Wondercon attendees were treated to an extended trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern film last night. The trailer expands on a number of concepts that I was curious about, namely the setting up of the film’s main villain (Parallax?) and introducing us to the Green Lantern Corps in their entirety.

I’m not exactly a fan of the “angry oath” at the end, and am skeptical about the film as a whole, but Tomar Re looks kick-ass, and they’ve finally gotten around to showing audiences the ring’s functions. I know that we, as comics nerds, know the Green Lantern mythos inside and out, but we have to remember that there are many film-goers who have no idea how any of the concepts work. This trailer should help them a little bit, and generally make the transition easier.

Things I liked:

• Abin Sur’s escape from evil. Creative use of the ring.
• Tomar Re’s “this is who we are” intro
• Jordan’s pupils slowly turning white
• Hector Hammond being Parallax-powered, as it seems a bit stupid to say “a great evil is coming, but be sure to take a completely unrelated threat seriously, too!”

Things I didn’t like:

• Ryan Reynolds’ “pledge” to the lantern. Feels hokey
• Overly-CGI’d Sinestro.
• Giant laser from OA: That’s gotta hit someone
• The suit. The suit the suit the suit. It crackles with energy and looks hokey.
• The fact that we’re taken from Earth to Oa, then back to Earth to show Hal kicking Hector Hammond around. It’s saying “here’s all this scale that you never considered before” and then expecting us to consider a telepath/telekinetic a threat. He may be powered by Parallax, but he seems nowhere near as ominous as those black clouds of doom.