Monday, January 17, 2011

The Green Hornet

So I am sitting in front of the computer at this moment, reading RottenTomatoes.com and I am flabberghasted. It would appear that 166 critics have filed reviews of "The Green Hornet". By a vote of 72 to 94, the movie is rotten. The T-Meter reads 43%. The strength score is 5.1 stars out of 10.

Folks, I walked out of this movie something like 35-40 minutes into it. I couldn't stand to finish this crap. It was horrid to the uttermost farthing. I cannot believe that 72 critics, who are indexed by RottenTomatoes.com, could possibily give this movie a thumbs up. How can 43% of the critics in these United States of America possibly give this POS a thumbs up? Why? Why? WHY?

It is far worse than Hally Berry's Catwoman, and that stinker once swept the Razzie Awards. The Green Hornet is destined to win it all at the Razzie Awards this season. There will be nothing left over for any other stinker this year.

Catwoman was bad because of a poorly developed core idea, and an inconsistent director's tone. The problems found in The Green Hornet are far worse than that. Without having checked it out, I am very sure that this script went through the hands of 6 to 10 different writers. These writers did not agree upon a story line before primary photography began. This is always how the most calamitous shipwrecks occur. OH THE HUMANITY!

In all seriousness, I am sure the writers settled on the following methodology in writing this script. (1) They took 6 or 7 submission scripts, ran them through a document shredder, (2) they stuffed the shards into a canon, (3) they fired the canon, and (4) when the shards finally drifted down to earth, the natural pattern they formed became the script for the Green Hornet. No lie, that's how they wrote the script.

The result is clear: you will find fragments of several different stories scattered in the first 30-40 minutes of this film. This leads to major incoherancy problems. You litterally cannot follow this movie. You will ask yourself the following questions again and again in this movie: Why are we hear now? What are we doing? How does this scene follow from the last? Why are we moving to point B now? What are we doing here?

There are some major non-sequiturs packed inside the first 30 minutes of this film. I had a discusion with a dude at work who took his kids to see the Green Hornet. He agreed with me and said it got a lot worse in the second half. I congradulated myself for walking out early.

There are still more problems. Seth Rogan was a horrible choice for Green Hornet. I know you wanted to do an action comedy like Iron Man, and that constitutes a horrible explanation for a bad choice. You picked the wrong guy, period. You have the blood of a 1st round draft bust on your hands.

We should go to the center of the bullseye. The worst aspect of this movie is the initial choice of a marginal property. The Green Hornet is anything but the best Super Hero property on the market. I have always regarded it as being one of the worst examples of Super Hero comics.

Most of the distinct flavors of The Green Hornet are illconcieved. This is why the incomparable Bruce Lee could not save the TV series from a quick cancellation. It wasn't the way they dealt with the material. The core idea is just plain bad. To make this work, you would need a major reformation like the sort Nolan did with Batman Begins.