We loved it. Okay, well, I did; the 3D gave Kathleen some nausea issues, which hits her sometimes when she’s watching films that were retrofitted rather than shot that way. But when she wasn’t feeling sick, she liked it as well.
I loved the interplay between the Hornet and Kato, including the issues they both had with each other (culminating in a slugfest between Britt and Kato that actually goes on a lot longer than you’d think it would considering one of them is, y’know, Kato.)
Furthermore, everyone in the film has issues, including the crime boss with the unlikely name of Chudnofsky who is, on the one hand, a top criminal boss but, on the other hand, is concerned that he’s not scary enough. It nudges the edge of camp but doesn’t quite go over.
As for Britt Reid himself, we have one of the favorite tropes of heroic fiction–father issues–in order to fuel the plot, but that’s fine. The notion of Britt actually having to live up to a family tradition of heroing is rooted deeply in the original radio show’s mythos. Speaking of which, there are frequent nods to the character’s history, including: the Hornet’s initial (and almost accidental) outing being in a costume similar to what was worn in the movie serial; Kato having a sketchbook that features a drawing of Bruce Lee; a photo of Van Williams up on the wall of the Daily Sentinel; and a Lone Ranger visualization that harkens back to the character’s family tie (in the original concept, he was the Lone Ranger’s grand-nephew.) And ultimately, of course, there’s the theme: “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” which accompanies a full-blown re-creation of the TV show’s opening credits with the hornet symbol coming right at you in 3D no less. If you’re a Green Hornet fan, the film’s worth it for that sequence alone.
Also, I have to say that Britt’s rationale for the advantage of the Hornet’s being thought of as a criminal is the best I’ve ever heard. Far more clever than just the notion that he can get near the criminals if they think he’s one of them. That never made a ton of sense; he has a rolling arsenal and Kato for back-up; he should be able to get near anyone he wants. Britt’s reasoning is steeped in the history of superhero movies, including several Batman films: in order to get the heroes to knuckle under, the villains frequently resort to threatening innocent people. But if the villains think the Hornet is one of the bad guys, that takes that particular weapon out of their hand. Why would the “criminal” Hornet care if innocent people are being threatened. Thus (figures Britt) no innocent people will be injured while the Hornet and Kato fight bad guys. This, of course, promptly falls apart when the Hornet engages in several high speed car chases that, considering the impacts, must have injured or killed a score of policemen. That downside never comes up, though.
The heatedly disputed Seth Rogen turns in an excellent performance, going from aimless playboy to determined hero who remains, through much of the film, out of his depth until he finally pulls it all together. Kick-Úš would definitely approve. And then there’s the breakout performance by Jay Chou, stepping into the high-kicking shoes of Bruce Lee. I don’t know if he was daunted by the prospect, but I think he did the master proud.
And finally, in the “I called it!” department: Remember how for the past week I’ve been citing two particular episodes of the TV series as my personal favorites? Well, all I’ll say is that the plot of one of them features prominently at one point in the film, and is even resolved in the exact same way. So obviously I wasn’t the only one who had fond memories of that episode.
One Hornet adventure that does NOT factor into the film is the one where he meets Batman. For those who would like to see it, I am informed by Tom Galloway that it will be airing on the Hub on Saturday, the 22nd of January from 3 to 4 AM EST. It’s worth it just to watch Kato kick Robin over a desk.
PAD
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I had decided not to go when Ebert gave it one star, but now I think I’ll go.
Thanks
I became suspicious of Ebert’s ability to review superhero movies when he didn’t get the ending of Spider-Man, and stopped trusting it altogether when he reviewed the first Fantastic Four movie. He complained that the Thing was a ripoff of the Hulk and the Human Torch of the Flash, and about Sue’s reluctance to walk naked across the bridge while invisible (since naked invisibility shouldn’t matter, ignoring the fact that the bridge was covered in debris and broken glass from wrecked cars).
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This was cemented by his answer to a reader’s question to his newspaper column, asking why Spider-Man didn’t show up when the Hulk was in New York. His answer was, essentially, “I know they have the same publisher but I don’t think that means they ever met in the comics”. Granted, he shouldn’t be expected to be intimately familiar with these characters’ publishing histories to review their films, but if he’s not willing to do the thirty seconds of Google research to settle the question one way or the other (as with looking up the respective creation dates of the Thing and the Hulk), why run the question at all?
Wow, you’re right, he completely failed to get the ending of Spider-Man. But then again, every Roger Ebert review (especially since his post-surgery return) contains something that he doesn’t get or is flat-out incorrect, which is why I don’t read him anymore. That, and he’s gotten overly arrogant in his old age.
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But as for the FF, I don’t think he complained that they were rip-offs. What he wrote was:
“Unlike the others, who look normal except when actually exhibiting superpowers, [the Thing] looks like – well, he looks like his suits would fit The Hulk, just as the Human Torch looks like The Flash, and the Invisible Woman reminds me of Storm in “X-Men.””
Maybe he’s implying that they’re rip-offs, but to be honest I’m not sure what he means here, or just how the Torch bears any resemblance to the Flash or Sue to Storm. It’s just bad writing.
I’d read that Bruce Lee was a bit non-plussed that he was actually supposed to lose to Robin in that fight, and so started a rumor that he intended whup the tar out of Burt Ward during the filming of the fight scene. This apparently had Mr.Ward, who had studied karate somewhat, living in fear until the decision was made by someone in charge to have their fight be a draw.
Poor Robin. He never gets any respect.
Actually, I’ve been doing some further research into that.
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It turns out that Burt Ward actually regularly sparred with Lee. They were friends and work-out buddies and lived within five minutes of each other. Now in the original concept for the meet up, Robin was supposed to win and Bruce Lee said no way; Robin simply cannot beat Kato. So that was apparently settled at the pre-production stage with the decision of a draw. However, Lee then decided to have some fun with Burt Ward and began filtering word through that he was so outraged over even the notion that Robin could defeat Kato that he was going to take Ward apart during filming. Ward, thinking that Lee’s pride had really been injured to that degree, was absolutely terrified, because he already had personal experience of what Lee could do and knew that Lee could destroy him. Whether Lee actually told Ward beforehand that he was just yanking him or if he kept him hanging throughout the entire time, I don’t know.
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If you watch the fight closely, you’ll actually see Robin–for pretty much the only time–using actual martial arts blocks. That might actually be Ward.
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PAD
The way I had heard it (and I believe, IIRC, that this was in the A&E Biography on Bruce Lee), Lee started that rumor because Ward had been shooting his mouth off about knowing kung fu and what not and Lee started the rumor in order to just take him down a peg.
per Burt Ward’s autobiography, even before the show they lived in the same building, sparred together & would go out for dinner with their respective wives. He mentions and denies rumors of having been scared & praises Bruce as a fighter,family man and just as a human being.
I’ve been listening to the whole “But he’s a comedian! How could he possibly be a good Green Hornet?!?” debate with some amusement … and with the name “Michael Keaton” running through my mind.
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Yeah, I find that one a bit odd as well given how many actors that genre fans are familiar with have moved from comedy roles to drama roles to action roles and back again; often with roles that the genre fans are familiar with. 9 times out of 10 it’s not even close to a sensible argument anymore.
As someone who trained as an actor,* I can testify that comedy is harder to do than drama. It never surprises me when a a comedian makes the jump to serious actor, because they have all the necessary tools in place already. I can think of more serious actors who can’t do comedy (Harrison Ford, anyone?) than the reverse.
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*That’s where my formal training lies from my misspent college years. I’m not saying I was any good.
In the collection “The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told” (a collection of text stories that featured some pretty good takes that was created as a tie-in to the first Burton film), one of the best stories is entitled “Dying’s Easy – Comedy’s Hard”.
I have no problem with “comedic” actors taking on a serious role — as long as they do it well. For example, Robin Williams brought much of his rapid-fire comedy timing into GOOD MORNING VIETNAM and ALADDIN, where it worked fine — and then wisely completely abandoned it for movies like INSOMNIA and ONE HOUR PHOTO.
My problem with Seth Rogen in THE GREEN HORNET is it felt like he was acting the same as he always does. During the scene where he and Kato are discussing becoming superheroes, all you’d need are two marijuana joints and a few more “Dude”s and that scene could have come straight from KNOCKED UP or PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. To me, that wasn’t a good fit for an action/superhero flick.
My problem with Seth Rogen in THE GREEN HORNET is it felt like he was acting the same as he always does. During the scene where he and Kato are discussing becoming superheroes, all you’d need are two marijuana joints and a few more “Dude”s and that scene could have come straight from KNOCKED UP or PINEAPPLE EXPRESS.
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That may well be where the disconnect between your opinion and mine originates. I didn’t see “Knocked Up.” I didn’t see “Pineapple Express.” I saw bits and pieces of “Zack and Miri” but never the whole thing. So aside from his voice work in animation, I have very little exposure to films that he’s been in because most of them are simply not aimed at me.
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So you were mentally lifting a slacker persona (I assume) that he’s played in other movies and feeling that it was just being slapped onto an already existing superhero property, and so you had a problem with it (at least that’s how it seems to me.) I, on the other hand, being largely unfamiliar with his work, was able to judge it for itself, solely within the context of this movie. Based on that, I thought it was a lot of fun and had no problem with it.
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PAD
I think James pretty much encapsulates my feelings on Rogen’s performance as well. The script tells us that Britt has matured, but I don’t get it from Rogen’s performance at all.
I had no issue with a comedian playing the role. I thought he was… okay, and that’s about it. Would have been more impressed if it didn’t feel like every other character he’s played…. in a mask!
I saw THE GREEN HORNET today, and I most definitely disagree with PAD on it. For my full review, it’s at http://thearmchaircritic.blogspot.com/2008/08/pineapple-express.html For some non-spoiler thoughts, I found Seth Rogen annoying for almost all of the movie, like a comic constantly trying to do schtick. The 3-D was completely unnecessary, and I found Kato’s combo of Terminator-style targeting and almost-MATRIX bullet time annoying. Yes, Rogen’s rationale for posing as criminals made more sense, but that was about the character’s only contribution to the duo. (This might have worked better as a straight-up comedy, about a hapless hero whose “sidekick” does all the work and constantly saves him. (Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the Sherlock Holmes comedy WITHOUT A CLUE.)) And why not just make Cameron Diaz’s character the crime reporter, instead of a secretary who just happens to know more about criminals than any other character in the movie?
I saw the GREEN HORNET show for the first time earlier in the week and found it simple and entertaining. The movie just annoyed me.
Well, different strokes. I didn’t find him annoying at all, nor was he trying to do schtick. He came across as what he was: an aimless rich guy who decided it would be cool to be a crimefighter, but was content to leave much of the heavy lifting to his sidekick…who then took offense at being considered a sidekick. For something as unreal as a superhero movie, it was a surprisingly realistic take. Nor do I think you’re giving Britt his full due: He was the emotional drive of the story; he came up with the idea of using Kato’s resources to help people; he came up with the angle of being criminals; he realized that Lenore Case was a potential resource and thought of tapping her, without her knowledge, for guidance; he figured out the entire backstory of the criminals; and he specifically requested something for the Black Beauty that was a major plot point later.
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Kato’s “targeting” was just a visualization of what a kung fu expert does in a given situation: zeroes in on the closest and immediate threats, determines where everything is, and then tracks it as he goes to work.
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So basically the things you find annoying are what I find realistic.
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Now here’s where I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you AND James on a few points.
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*SPOILERS AHEAD*
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I was annoyed that Britt falls into the role of villain mainly through an act of petty vandalism that he goes on to exaggerate for his own purpose. I’m not against the idea that Britt would use the Sentinel to further the myth of the Hornet as public enemy number one, but I don’t like that it all springs from Britt cutting the head off a statue (“Simpsons did it!”)
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As an armchair scriptwriter, I would have left the public’s perception of the Hornet at a “Hero or Villain?” level until after the fight at the Sentinel, where given its outcome, the Hornet could only have been branded a criminal.
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And speaking to the fight at the Sentinel, and what led up to it, am I the only one really annoyed that they made DA Scanlon a corrupt official? To me that feels as wrong as making Commissioner Gordon a crooked cop whom Batman allows to die.
Can’t reply directly to FilmBuffRich (too many layers down in the thread), but here’s my take on the DA Scanlon question he raises:
**SPOILER WARNING**
It worked for me for two reasons: first, Scanlon’s story at that point explained a lot about Britt’s father’s actions — and second, what I abruptly realized about the movie as a whole is that in a lot of ways, it’s a mirror-image of Nolan’s The Dark Knight, with Chudnofsky and Scanlon as Britt’s versions of the Joker and Harvey Dent. The two films are by no means in perfect parallel, but I think the resonances are clear and deliberate.
For the most part, 3D is almost ALWAYS unnecessary. It’s simply a given for the time being, and I don’t think it’s fair to judge an action movie at the moment based on that.
It’s a fad, and it will pass.
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I’m not sure it’s a fad this time. The blue and red glasses 3D that relied on extra lines being drawn on the film that screwed with the picture and the color was a fad simply because the technology was dámņëd poor. This is something different.
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This is much closer to “true” 3D where the only picture issue is the darker image and that can be dealt with easily already. Plus the money being rolled out to make this tech work at home is a sign that having this as the norm is already in the pipeline as the desired goal of the movie industry in the near future. The blue & red glasses gimmick never really had major industry support and home theater industry support.
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I was in best buy the other day and they had the new HD-3D TV set up with Avatar playing on it. It was the first time I’d seen the new tech up close and personal and I was blown away by how good (barring the darker image) the thing looked. The price wasn’t all that out there either.
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And if you don’t like the 3D or can’t watch it without getting sick? Don’t use the glasses. Unlike the red & blue glasses era 3D you can watch a new 3D film without the glasses and it looks like a normal film. This tech has all the upsides that the movie industry wanted out of 3D and none of the downsides that the old 3D had. It ain’t going anywhere any time soon.
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That should read…
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It ain’t going away any time soon.
“This is much closer to “true” 3D”
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Eh, I think regular 2D is closer to true 3d than this stuff. Depth perception is a massively overrated part of how humans perceive the three dimensional world. 3D technology doesn’t really simulate anything more than stuff being waved a few inches in front of your face.
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Regular 2D movies actually simulate depth pretty well. You can tell when one character is farther away than another. You can look at a hallway and tell that it’s long. Human perception of depth is much more complex than our eyes being 4 inches apart.
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I disagree, Jason. I think the new tech (or at least what I saw with that home theater demo) looked amazing and had a good sense of “real” depth to it that a flat 2D doesn’t. But that’s the beauty of the new tech VS the old stuff. If you don’t like it you can just take the glasses off.
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In a way the new tech likely makes opinions like yours and Rich’s meaningless to the movie companies and the TV manufacturers. If 3D becomes the only option it won’t stop you from watching because you’ll just watch it in 2D. The only issue you’ll run into is when they adjust the bright settings (as they’ve supposedly done for 3D showings at the Alamo Draft House) so that the 3D image is showing at the proper light levels. You’ll be stuck with 3D or a slightly brighter than proper image. But that’s something you can adjust on your home set and that the 3D manufactures and theater owners will likely address for people with medical problems or queasy stomachs by handing out gray tinted glasses that dim the bright image without doing the 3D effect.
‘the 3D manufactures and theater owners will likely address for people with medical problems or queasy stomachs by handing out gray tinted glasses that dim the bright image without doing the 3D effect.”
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There’s nothing they can do about the medical problems. There’s actually more than one biological function going on to measure depth. The comparing of the different images each eye receives creates the 3D illusion, but the muscles in each individual eye also change with distance, and those register a flat screen. So those different systems are getting conflicting information about distance, which causes headache and nausea. This affects older people more than younger, which is part of why the 3D trend is strongest in children’s animated movies right now.
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I’ve heard several people say that they did better with Avatar than with most 3D movies, but there’s no indication that the industry is heading towards a time where every 3D movie is done as well as Avatar. Even that wouldn’t solve the problem for everyone.
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The current technology is certainly better than the older tech, but there are still significant drawbacks to the tech. And I haven’t heard much about 3D TVs that was at all positive.
I’ve never been able to get 3d to work, myself. I put the glasses on and all it does for me is turn everything red and blue. I wear glasses to correct near-sightedness, don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but for me, all this 3d flap is a bunch of sound and fury.
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“There’s nothing they can do about the medical problems. There’s actually more than one biological function going on to measure depth. The comparing of the different images each eye receives creates the 3D illusion, but the muscles in each individual eye also change with distance, and those register a flat screen. So those different systems are getting conflicting information about distance, which causes headache and nausea. This affects older people more than younger, which is part of why the 3D trend is strongest in children’s animated movies right now.”
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I think you misunderstood what I was talking about. I don’t mean that they’ll fix the thing so that people with medical problems can see the 3D, I mean that they’ll hand out to people who cannot watch the 3D ordinary sun glasses that are the right shade level to compensate for the brighter screen. My wife can’t watch the new 3D in all of its glory because the new 3D will give her massive migraines at best, migraines with black spots in her vision at slightly less than best and maybe a full on seizure at worse.
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She can’t watch the new 3D, so if they get to the point that it’s the norm (and they’re upping the bright levels in the projector settings to compensate for the darker image caused by the 3D glasses) she and anyone like her will have to wear tinted glasses to reduce the brighter picture to proper levels.
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“I’ve heard several people say that they did better with Avatar than with most 3D movies, but there’s no indication that the industry is heading towards a time where every 3D movie is done as well as Avatar. “
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Yeah, but most movies aren’t done that well anyhow in 2D. I don’t think the overall quality will get better unless the filmmaker behind any given film is better, but I think that this time the 3D tech is here to stay and will slowly become more and more the norm.
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Gray64,
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The new 3D tech doesn’t use the red & blue thing anymore. It’s way beyond that.
3D didn’t last in the ’50s, it didn’t last in the ’80s, and it won’t last now. People already seem to be getting sick of it, and realizing that it doesn’t really add anything to the movie.
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Maybe, but then I’m one of the ones who hated it in the 80s because I couldn’t stand all of the little red and blue lines and when it was done badly you couldn’t take off the glasses and watch the film at all thanks to those dámņëd things. I kinda like this tech and apparently so does the industry. They’re sinking a lot of money into it and into the home theater and home gaming ends of it.
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It might not be the fad that the 50s and 80s red & blue glasses 3D was.
But most 3D movies in the ’50s and ’80s used the same polarized glasses they use now. The red and blue glasses were rarely used.
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Not in my area. All we ever saw was the red & blue deals. That’s also all you ever saw for home use.
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Just the fact that you’re not seeing those things at all this go around says something about how the inustry is pushing 3D this time VS before.
I think 3D may be here to stay for some films but we will definietly not see as many as they were predicting and stuff like the Green Hornet is one reason why.
It was shot in 2-D and later converted to 3-D. Films like Avatar were actually shot with a two camera process that imitates the human eye. It’s the difference between reality and a viewmaster.
I’m sure they did a better job on GH than they did on CLASH OF THE TITANS or THE LAST AIRBENDER but I’m not paying extra for faux-D. Rather see it in 2-D if that’s how it was filmed. If anything will kill 3-D it will be the perception among the public that it’s being used to pimp up films the studios have no faith in.
(Jerry, I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say you can just take the glasses off and there is no problem–I see a lot of ghosting. Unless it’s something like LAST AIRBENDER where half the time I’m not sure there was any 3-D at all.)
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Hmmm…
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I wonder if the ghosting is a problem with the 3D being forced onto a 2D film? Or did you see a 3D shot in 3D?
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I’ve only seen one film in the theater in 3D (or, to be more accurate, about 3 minutes of it while trying to find someone) and that was Avatar. I wasn’t wearing the glasses that everyone else had on and I didn’t see any ghosting; and it was a heavy action scene with lots of movement on the screen. But I have been told by several friends who go to a lot more movies in the theater than i do lately (i.e. just about anyone) that when the 3D bugs them or it’s just painfully bad that they just ditch the glasses for a bit. None of them have said anything to indicate that there was an issue with doing that.
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The home tech certainly didn’t seem to have any ghosting issues though. The set up I saw in Best Buy (also showing Avatar) on an HD 3D TV looked fine with or without the glasses. Maybe it has something to do with the model and age of the projector in the theater?
Color isn’t usually “necessary” to tell the story either. But it’s a tool available to artists to use or misuse.
Umm, that link does not lead to a review of Green Hornet, nor do I find a review of Green Hornet elsewhere on the blog.
As for me, I saw the movie today (in 2D), and generally enjoyed it. I think there’s room for a lot of discussion about the way the film characterizes Britt Reid — you can make a persuasive case that he’s been explicitly designed as the exact opposite of Bruce Wayne/Batman — but I’d call that at least as much a scripting issue as a matter of Rogen’s performance.
Like PAD, I have seen very little else of Rogen’s work, and so didn’t have that baggage going in. I do think that this version of Britt skates awfully close to being excessively annoying at times, but the movie moves fast enough that he never quite crosses the line into “offensive”. It’s a close thing at one or two points, though, and I hope that this aspect of Reid’s character arc is addressed if this gets a sequel.
One other observation: this Green Hornet is very much a creature of Los Angeles, in that for most of this film his single major asset is the Black Beauty. These sorts of car chases would, I think, be impossible to pull off in a Manhattan setting, and the Hornet himself is too reliant on the car to operate effectively without it as yet. Which is, I suppose, another sort of sequel fodder….
It sounds great, and I have every intention of seeing it as soon as the budget allows, but I’m still waiting for the Cowboy Pete review of “The Cape.”
Re: Bruce Lee as Kato vs. Burt Ward as Robin.
The “Black Panther” vs. The “Yellow Chicken”. 🙂
Anyone know if the Green Hornet year one comic by Matt Wagner is worth a read thru?
I haven’t read it, but it’s Matt Wagner, so that would usually be sufficient for a recommendation.
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Speaking of Matt Wagner, if you haven’t read his recently completed run of Zorro, check it out. Great stuff!
In the end, the whole Green Hornet movie “controversy” reminds me of a classic song that is re-interpreted by different singers over the years. Some versions rock (being so good that the original singer is almost forgotten); some versions become easily forgettable; others make you go “What were they thinking?”
Personally, I didn’t like the 180 degree change of one character. Trying to avoid spoilers but if you see the TV show’s opening credit narration and then this movie – it will be clear.
My version of GH still is the TV show – with all its flaws (nothing is perfect) – for some people this Rogen version will be “their” GH. And I say with all honesty, “Good for them.”
Speaking of the 3D controversy, does anyone know if the new Tron was a 2D movie that was converted into 3D? I recently saw it again, this time in a 3D Imax theater. I was unpleasantly surprised to see so little actual 3D in the film. The Pirates of the Caribbean 4 3D trailer had more 3D in two minutes than Tron had in two hours. I assume that was the difference between shooting in 3D versus converting 2D.
AFAIK, parts of it were filmed in 3D, parts were filmed (and screened) in 2D which was entirely intentional on their parts. There’s even a notice to that effect at the beginning. I thought it was done well. I was pleasantly surprised to not see a lot of the standard 3D gimmicks of things flying at your face at high speed (which is where I think 3D usually *really* fails. If you need to resort to stuff being thrown at the audience to make the 3D work, then you haven’t done your job as a filmmaker. ‘Course, that could just be ’cause I don’t like things flying at my face…).
From what I saw, it was 3-D when they were on the Grid, but 2-D in the real world.
Correct. It was a bit WIZARD OF OZ in that respect.
It was shot in 3D (the parts that are in 3D, natch). I think the lack of impressive 3D in Tron:L is more due to the inexperience of the director.
My problem was not with Rogan himself (I have little history with him), nor with taking a more humorous basis for the GH tale, but because it was all so uneven, unable to decide which category or two to fit into. Gritty crime drama? Super-hero romp? Tarantinoesque violence escapade? Campy frat film? Redemption and maturity arc? And, sure, there’s comedy, but within that realm, what kind? Farce? Goofball? Dry? Juvenile? Situational? Absurdist? Fart jokes? From “this is deadly serious” to “this is just stupid” to “Britt’s finally becoming a hero” to “Britt’s a buffoon” way too much and way too inconsistently. That’s as true for Chudoffsky as much as for Britt, and even to a degree for Kato.
It was also a surprisingly violent film. Much of it was “lots of guys get bloodlessly shot” and “big exploding car crashes (from which there are few if any injuries”), interspersed with (esp. at the end) some particularly gruesome ends. There’s nothing wrong with the violence, but it felt unexpectedly over the top in context.
On the other hand, for a 3D retrofit, it was fine; the Black Beauty was awesome (if occasionally deus ex machina), and Chou’s moves were lovely (comparisons to Lee or not).
I’d wait for Netflix. Or borrow a DVD from someone, assuming anyone still buys DVDs.
It took me two days for this to hit me: One thing that frustrated about the film was that it’s advertised, and for a large part pretends to be a superhero film, yet Britt never becomes a “superhero” in the classic sense. They really end up more like 80’s film vigilantes, and Britt still seems to be the same bufoon he was at the start. I get it now though. The whole time he’s playing at being a superhero. His big transformation is realizing that using the Sentinel is the best way to be helpful. He’s played at being Superman, but grows up enough to become Clark Kent.
Also I feel very dumb. I went in looking for a Lone Ranger reference (even wearing my Lone Ranger t-shirt) and I missed it. Where was it?
David et al.,
Here’s a review I published on YAHOO and ImDB…you’ll notice I agree with your review…plus I caught the plot reference to the original 1966 tv series…and I think the reference was well done in the story of the movie:
Seth Rogen co-wrote and acted the part of Britt Reid/Green Hornet in a movie set in modern day Los Angeles and when the movie is over you think to yourself: He got it right!
It is right to cast Rogen as a very flawed rich kid, who steps-up into his role as a masked “super”-hero to do something so he is no longer wasting his potential…coming along with him on this fun ride is Kato…a “human Swiss army knife” who has a gadget for every challenge and also an ability to fight off multiple attackers making it look like some sort of interpretive ballet as a contact sport.
The Action sequences are EXCELLENT! In fact, the penultimate fight at the building housing the Daily Sentinel’s printing presses and offices ranks up there with the fight at the office building at the end of Terminator 2, where the Terminator fights off scores of police to get John Conner and his Mother to safety.
The cars are supercalifragilicious-expealidotious! The Black Beauty looks great and has more gadgets than is possible to imagine. There is a great throw away line to “why not ejector seats?” which leads to a very, very funny gag later in the movie. I could write another 100 paragraphs on the Black Beauty and how cool it is in form and function and just plain fun to drive. In this era of “small, electric powered, ecological cars” it is just plain joyful to watch the good guys tool around town in a big, gas powered, powerful car with every possible helpful gadget the heroic good guy {pretending to be bad guy} would like to have. I’ll sum up by saying, the cars in the Green Hornet are THE coolest cars in the history of the movies.
The first time Britt and Kato suit up as the Green Hornet and well, Kato, as they speed out of the garage there was a sense that a rocket was taking off and everyone in the movie audience wants to be in the Black Beauty with them!
Rogen, whose work I was unfamiliar with before I saw this movie, is impressive…in being one of the writers of the this movie he exhibits a good sense of fundamental story telling…and a good story is the usual element most lacking in all “superhero” movies.
I appreciated the fact that as with Tony Stark in the “Iron Man” movies, Seth Rogen’s Britt Reid doesn’t change his fundamental character when he puts on a mask and costume. In fact, when he is “in character” you see him flailing about looking for bad guys to rout and you know he will “get the hang of it” but there is truly pleasure in watching him “grow into” the role.
It is most pleasurable to watch Rogen’s Britt Reid and Taiwanese singer J. Chou’s Kato grow from being almost complete strangers to first…boss and employee, then…two guys driving around in the coolest car(s) ever seen on screen, then…partners engaging in brotherly fisticuffs over who is in charge and finally partners…teaming up again to rout the bad guys. Are Rogen and Chou up to filling the shoes of Van Williams and Bruce Lee who played the Green Hornet and Kato in the 1960 ABC tv show, The Green Hornet? Yes, and then some…Rogen’s performance is a delight to me. He is much more real playing Britt Reid with all his flaws than Van Williams was, considering Van Williams never, ever seemed to even break a sweat while he was emoting at a stolid, “if I crack a smile no one will take me seriously” level. As for Chou…he is very compact and you don’t get the physicality in his performance as you did with Bruce Lee…however, Chou is much more Britt Reids’ friend and the Green Hornet’s partner than Bruce Lee’s Kato was and thus it’s just better characterization.
The villains are bad guys that you cheer against. The lead villain, played by the horrific Nazi in the movie, “Inglorious Bášŧërdš” is scary and silly at the same time as he decides he is too non-descript to compete in the world with the Green Hornet and the silliness develops further as he goes from non-descript to a sort of low-rent “Super Villain”.
The special effects and stunt work are traditional cars used as battering rams…but there are two stunts so outrageous that they recently served as the “myths to be tested on a recent episode of Mythbusters”. On Mythbusters, one of the stunts was shown to be most plausible and the other was shown to be completely busted. In the movie, both stunts were fantastic.
Cameron Diaz is portraying an intelligent, modern career woman in her version of Lenore Casey. She is a most welcome update on the blonde secretary from the 1960’s show and she also has no problem saying no to the boys…which makes their interactions less stereotypical and more interesting for that. Unlike Pepper Potts in the Iron Man movies, Lenore Casey in this movie has no trouble calling both Britt Reid and Kato on their “bad boy” behavior and making them toe the line with her.
As for the music, it’s presence enhances the movie. The people who pick the music and decide where it should go in the story picked the exact right time in the story to have the iconic music of “Flight of the Bumblebee” playing…a perfect reminder of the 1960’s tv show.
Another welcome reminder of the 1960’s tv show…at the end, Lenore suggests a strategy to deal with a ahem,”medical problem” with the Green Hornet. Her solution is an exact duplicate of the same solution to the same medical problem that occurred in the episode of the Green Hornet TV series where The Green Hornet and Kato battled corrupt police officers. (that episode was entitled, as I remember, “Bad Bet on a 459”)
What would I change about the Green Hornet? I would make an announcement at the end of the movie to stay tuned for another thrilling adventure of the Green Hornet in movie theaters next year!
Thank you Mr. Rogen and company for giving me a very pleasant movie to see and resee in 2D and 3D as often as I want…there’s so many visual things to absorb in this movie, I expect I’ll be seeing it many more times to catch all the details.
I saw it today. Originally the plan was to see it on the 15th, but that plan (and the one to see it on the 22nd) got scuttled.
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Anyway, here are my thoughts on the movie (minor Spoilers may follow for those who haven’t seen it yet.
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Overall, the movie was good. I liked that even as a child, Britt Reid tried to help people (in this case, a little girl being picked on by bullies; but we didn’t learn the exact circumstances of young Britt’s fight until later); and that fighting back against bullies was part of his impetus to become the Green Hornet.
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I also liked how Britt was smart enough to ask Lenore Case what she thought the Hornet would do next, once he learned she’d studied criminology.
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I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Movie trailers can be deceiving. From the trailer, the impression I got when a news announcer said that James Reid had been found dead was that he’d been shot down or something like that. Not quite. In the movie, the report goes on to say that he was felled by an allergic reaction to a bee sting.
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What difference does it make, you might be asking? Well, I think Britt shaking off his ne’er-do-well lifestyle and taking active steps to fight against corruption like his father did is a better motivation for becoming the Hornet than in a roundabout way via his vandalism of his father’s statue at the cemetery. Revenge for his father rather than revenge against his father would have been a better motivation for Britt becoming the Hornet.
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Though that does raise an interesting question: What if that young couple he and Kato (mostly Kato) saved from being attacked hadn’t been in the area of the cemetery? Would Britt and Kato have just gone back to the Reid mansion, having succeeded in their symbolic bit of revenge for the broken toy, and that would have been that? I think it would have been. Yes, it’s great that even though he’s been an irresponsible party animal, Britt Reid wants to help people (at least people being bullied), but I’d rather he’d have become the Green Hornet to essentially fight bullies than to just happen to run into some after playing a prank.
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Britt later learns that his father was, in fact, murdered, injected with a toxin that has the same properties as the toxin(s) in bee stings. But that’s much later. At the very least, the script could have reflected that Britt had some doubts about his father’s death. Yes, Britt is forced to re-evaluate his feelings about his father, in view of how and why the senior Reid died; but that re-evaluation and Britt doubting his father’s death was an accident aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
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One thing I didn’t like is that even though Britt genuinely does want to fight against criminal gangs— who he probably sees as the grown-up versions of the playground bullies— and help the people of his city, he’s still something of an immature brat. I think a stronger story arc would have been: Britt’s father is killed, Britt gets a wake-up call about adult responsibilities; he becomes the Green Hornet, but he makes some mistakes along the way.
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Along similar lines, in the Lone Ranger and Tonto Graphic Album by Joe R. Lansdale, Timothy Truman and Rick Magyar, there’s a sequence where we learn the Lone Ranger had made a mistake in judgment shortly before he and his company were attacked at Bryant’s gap. The Ranger, alienated from Tonto because of what had happened, decides that he has to become what he’d set out to be, not what the dime novels have made him out to be.
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But back to The Green Hornet. At one point Kato accused Britt of acting like it was all a game. Frankly, Kato was right. Hopefully, if there’s a sequel, Britt will be more mature.
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Overall, despite a few flaws here and there, The Green Hornet was a good movie, and I thought Seth Rogen, who, again, I’ve never seen before, did a good job. Even though Britt remained an immature brat for most of the film, it was clear he had the potential to make something of himself. This is especially true at the end.
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I liked that the credits acknowledged the radio show, even though the TV series was a major influence. As a further acknowledgment it would have been nice if the murdered reporter was called Lowry. Fans of the radio show would have recognized it, but it would have just been a name to everyone else.
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As to the 3-D effects, they were good; but it seems there were only a few of them. They weren’t distracting, however. Which is a good thing. If they take you out of the story, what’s the point?
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On another note, I see, in scanning through previous comments that the quality Roger Ebert’s reviews of superhero movies has been called into question. I don’t remember if it was Ebert or Siskel, but when talking about Batman on their review program, one of them said they found it completely unbelievable when Bruce Wayne took Vicki Vale into the Batcave.
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So did I; because it never happened. Alfred took her into the Batcave, to Bruce’s surprise.
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One of them also said, during their reviews of Star Trek Generations/I> that Dr. Soran’s plans would have all been for naught (to say nothing of the many lives lost) had he leaped into the nexus ribbon and missed. Or words to that effect. Except Dr. Soran didn’t leap anywhere. He stood on that tower and let the nexus wash over him.
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JC asked if the Matt Wagner Green Hornet comic is worth reading. Yes. At least the first trade paperback is. I haven’t read any more than that. It’s set during the era of the radio show, but differs from the radio show’s canon slightly.
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Oh, and anyone who likes The Green Hornet and hasn’t sampled the radio show before should really do so. If not for the radio show, there never would have been the two serials, TV show, comics, or the movie.
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Rick
Revenge for his father rather than revenge against his father would have been a better motivation for Britt becoming the Hornet.
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Well, you could also argue that it would have been the more cliched motivation.
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I mean, isn’t revenge on behalf of a fallen father/loved one/mentor one of the standard tropes of fiction? The reason you’re drawn to the notion, Rick, is that you’ve seen it countless times before and so it seems natural to you. It’s comfortable; familiar. Isn’t that Batman’s motivation? The Punisher’s? “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” It was part of Luke Skywalker’s motivation until he learned that Vader WAS his father. The Bowler was out for revenge for her father’s death in “Mystery Men.” Pretty much every kung fu movie ever made features the death of a loved one or teacher at its emotional core (as sent up in “Kill Bill, Vol. II–itself a revenge-fueled film–when Elle Driver sneers, “That’s right: I killed your master.”)
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So here’s Britt Reid who’s just kind of drifted from one thing to another to another in his life. In that context, it made perfect sense for him to drift into crime fighting. He winds up making the right decision, but for all the wrong reasons. Plus being driven by revenge is simply one note. With Britt discovering belatedly that his father’s death isn’t what it seems, it not only allows him to play multiple emotional beats, but it provides the impetus for him to be focused as never before in the film.
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Personally, I liked the idea that they chose a different path to heroism than the standard “You killed my father! You must die!” trope.
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Though that does raise an interesting question: What if that young couple he and Kato (mostly Kato) saved from being attacked hadn’t been in the area of the cemetery? Would Britt and Kato have just gone back to the Reid mansion, having succeeded in their symbolic bit of revenge for the broken toy, and that would have been that? I think it would have been.
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Probably. And if Kato hadn’t known kung fu, Britt would have died. And if the thief who swiped the box office receipts hadn’t subsequently killed Uncle Ben, Peter Parker would be a very rich wrestling superstar. So what’s your point?
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You have to make SOME allowances for plot development. Otherwise you can second guess your story into oblivion.
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PAD
Pad,
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My point is that while revenge for a father/loved one/mentor is, as you said, a standard trope, it strikes me as a stronger motivation for Britt to become the Green Hornet than for him to just happen to witness an assault while he just happens to be pulling a prank in an act of symbolic revenge against his late father.
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You’ll note I said revenge for his father rather than revenge against his father would have been a better motivation for Britt becoming the Hornet, not that he should have been acting out of a one-note revenge theme. In the radio show, Britt’s father was very much alive, so his death had nothing to do with Britt’s motivation to become the Hornet. In fact, Dan Reid, to his son’s surprise, not only approved of Britt’s activities as the Green Hornet when he learned the truth, but revealed that he, himself, had ridden with his uncle, the Lone Ranger. So his father’s death needn’t have played any role in Britt’s impetus to become the Hornet. I’m just saying that since the senior Reid’s death did play a role in the movie, Britt acting on some degree of revenge for his father (even if he still thinks he’s an áššhølë) strikes me as the stronger and more believable of the two scenarios.
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What if Britt’s father was alive throughout the whole film, and Britt, following an argument, decided to decapitate an existing statue (in a park, let’s say) as belated revenge for his broken toy? And what if, as before, he and Kato saved a young couple, and subsequently decided to go the Green Hornet route? That would actually have been better, because it would have left open the possibility of a direct, man-to-man confrontation between Britt and his father (whether or not Britt’s role as the Hornet played into it). The question would have been “will Britt tell his father what he really feels, or will he continue to act out?”
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Are there cliches in that scenario? Sure. I’m just saying I’d rather have seen Britt doing something other than just happening to witness an assault after performing a childish prank when the first seeds of becoming the Green Hornet were planted. Here’s a thought that just came to me, a variation of that scene, which I think would have worked better: en route to the cemetery, Britt witnesses an assault, and hating bullies, impulsively tells Kato to stop the car. Before Kato can fully react, Britt has leaped from the car. Kato goes and saves his ášš. Later, still pumped up with adrenaline, they go on to vandalize the statue. Only later still does Britt think about helping people. The childish prank with the statue remains (as well as the related scene near the end of the film) but separated from Britt playing hero.
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Maybe it’s just me, but if the attempted rescue of the young couple had come before Britt and Kato went to the cemetery, the scene would have been stronger (though still a plot development). And true to Britt making the right decisions for the wrong reasons, he would still have gone on to vandalize the statue instead of thinking better of it, and going home.
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Rick