One of the problems with the modern superhero movie is that the first film is often a protracted origin story; what took comic book creators of the Silver Age about 8 pages to tell takes current directors about two hours. But that won’t be the case with Green Lantern, insists star Ryan Reynolds.
Reynolds tells the mooks at MTV: “It is [an origin story] to a certain degree, but it’s not a labored origin story, where the movie [truly] begins in the third act… The movie starts when it starts. We find out Hal is the guy fairly early on, and the adventure begins.”
Ironically, Green Lantern is a character, unlike Superman, Batman or Spider-Man, who could probably benefit from a detailed origin film, if only to set up his very unique universe. Still, that can be done in the context of an actual story, which was something I thought Iron Man did pretty well. One day though we’ll get a superhero movie that opens with the hero already established. Maybe that’ll happen in the long-awaited Ambush Bug movie.