Now Burnett is turning to Hal Jordan. "Green Lantern: First Flight" will be released on July 28, 2009. Here is a Q and A with Burnett:
QUESTION:
What made Alan Burnett the perfect choice to write Green Lantern: First Flight?
ALAN BURNETT:
They had been going through some ideas for Green Lantern stories and
none of them were quite working out and I came up with this notion
that I thought would be interesting. So, I just pitched it to them in
one line. “Have you ever done Green Lantern as Training Day?” with the
idea of the Denzel Washington role being Sinestro. They said, “That
sounds pretty good – start writing.” And that’s how it began.
QUESTION:
So this is a police story?
ALAN BURNETT:
We’re treating all the sectors of the universe as precincts and
there's, I believe, about 3,600 Green Lanterns – one for every
precinct. Hal Jordan covers our section. The story is essentially Hal
Jordan’s first day on the beat as a cop and he's partnered with
Sinestro. He's seeing the universe for the first time, and we get to
look at the universe through his eyes. It’s a bizarre place, but it's
also pretty recognizable.
QUESTION:
Is there a message within this film?
ALAN BURNETT:
Well, one of the messages is that I like lots of fights (he laughs). I
suppose it's the old “Don’t judge a book” thing. Appearances are
deceiving. Those who you think might be your greatest friend can be
your greatest enemy, and those you might think are of no use to you
could be the most important person in your life.
QUESTION:
Did the origin story development of Hal Jordan in Justice League: The
New Frontier influence your approach to this first Green Lantern film?
ALAN BURNETT:
I’d originally treated the origin story by going back to the very
first Hal Jordan/Green Lantern comic book. But ultimately, my script
was about 20 minutes longer than it should’ve been. Bruce Timm came up
with the idea of getting the origin done as quickly as possible, so
that’s where some cuts were made. Now we get the origin story done
before the opening credits, and we leap right into the adventure from
there.
Was there much research involved in writing this script?
ALAN BURNETT:
I've been keeping up with the comics, so I didn't have all that much
research to do. There has been a lot written on Green Lantern. I
actually think he's very complicated. Hal Jordan has gone through
changes in the comic books in the last 35 years or so that are just
shocking. But I didn't have to deal with his recent history because I
was going back to a story from his beginning. However, I am dealing
with Green Lantern characters who didn't exist when I started reading
the book, so there was a little bit of research on that. I've written
Green Lantern in the comic books on a few occasions, so I had some
notion of most of the characters I was dealing with in this film.
QUESTION;
What makes Green Lantern a great super hero?
ALAN BURNETT:
Green Lantern is sort of a unique super hero. When you’re writing his
powers, they do seem a bit odd – at times, they’re very sci-fi and at
other times very magical. It's like that old saying about the
technology being so advanced that it looks like magic. He has a ring
that allows him to construct anything he can imagine. One of the
tricks to writing about those powers is that, when you come up with
something he does with the ring, the audience is expecting to be
amazed, but also – and this is odd to say about a comics/science
fiction story – they need it to be in context, and it needs to be
believable.
Hal is also a very colorful character and he’s in the middle of this
big soap opera in space. It’s a very involving backdrop that opens the
door to telling a million stories with him. He also has one of the
great costumes – that great Silver Age suit from the 1950s. He was one
of the few, and maybe he was the first flying character, who didn't
have a cape. So he has this sleek outfit and it’s very striking.
QUESTION:
What makes Sinestro a great villain?
ALAN BURNETT:
We play Sinestro as sort of the bad half of Hal Jordan. As I was
writing them, I figured they were pretty close. They both have
distaste for authority. But Sinestro is the dark side of the Green
Lanterns – he wants absolute control, while Hal Jordan is more about
serving the people. The other thing about Sinestro is that he doesn't
think of himself as a villain. He has a plan which he thinks is going
to benefit everyone, but unfortunately what this plan does is give him
absolute power. And, of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely –
and you can see that it's corrupting him even as he tries to wield it.
QUESTION:
When did you first fall in love with comic books?
ALAN BURNETT:
I had read comic books like “Little Lulu” when I was young, but when I
was nine years old we took a vacation – and I always saved up comic
books for the vacation because it was a long trip from Ohio to
Florida. Into my stack that year I got the super hero comics and I
particularly remember bringing Batman. Somewhere around Kentucky, I
started reading my first super hero comic and it was like I lost my
virginity. It was just the most amazing thing. I was suddenly in an
adult world that I sort of understood and it was sort of made for me.
And I was hooked. I've been hooked ever since.
QUESTION:
As you exited Kentucky during that eye-opening trip, did you ever
imagine you’d be writing those comics and cartoons as an adult?
ALAN BURNETT:
When I was a kid reading this stuff, I never thought that I'd be
writing it. But you know, it’s because I did read this stuff then that
I write it now. When I started working at Hanna Barbara in 1981, they
were looking for someone to take over the Super Friends show and they
knew that I was a big comic book fan. Before that, I don't think the
story editors or the writers cared about super heroes. So I have two
degrees from college, and they don't mean as much to my career as
those four or five really intense comic book reading years between the
ages of 9 and 14.
QUESTION:
Who are your greatest writing influences?
ALAN BURNETT:
I have two major influences and it’s kind of strange to say them
together, but those would be Alfred Hitchcock and Woody Allen.
Hitchcock wasn't a writer, of course, but in a way he was because he
sat down with his writers and worked his way through the script with
them. I think there’s a lot of Hitchcock influence in some of the
action-adventure things I’ve done. It's just little things, certain
scenes or actions, that remind me of something he would’ve put in a
film. I think Woody Allen has influenced the way I interject comedy
into the action adventure. That’s my favorite genre: action-adventure
comedy. Like North By Northwest. That’s just a beautiful, beautiful
movie, and it’s as funny as it is thrilling. That's my favorite type
of entertainment.
For more information, images and updates, please visit the film’s
official website at www.greenlanternmovie.com
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