Better roles for child actresses than adult actresses? Jennifer Lawrence graduates to 'adult' roles by playing the token girlfriend/manic pixie dream girl.

Yes, this started as deleted material from my Silver Linings Playbook essay from Saturday. I don't want to get into another 'roles for women' rant, but it's interesting that Jennifer Lawrence may win an Oscar for arguably the first role of her career where she exists purely to support the male lead's arc (even her token girlfriend role in The Beaver had a character arc for *her*). She has not a single scene in this film where she exists as a character outside of her role as Bradley Cooper's girlfriend/spiritual healer. She is basically a glorified manic pixie fuck toy who exists purely to support the male lead's emotional journey, not fit for even a single scene disconnected from Cooper's story. This parallels the career trajectory of the likes of Shailene Woodley and Blake Lively, solid actresses who did film and/or television work as leads who only earned real acclaim after they took supporting roles in more automatically prestigious 'manly dramas'. Blake Lively was a lead in films like Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and the television show Gossip Girl.  But she was written off as a kid-friendly television star before she played a strung-out junkie with romantic feelings for Ben Affleck's oh-so-conflicted bank robber in The Town. Shailene Woodley was a lead actress in ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager, but critics only started taking her seriously once she played supporting fiddle to George Clooney in The Descendants. It's a great film and Woodley is terrific in it, but would critics have even noticed the picture had it been told from her point of view? I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of this as the newer crop of child actresses 'come of age'.

Oliver Stone's star-filled, and unapologetically R-rated Savages, the official 'adult popcorn film of summer 2012', gets a down-and-dirty trailer.

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It used to be a custom of sorts to have at least one somewhat adult-skewing genre picture in any given summer, something to stand out for older audiences who liked their summer thrills with a bit less fantasy and a bit more gore and/or nudity.  Be it Wolf in 1994, A Time to Kill in 1996, Swordfish in 2001, The Road to Perdition in 2002, or Collateral in 2004 (along with, arguably The Manchurian Candidate redo), this once time-honored tradition somewhat went the way of the dinosaur as seemingly adult genre fare like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Da Vinci Code, Live Free or Die Hard and Salt got squeezed into the PG-13 zone and R-rated comedies like The Wedding Crashers, Tropic Thunder, and The Hangover compensated for the lack of truly R-rated action fare.  Aside from the likes of The Expendables in 2010, summer has pretty much been the place where everything is aimed at everyone for the last several years.  But Universal senses an opening, not only moving this seemingly trashy bit of pulp fiction into the summer, but slotting it three days after the debut of Sony's The Amazing Spider-Man.

Weekend Box Office (06/19/11): Green Lantern pulls a Van Helsing, opens with $53m, endangers entire DC Comics film franchise.

When is a $52 million three-day opening a genuine disappointment?  Well, in the world of box office, all things are relative.  And when it comes to opening weekend, the quality and estimated staying power has to be taken into account.  Green Lantern debuted at number one this weekend with $53.1 million.  On the surface, that's the third-biggest DC Comics opening ever, and the second-biggest non-sequel DC Comics film (behind Watchmen's $55.2 million).  But like Watchmen, a seemingly glorious opening (a $55 million debut for a 2.5 hour R-rated superhero drama based on a cult property) is considered troubling due to fears about its staying power and overspending.  Green Lantern cost about $200 million to produce, with another $150 million going towards marketing efforts.  The film had a poor 2.45x weekend multiplier and earned only a B from Cinemascore.  This does not guarantee that Green Lantern will follow Watchmen's lightning-fast downward trajectory (the film didn't even double its opening weekend, ending with $107 million).  But with mediocre word of mouth, generally poor reviews, and brutal competition coming just down the pike (Cars 2 next weekend, Transformers: Dark of the Moon a few days after that), the best that Warner can hope for domestically is an around 3x multiplier for a $155 million finish.  Warner and DC Comics will have to be counting on overseas numbers to carry the day.

Midnight Box Office (06/16/11): Green Lantern grosses $3.35m in 12:01 showings, heading for probable $61 million opening weekend.

The midnight money is apparently tallied already.  So once again, we have a decent idea of what a major film's opening weekend will be before the first Friday shows on the West Coast even begin.  Fascinating... Anyway, Green Lantern grossed $3.35 million in midnight screenings last night.  That's ahead of the $3.25 million earned by Thor at midnight, and just under the $3.4 million midnight gross earned by X-Men: First Class two weeks ago.  So at this point, it's just a matter of anticipating just how anticipated Martin Campbell's superhero saga is.  It is an original property, so it won't be as front-loaded as X-Men: First Class (which pulled in 6% of its weekend at midnight).  Reviews are pretty lousy (unfairly so in my opinion), which may or may not make a difference (remember, audiences for movies like this generally don't care about reviews).  So basically the question is whether it pulls 5% of its money at 12:01am (like Thor) or 6% of its money at 12:01am like X-Men: First Class.  For the moment, Green Lantern is apparently heading for an opening weekend between $55 million and $67 million.  Let's split the difference, give it a 5.5% midnight take and call it for $61 million.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Green Lantern (3D) is not as great as we had all hoped, but it's not nearly as bad as we had all feared.

Green Lantern
2011
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

I kept waiting... I had read the earlier reviews, which seemed to confirm all of the worst fears stretching back to last November.  But the hate never came.  Martin Campbell's Green Lantern is a deeply problematic comic book adventure, with structural and character development issues that should damn-well have felled the film.  But like its title character, it overcomes its own weaknesses and embraces its inherent flaws.  The picture has signs of tinkering and studio interference.  But it also has several fine action scenes, a strong visual style that feels like a living comic book, and arguably the best 3D conversion yet achieved in live-action.  Oh, and it also has Peter Skarsgaard, but more on that later.  I have no idea how Green Lantern purists will react, but the film as it is  remains a weird combination of ghee-whiz kid-friendly superhero antics and truly disturbing horror elements.  That the film is not quite the triumph we wanted may be tragic.  That the film as it stands works at all may qualify as a miracle.

Another week, another Green Lantern trailer: this one in 3D. Well in theaters it's 3D, here it's just 2D (but with a decent amount of new footage).

Apparently the 3D effects for this trailer looked pretty spectacular in theaters.  That makes me awfully happy, as I really want to see this early but don't want to settle for an inferior presentation.  There is actually quite a bit of new footage here, even if we seem to be seeing much of the finale (including the apparent death of a major villain) right there in the trailer.  There are a few new bits of Reynolds actually doing the whole superhero thing in costume, so that's a relief.  Still, the actual 'Hal makes a glowing green car or a glowing green machine gun' scenes are going to be where dramatic credibility is lost (or absolutely affirmed).  This one has just under a month to go, which means Warner has time for at least a half dozen more trailers.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Hector Hammond added to ongoing Green Lantern poster collection.

Green Lantern gets a second (this time plot and character-centric) trailer.

This is almost anticlimactic after a month that saw a four-minute Wondercon clip and two extended TV spots, but here is the official second trailer for Green Lantern. This clip is obviously much less jokey than the infamous teaser, and it clearly lays out the intergalactic scale and the world-threatening scope of the picture. It also gives some badly needed face time to the human supporting cast, notably Peter Sarsgaard as primary villain Hector Hammand, Tim Robbins as his father, and Angela Bassett as Dr. Amanda Walker. Blake Lively is still being hidden from view as much as possible, which can't be a good sign. The key issue remains the same as the other released footage: next to no actual scenes of Ryan Reynolds in action as the Green Lantern. It's still the same helicopter rescue, gattling-gun scenes that we've seen before. Of course, there's still six weeks to go, with the special effects burden adding $9 million to the budget, but you'd think Warner would want to show off footage of Hal Jordan kicking butt? And I'm frankly a little shocked that we haven't seen what should be the money shot (if it exists): countless Green Lanterns flying through space and/or doing battle with Parallax. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Updated: Green Lantern gets extended TV spots, sells cosmic scale to general audiences.

This TV spot ran over the weekend in various high-profile locales. It's 120 seconds long and, unless you're a nerd who looks up Wondercon footage, this is the first you've seen of the film since the disastrous trailer back in November 2010. As such, this extended spot is all about selling the scale of the picture and the intergalactic stakes. And on that note, it is a success. Reynolds is featured prominently, but mainly as an observer. In fact, the main problem with the spot is when the narrative returns to Earth for the last action montage, it feels less impressive than what came before. The only shots of Hal Jordan in action both come from the same scene of him beating up Peter Sarsgaard in a lab. Obviously this is marketing and Warner may be hiding at least some of the third act stuff (we already see what appears to be the death of a major villain) so we can hope that Jordan does more than stop a crashing helicopter and beat up a deranged scientist. I'm still impressed and cautiously optimistic thus far. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Now THAT's a trailer. Green Lantern Wonder Con footage.

Lesson to be learned: if you don't have the material for a decent trailer, wait until you do. Warner Bros. shot itself in the foot late last year with a rushed and cheap-looking Green Lantern trailer in order to debut it with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I. The word of mouth was poisonous and the marketing campaign pretty much entombed itself until this weekend. The guests at Wonder Con saw about ten minutes of new footage, and Warner decided to release four minutes worth. And it's pretty fantastic stuff. Sure, the effects are still work-in-progress and much of the film will likely resemble an animated picture, but... wow. The scope and scale is apparently everything you might want from a Green Lantern space adventure. The vastness of outer-space, the scope of the various alien worlds, the sheer intensity of the opening moments, and the fact that the outer-space menace (Parallax, I presume) actually looks pretty terrifying... I'm officially back on board for this one. It's no secret that I'm a big Martin Campbell fan, and it seems (for the moment) that my faith has been restored. The bad news is that while Allison liked seeing Green Lantern, she was a little freaked out by the last thirty-seconds, so she'll have to stay home on this one. Quite simply, I'm quite impressed and a little relieved.

Scott Mendelson

If The Dark Knight Rises ends up being based on 'Prey', which lucky leading lady will get this choice role?

Who should get this plum role? Anne Hathaway? Blake Lively? Rachel Weisz? Keira Knightly? Naomi Watts? Or how about Natalie Portman, fresh off her Oscar win for Black Swan? Her name is Catherine and she's the mayor's daughter. She has two or three scenes in the first two (of five) chapters of "Prey" where she engages in debate regarding the usefulness of Batman in Gotham City. Then she gets abducted in chapter three, as part of a plot by Hugo Strange to frame Batman and turn the city against him. Catherine spends literally the entire remainder of the five-part saga stripped to her bra and panties, gagged, and chained to a bed. Oh, and as for Catwoman, she's barely in it. And we wonder why it's so hard to get females to start reading mainstream superhero comic books...

Scott Mendelson

Martin Campbell's Green Lantern gets a shoddy, choppy, awkward trailer.

Go here for a high-quality HD version. That was shockingly bad. I don't just mean that the tone was juvenile, the acting overly broad, and the action relatively earth-bound. I mean that this is one of the worst-edited trailers I've seen from a major release in years. The only bits of genuine visual 'wow' is at 1:25, as we see a glimpse of Oa with a token cameo by (I assume) Sinestro. The whole thing feels disjointed and choppy, without any real flow or narrative logic. Hell, for people not familiar with the mythology, the clip is pretty darn confusing to boot. It would be one thing if this were a brief teaser that highlighted the visual 'money shots'. But this is a full 2.5 minute trailer that's mostly set on Earth, and there's not even a token attempt to explain the universe or any of the characters. The effects seem okay, and even the much-derided CGI costume looks okay to me. The action seems a bit larger than Thor, for whatever that's worth. What's most striking about this initial tease is how generic it is. Yet another cocky arrogant young man is tempered by supernatural powers and the awesome responsibility that it brings, but he's secretly afraid of failing. Again, I believe in Martin Campbell. He made two of the very best James Bond films of all-time (Goldeneye and Casino Royale) as well as one of the finest superhero adventures ever (The Mask of Zorro). I'm just not sure how much I believe in Green Lantern. This one touches down on June 16th, 2011 (ironically the spot usually reserved for Batman pictures in 1992, 1995, 1997, and 2005).

Scott Mendelson