Ryan Reynolds Assures Fans, 'Green Lantern' Will Only Make You Laugh a Little Bit

I've never really understood this business that anything we've seen of "Green Lantern" thus far is at all problematic. I was - and (funds willing) still would be - a huge comic book consumer, and I remain a fan of the characters intellectually. Green Lantern should have a fair dose of levity, akin to the tone of the "Iron Man" films. It should be funny; not a comedy as such, but there have to be laughs in there.

Apparently some people disagree, and until Warner Brothers unveiled the awesome four-minute extended trailer over the weekend, were pretty much convinced this would be a whole lot of...I don't know, women falling or something.

"We were very careful to never push [the comedy] too far," star Ryan Reynolds said in an interview with The Playlist, "but you're dealing with a pretty inexplicable universe and you're dealing with a guy who's been transported to another galaxy, there's gotta be some moments of levity there 'cause the movie is not 'The Dark Knight,' and it's not a comedy, but it is somewhere in between."

Studios have been chasing that "Dark Knight" dollar for the past few years, promising "gritty, edgy" takes on established properties, and there were rumors going around that this policy would extend to "Green Lantern," but thankfully that hasn't seemed to be the case. Reynolds is right - this is huge, colorful, cosmic stuff, and some levity helps ground it and make it human.

And besides, what's so wrong with a superhero having fun with their incredible powers? The fan community gets all caught up in the responsibility of it all and sometimes forgets just how awesome it would be to have super powers. We could use a few movies that remember that.

The unfinished effects have also been criticized, but that seems like a willful ignorance of the process of blockbuster filmmaking. Effects for films are never finished until the movie is actually in theaters, and The Hollywood Reporter revealed that "Green Lantern" still has about 50% of the work left to go. With what we saw in the four-minute trailer, I'm not surprised - this is a massive film. Producer Donald De Line didn't get into specifics, but did note that the 3D conversion turned a "decent amount of post[-production]" into an "incredibly pressured" schedule.

So if you want to blame the shoddy effects of the finished product on something, turn to the current whipping boy for everything - the third dimension.