The Green Lantern, and why Hector Hammond is (to me) the most interesting character

So I took some cute kids to Green Lantern last night. I'm not huge in to super hero movies (don't get me started on Dark Night minus Heath Ledger), but I actually quite enjoyed it. Graphics were cool, aliens were pretty cool which for me is saying something, the creepy villain monster was actually creepy, and Ryan Reynolds is of course adorable.

Here's my problem with super hero movies. The heroes themselves are just so one-dimensional and cliche, and the stories are always the same. Don't get me wrong, super heroes and their traditional plots are totally classic, which is why they've been around so long and generally work very well. I just prefer more complexity and unpredictability, I suppose.

Which is why villains are almost always so much more interesting then their hero counterparts. I mean, who would pick Jack Shepherd when you could have Benjamin Linus, or Harry when you could have Snape, or Shuester when you could have Sue, or Andy Sachs over Miranda Priestly...you get the point.

It's the layers that make the villains and anti-hero's interesting to me. When you realize that Snape and Ben and Hector are all just deeply in love, even if they can't help but be creepy about it. When you realize that Snape and Ben and Hector were all abused or mistreated by their fathers. When you see that Sue does have a heart in the form of her downs sister, and that scene when you come in on Meryl Streep/Miranda with no make-up...that scene is the quintessence of what I'm talking about.

It's the fact that under this:

there is this:

And under this:

there is this:

And that the good ones always have a pitiable and usually sympathetic reason for what they do:



Happy writing!
Sarah Allen

p.s. Whats that? I've mentioned Meryl Streep and Benjamin Linus a hundred times before? And Snape? I'm sorry, have we met? I'm Sarah Allen.