The trailer for Green Lantern: Comic-book movies are sometimes allowed to be fun

The first full trailer for Green Lantern has debuted, clearly hoping that if it hangs around for the next half-year or so before its debut that it can drum up some audience interest in the notion of a comic-book movie in time for summer. Further hedging its bets, this preview goes with the far more beloved framework of a Ryan Reynolds romantic comedy, putting People’s recently crowned Sexiest Man Alive in the light we’re all most comfortable with—namely, smooth-talking the ladies—and even taking to the skies in his big, phallic fighter jet to fuck the air, just the way it likes it. Then he meets what resembles a purple, glowing Mandy Patinkin from Alien Nation, who gives him his Green Lantern ring and then comic-book stuff.

All kidding aside, Green Lantern seems to be a direct rejoinder to the increasingly gritty, morally questioning, grounded-in-reality comic-book movies of late—completely necessary, considering Hal Jordan’s transformation requires flying through space surrounded by a mystical green cloud and fighting a very silly-looking Peter Sarsgaard as the hydrocephalic Hector Hammond. And the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously—that it makes being a superhero look like an awful lot of fun—could be just the thing to finally make comic-book movies a viable property, sarcasm sarcasm.