Another Challenge for the Green Hornet

As a compromise, it's not that bad.

The GREEN HORNET movie that debuted Friday was the culmination of a decades-long push to make a movie based on this radio-show hero created in the 1930's. The challenges were understandable. Apart from various comic book appearances in recent years, and a scene in the 90's biopic about Bruce Lee, the Hornet has been absent from popular media since his ill-fated 1966-67 TV series. That he remains known at all by people who are not old-time-radio cognoscenti probably results from that sixties TV series -- my favorite incarnation of the character -- which, while hampered by low budgets, a half-hour format that pretty much prevented any character development, and a serious tone that bucked the campy superhero vibe of the day, still had style to burn, cool threads, some nice noirish mise en scene, and Bruce Lee as Kato. Other pluses are the unique concept that the Hornet is a hero posing as a gangster (which probably worked best in the thirties) and the Hornet's status as a major influence on that other pulp-fiction rich guy who rides around in a fancy car with his sidekick, wearing a mask, and dealing out late-night justice.

And I've got some emotional investment in this property. When I was a little kid, the TV series was playing in syndication; and for some reason, I was obsessed with it. I read over the Whitman novelization of the TV series. I sought out whatever merchandising I could find from that over-merchandised series. I played with Green Hornet bendy toys and threw a fit when I lost them. I ran around in a Green Hornet sweatshirt and my dad's hat, wielding a black plastic squirt gun as my Hornet Gas Gun. Years later, I watched episodes of the series; and while I cringed a bit at some of the cheap production values, I found them stylish and fun -- particularly Bruce Lee's fight scenes.

Which brings us to the compromise in question: The new GREEN HORNET movie.

The movie is plainly based more on the sixties TV series than the radio show (although in an early scene the Hornet and Kato wear outfits that suggest their '30's incarnations). We have the '65 Chrysler Imperial Black Beauty (which lives up to its name), the sixties costumes (which look rather retro now), D.A. Scanlon (a decidedly different character than his sixties character, who was a mentor to young Britt Reid and the Hornet's "inside man") and Lenore Case, Reid's blonde secretary (whom Cameron Diaz plays with particular snap and a great deal of tolerant patience). We've also got the elements the series carried over from the radio show: The Daily Sentinel newspaper (here depicted as housed in the CAA building in Century City), supposedly a family-owned major newspaper in Los Angeles not affiliated with a conglomerate (now there's a fantasy element); Mike Axford, an Irish reporter in the radio and TV series, now an editor played by Edward James Olmos; and a theme of Britt Reid trying to live up to his father's example.

The best new thing the movie brings to the party is the updated Kato. In the TV series, it was clear that Kato was the better fighter of the pair, and had so much to offer that his role as Reid's valet and chauffeur seemed demeaning even as a cover for his true job. Here, Kato is depicted as a real person, much (much much much) smarter than Reid, and actually the lead in the partnership. He also has feat of clay, including his machismo and frat-brother attitude that alternatively draws him into collaboration and conflict with Reid.

The movie also brings money -- money to create set pieces that the TV series could only dream of. We don't have to deal with "midnight" scenes that were plainly shot in sunlight, or the massive use of repeated stock footage, that the TV series used to stay within budget. Plus, the director brings a certain style to the proceedings that I prefer to some of the blurry-shot action scenes in recent movies.

The weak point is the Hornet himself -- at least, as portrayed by Seth Rogen.

Apparently, Rogen is the compromise. The only way this long-gestating project could see the light of day was for writer-star Seth Rogen to bring his fans (of which I am not one) by depicting Britt Reid as Seth Rogen's standard screen persona. That is, rude, clueless, and deliberately, achingly, stupid. I say "deliberately" because Rogen's Reid starts out the movie as a self-made idiot playboy (supposedly his rebellion against his emotionally abusive father), the son of a newspaper publisher who has never read a newspaper all the way through. And throughout his character arc, he . . . never improves. Even though he places himself in a situation where he needs quick wits to stay alive, he does nothing to quicken his wit. Even the scene in which he puts all of the clues together (accompanied by one of the most unnecessarily arty montages you'll ever see), the movie emphasizes how stupid he is.

Now, the Hornet was not necessarily a complex character, either in the radio show or in the TV series. So the filmmakers had some broad character outlines to fill in. But as opaque as Britt Reid/the Hornet were as characters, the one aspect of both that could not be denied was their intelligence. Reid was young in the TV series, and was constantly compared to his father, but he was plainly a sophisticated businessman who was always on top of his job. Despite his extracurricular activities, his role as a publisher was not just a blind; his journalism was another weapon in his war against gangsters or racketeers. Indeed, the radio Green Hornet often went after crooked businessmen, a task that demanded Reid's business acumen. As for the Hornet, he played a vital role in the crimefighting team: He was the one who came up with the plans and strategies, and who carried them off with the sangfroid that allowed him to swagger into a room of thugs wearing a mask and an attitude.

Moreover, intelligence is simply a prerequisite for a hero such as the Hornet, who doesn't rely on superpowers or bullets (well, at least the non-movie Hornet stays away from the bullets). You can have a hero who isn't musclebound, or who doesn't have the best fighting skills. But you cannot have a private-eye-type hero like the Hornet who isn't smart. Indeed, it's difficult for any hero to function without intelligence, unless he's the Hulk. (Who's also green.)

A Hornet who is stupid, who glories in his stupidity, who succeeds despite his stupidity, is simply not my Green Hornet.

So it's a pretty good Green Hornet movie, except for one pesky thing: The Green Hornet.

Noir: Hollywoodland, Hornet, and Javier

I suspect that my fascination with film noir iconography originated from watching the '60's TV series THE GREEN HORNET at a tender age. I'm sure I did not see the Hornet in its initial run (1966-1967), since I was only one to two years old at the time. More likely a local station picked it up as syndicated reruns and ran it. But I was a big Hornet fan as a little kid. My parents would buy me some of the GH merchandise that was still left on the store shelves. (The series was put out by the same producers as the '60's BATMAN show, which was one of the biggest merchandising successes ever; and the producers entered into numerous licenses for the Hornet, convinced lightning would strike twice. It didn't.) In particular, I had a bendy-toy figure of the Hornet, which I would periodically lose, and raise a ruckus until my parents got me a new one.

A couple of days ago, I watched one of the early episodes of THE GREEN HORNET, "The Silent Gun," on a cable station. The series is best remembered today mostly as the American debut of Bruce Lee, who brought a catlike grace to his portrayal of the Hornet's sidekick Kato. (And everytime Lee springs into action on the show, you can't tear your eyes off him; he looks almost superhuman in his movement.) But what stuck with me was the scenes in which the producers sunk a little bit of money into shooting beautifully lit nighttime sequences, with the Black Beauty (the Hornet's big, nasty American car)tearing around rain-slick city streets, its green headlights reflected in puddles.

Of course, the reason the producers spent money on those shots was because the series made extensive use of stock footage. The sequences would be repeated whenever they wanted to set a bit of mood while getting the story from point A to point B. Most location shots, especially later in the series, used outrageously bad day-for-night effects. (In one, the establishing shot featured the Black Beauty driving down PCH, somewhere around Pacific Palisades, with the sun high in the sky. Cut to the Hornet in the back of the car, the windows around him black with night, as he tells Kato, "It's almost midnight." Uh-huh.)

Nevertheless, the show was, in my memory, the slickest piece of film noir ever made for television; and I've always thought that if onewere to become a crime-fighting mystery man, there's worse ways to roll than Britt Reid's approach: dress to the nines; play-act as a gangster; travel in a stunning car; and have Bruce Lee cover your back.

What brought these thoughts to mind was my back-to-back viewing last week of two recent noir movies: HOLLYWOODLAND, the biopic about the complicated life and death of Superman actor George Reeves; and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, the Coen Brothers' multi-Oscar winning meditation on implacable pursuit and death under the hot Texas sun.

HOLLYWOODLAND was pretty good, although the movie was far more engaging when telling the true story of Reeves than when depicting the framing device, the fictional/composite story of private detective Adrien Brody as he seeks the truth of Reeves's fate while dealing with the shambles of his own life. Perhaps the truth (augmented and concentrated) is more compelling than any fiction the screenwriter could come up with.

NCFOM, while nominally in the same genre as HOLLYWOODLAND, was far, far superior in quality. The Coen brothers grab your attention from the first frame, and won't let you look away, no matter how grim and horrifying events become -- and they become quite grim and horrifying indeed. The film is one of those few ones that reads like a novel (perhaps the result of following its source material closely, although I haven't read the book and am not in a position to judge): It does not follow predictible paths, but every path it follows feels right and fits into the overall rhythm of the piece. Furthermore, despite being lean on both dialogue and background music, whenever the movie concentrates on Josh Brolin as resourceful prey Moss or Javier Bardem as even-more-resourceful force of nature Chigurh, you can tell nearly every thought that goes through their heads -- even when their facial expressions barely flicker. It was excellent moviemaking -- though I'm still amazed that so many Academy members were enchanted with so nasty a film.