DOCTOR STRANGE and GREEN LANTERN Are The Same Film
Something that really grinds my gears is when critics/sites do “non-spoiler reviews” and “spoiler-filled review.” If you are doing a review, you do not need to include plot-specific information that would be regarded as a spoiler (twists, surprises, outcomes, etc.). At least, if you’re not a hack you don’t have to do it; you can write around these things and can fold them into larger points about themes or strengths/weaknesses.
But if there is a specific story beat that is deserving of dissection and discussion, then that is more suitable for a longer post or editorial. If there’s something about how the ending reaffirms certain societal ills or hurtful tropes—or even the opposite!—or if there’s a twist that is poorly done, you can allude to it in a review but these other formats are where people should diagram the ways in which the execution fails the film.
This is made especially irksome because there really aren’t that many varieties of stories. Tropes abound along with classic structures like the Hero’s Journey or the Shakespearean Five-Acts and so on, complete with familiar genre trappings. For example, audiences know that the good guys will win in ENDGAME—but it’s the way in which it unfolds due to character interaction, visual spectacle, and other elements of the execution that matter. So even if two pieces of entertainment are telling the same tale…the outcomes may vary wildly.
Over on ScreenCrush’s YouTube channel, the always excellent Ryan Arey discusses how 2016’s DOCTOR STRANGE mirrors many of GREEN LANTERN’s story beats, character arcs, and even superficial elements like appearances of Big Bad or their approaches to training montages. I’m sure that the 2011 DC movie will be reappraised in the not too distant future and get a lot of “it’s good, actually” posts (especially as the people who grew up on it become adults that write about pop culture and entertainment). But while sanity and perspective still reigns (in this particular instance, anyways), it’s fairly accepted that GREEN LANTERN is a bad film on a slew of levels, from designs to dialogue to character development and more.
It’s not just the nutsack villain or the evil diarrhea cloud that is the problem at the heart of Martin Campbell’s adaptation of the comic book. Those would just be laughable or even delightful sidenotes of crappy weirdness, if everything else was working. Instead they become easy signifiers that act as shorthand for the mountain of other botched decisions.
Arey, in his usual style that marries knowledge with psychology with wit, reveals the ways that LANTERN stumbled while STRANGE soared (levitated, anyways). It is possible that director Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill learned the lessons from Campbell’s failures, which is unfair for DC but still results in a satisfying film for audiences. The ScreenCrush host draws excellent parallels between the two while highlighting what was changed in order for DR. STRANGE to be a much more entertaining movie boasting greater developments in characters and themes.
Be sure to subscribe to ScreenCrush’s YouTube as well as follow them on Twitter. And absolutely follow Ryan Arey on Twitter, as he is a terrific commentator/editorialist/geek ambassador on all of these nerdy properties done in an entertaining manner with actual screen presence who really doesn’t have any rivals out there.