On Justin Timberlake as Green Lantern

Last night the news broke online that Justin Timberlake had screen tested for the upcoming Green Lantern film, and is in serious contention for the role. Timberlake would play Hal Jordan, the Earth member of a galactic peacekeeping force who fights evil with a magic ring controlled by willpower. (The character might be harder sell to movie-goers than most superheroes.) Jordan was created in the early sixties as a square-jawed, no-nonsense test pilot, and is as bland as his heroic trappings are outrageous. Some argue that the character doesn’t really work outside of the sixties context, and the best Hal Jordan story in memory is the retro-leaning New Frontier. Unlike Iron Man’s Tony Stark, a genius/arrogant cad, or Spider-Man’s Peter Parker, a vulnerable screw-up, there has never really been enough to the character to make for reinvention or contemporary relevance. Which is why if the JT stunt-casting happens, it could elevate Green Lantern from a generic action film to something else entirely.

During my years as a dedicated weekly comics-buyer (grades 5-7, approx.) I followed Green Lantern from month to month, but it wasn’t Hal Jordan stories I was reading. Midway through the ‘90s, DC comics replaced the title’s central figure with Kyle Rayner, a hip, sarcastic graphic designer meant to attract younger readers. And, it worked, at least for relatively new fans like me. Meanwhile, DC editors had Jordan go insane, kill off a number of his colleagues, and try to rearrange time and space. In a nutshell.

Today, Hal Jordan is again at the center of the Green Lantern comics, after the folks at DC effectively hit the reset button and returned the title to the status quo of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. (They’ve recently done the same thing with the Flash, another hero who had been replaced with a younger, more complex character.) It was a move –one of the moves, perhaps- that betrayed the conservatism deeply embedded in mainstream superhero storytelling, and evidence of why there are probably more forty year-olds than fifteen year-olds reading DC books right now.

The possible casting of Timberlake is important partially because there’s so little to the Jordan character to begin with—unlike Robert Downey Jr. and Tony Stark, a pair that makes intuitive sense, putting an entertainer like Timberlake in the role could make for, well, nearly anything. Assigning an international superstar’s brand to this lesser-known superhero property potentially erases the baggage that comes with Hal Jordan. I have little doubt that if he’s cast, we’ll be getting Justin Timberlake, the Green Lantern, for better or for worse. At the very least, it would be a fantastic kind of mess.

[EDIT: Well, looks like it's Ryan Reynolds. Who's starring in Deadpool too, actually. Bro's gonna be busy. What might have been, eh?]

Battlestar Galactica Sex Appeal

Captain Apollo, with human civilization destroyed, it's obvious where you now spend most of your time. At the gym!

DC-related unintended double entendre of the day. Overheard on the train:

"He's deep in the annals of power."

Shameless Self-Promotion

Don't got enough friends yet, Mark Zuckerberg? Need more? Pathetic.

Bros Watch Forever

Battlestar Galactica Eps. 4-8

With only a foot into a long television series, or a novel for that matter, there’s always the temptation to extrapolate four or five hours of initial material into a thesis for the entire work. Sometimes the stretch works; the entire 80 plus hours of the Sopranos never really delves beyond the dark and family-focused boundaries that the first two episodes mark. Shows like the Wire and Lost though seem to have a case of plot ADD, never able to spend more than a season on a single story or group.
So indulge me for a single paragraph while I set forth my extrapolation of the entire four season plus webisodes series.

Battlestar Gallactica is an inquiry into what it means to be human cloaked in a sci-fi series. As the series progresses, the differences between the Cylons and the humans will only grow more and more bleary. The humans’ resolve will steel while the exact nature of the Cylons will become clear and they will be shown to have souls even though they are machines. The first eight episodes feel like Lost season one having seen the rest of the series. What you see is not what you get. Battlestar Gallactica is not a show about jet fighters and battles for supremacy between the humans and the Cylons. Instead, the series will try and answer exactly what makes humans unique and human when there is an identical race that is clearly not human.
OK. No more musings and speculation. Onto summary.

Episodes 4 and 5
Episodes four and five form one continuous episode bridged with a To Be Continued… in the middle. Has there ever been a To Be Continued so early in a series? I don’t think so.
The episode begins with a party for one of the battle pilots celebrating his 1000th landing. During the celebration, an accident occurs and a bomb blows up killing many of the fighter pilots. Because of this loss of skilled pilots, Commander Adama asks Starbuck to train a new set of fighter pilots.
The request to train new pilots brings up bad memories for Starbuck. You close watching watchers will remember that she passed Zak Adama through his flight training—the Commanders son and Apollo’s bro—because she was sleeping with him and not because he had the chops. It turns out she was not just sleeping with Zak, but they were engaged (and also having some steamy sex). In order not to have a repeat of this, she summarily flunks every new flight recruit Adama sends her.
Lots of discussion and drama ensues. Commander Adama finds out that she cheated Zak through training, kicks her out of his office, and tells her to train the god damned pilots. She says “Yes, Sir.” On the first of the new flights out, a Cylon fighter squadron is spotted, and in her remorse, Starbuck takes them on alone, killing them all, but also terminally damaging her fighter. She rockets down to a nearby planet.
Back at the fleet, Apollo and Adama are feeling guilty that they might have caused Starbuck to suicidally take on the Cylon fighters. They order the entire planet to be searched for her. President Roslin puts a stop to the search because it is endangering the entire fleet and wasting fuel. Apollo and Adama admit they are being too emotional, but WAIT! At the last possible moment, Starbuck reappears, flying a Cylon fighter she found on the planet!
Episode 6
Kaboom! The Cylons are infiltrating the Galactica and wreaking havoc blowing up stuff, and just who was the negligent crew member who allowed them in? In an attempt to allow for the rule of law, Adama with the consent of the President calls an independent tribunal to investigate who failed to prevent the Cylon from boarding. What at first is an orderly investigation fast morphs into a which hunt with Adama himself being called before the tribunal and accused of negligence. Adama dissolves the tribunal, but he realizes that he must tell the rest of the fleet that the Cylons now look just like humans. We learn that it was actually Deck Crew Chief Tyrol who let the Cylon in… or perhaps his Asian lover and secret Cylon Boomer. Boomer doesn’t know she is a Cylon, but her actions are starting to draw suspicion.
Episode 7
Gaius and Number 6 (the Blonde) get into an argument about whether there is a single god or multiple gods. It quickly becomes clear that Gaius doesn’t believe in either, and Number 6 vanishes from his head. She then pops up in the command center, as a defense specialist claiming that Gaius blew up key defense computers right before the Cylon attack. Gaius eventually repents dedicating his future life to God as long as he is allowed to survive. With his admission, Number 6 goes back into his head, Adama frees him.
Episode 8
The humans have captured a Cylon! And he is a slippery, mind-playing one at that. Because of her no-nonsense reputation, Starbuck is assigned to interrogate him and find out where he has hidden a nuclear bomb within the fleet. She tortures him but feels no remorse because he is not a human. They talk about theology, he professes to see the future and know the universe; she claims he’s a toaster oven. President Rosalind gets involved and at first appears abhorred that he has been tortured, but in a pretty cool scene she coldly orders him tossed into outer space. Unlike the Prez, Starbuck witnesses the Cylon’s death and is wracked by doubt wondering if he might indeed have a soul. The episode ends with Starbuck praying to the God’s for the Cylon just in case he does have one.
I’ve neglected to mention anything happening on Caprica with Boomer and that other guy. It’s a pretty lame plotline, we’ll update you if anything becomes of it.