The Fanboy Divide: 'Green Lantern' and 'X-Men: First Class'



Green Lantern slavishly adhered to the source material.

By Mark Frankland

This is the first time I have written something in quite some time so I do apologise if I start rambling a little bit.

Anyway to the point of this article, I think that this year marks a rather odd occurrence for geek culture; namely the divide that separates the critical and fan reception of Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class. This article will read something like a mini review of GL and X-Men as well as an exploration as to the reasons why there is such a divide.

Now to play catch up for those who may not know the issue surrounding these two films. Green Lantern has been met with a largely positive reception from the fans, whereas it has taken something of a beating from the critics. The opposite situation appears to be true for X-Men, where the fans generally dislike it but the critics (and myself included) think it’s brilliant. This is not to say that there haven’t been fans VS. critics conflicts in the past; all one needs to do is look at a film like Tron:Legacy which was widely received by fans as being one of the most interesting, intelligent, and not to mention damn pretty films ever made whereas the critics largely thought of it as an underwritten mess with underdeveloped ideas which tries to sell itself on spectacle not substance.

Now to make things clear I do not like Green Lantern. I think it is a poorly written and directed mess, where characters randomly change motivations for no other reason than to serve the plot so thin I can practically see through it. To give the film it’s due, the first 20 or so minutes are quite good and Ryan Reynolds delivers a very good performance, further cementing his rather odd position in Hollywood as being the best part of otherwise atrocious (see what I did there?) comic book movies whereas I think that X-Men: First Class is one of the best comic book movies to come out in the last 10 years easily beating 90% of the competition and only just falling short of my personal favourite Spider-man 2. It’s a very smart, well directed, superbly acted character-driven film which touches upon the complexity of growing up and the horrors we all carry with us.

Mystique and Beast warmed up to one another in
X-Men: First Class, one of many divergences from the
the source material.

I think that the divide between fans and critics can be best summed up in two words: fan service. X-Men: First Class ignores the continuity of the comics with its changing of the initial line of up of characters, the actual dynamic between the characters (I AM LOOKING AT YOU BEAST/MYSTIQUE), and the precise look of the characters. Additionally, it also ignores the continuity of the other films in the series of which it is a part, ignoring various parts of the main trilogy as well as completely ignoring the entirety of X--Men Origins: Wolverine.

Green Lantern however celebrates the continuity of the books, especially the well loved (and for good reason) Geoff Johns run rather to the point of obsession including numerous random side characters in both background shots and important sequences—mostly Tomar Re and Kilowog—as well as various minor Easter Eggs such as the Star Sapphire logo on Carol Ferris’ helmet. But this slavish devotion to continuity is most obvious with Sinestro who, at the beginning of the film, states the importance of willpower over fear and that the only true way for a Green Lantern to be great is by being fearless until Parallax turns up and Sinestro basically turns to the Guardians and says “Do you know what we haven’t tried yet? Fear! Fear is f**cking brilliant. Let’s abandon everything we stand for and try yellow on for a week or two”.

Sinestro's adopts an affinity for yellow (off screen).

Now this change from green to yellow is an important part of the comic continuity for Sinestro BUT it makes no sense in terms of servicing the film and accurately starts off the films rapid and determined decline into awfulness. I have this awful feeling that the director knew the script was awful and just started patching the problems in the script with fan service nonsense to hopefully placate enough of the fans to make people like it. And it worked....sort of. The problem is the Green Lantern film is so obsessed with trying to hook in the fanboys by including so much of the comics story that it not only sacrifices good plot progression and character development in the name of it, but it also massively alienates the non-geek crowd who will make up 90% or more of the audience. This is especially apparent when one looks at the money that Green Lantern has raked in (here is a hint: not nearly enough to cover how much it cost).

However, if you look at X-Men: First Class, it basically ignored most of the continuity of the books outside of the Charles and Erik relationship in favour of crafting its own narrative, which better suits not only the audience but the actual film genre. And this dedication to ignoring the comics in favour of making a film that works is why the fanboys hate it. We all know that comic book fans love continuity and no other group of fans love continuity more than DC fans (hell 75% of DC events have been based around fixing continuity issues) and that is all well and good until you start praising a bad film, not for its merits, but how much it resembles the books you have read.

There are of course other more minor reasons that explain the divide in the fans and critics. Most obvious of these is that the fans wanted Green Lantern to be good so the ailing DC Comics universe could finally start taking some non-Batman/Superman steps to recovery and start looking more like Marvel’s cinematic universe so they just ignored all the parts that would damage their hopes and dreams. That isn’t an attack on DC fans either. I know when I left the cinema after Spider-man 3 I repeatedly told myself that it was good because I wanted it to be good so badly. And now only after many years of restorative therapy can I look back on it and realise exactly how bad of a film it is. And to be honest no one really thought we needed an X-Men: First Class film especially after being so brutally burned by X3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So looking to get some cheap points in, fanboys went in having already made their mind up about the quality of the film.

To wrap this all up from what I have been able to piece together from various news sources is that there isn’t going to be a Green Lantern sequel. And at best we will get an Incredible Hulk style reboot most likely staring Kyle Rayner (which will piss off the fans no end) and that we might get a First Class sequel, but it most likely won’t be directed by Matthew Vaughn.