. As Lantern faces down the terror-inspiring entity, his Will flags and Parallax forces him to his knees. But he rallies with that nursery rhyme Oath (‘scuse me while I break out my leotard) and chokes down his fear, enabling him to triumph.

Hence: “terrorists” who prey on our fear only win when we FEEL fear; for us to triumph then, all we have to do is feel No Fear. (Was it mere coincidence this scene resembled 9/11?) Amongst the dynamic poses and ripped abs, is this the underlying forthright message of GREEN LANTERN?

Uh, probably not.

We already know that the underlying message is that mustaches are evil.

END