<![CDATA[io9: bruce lee]]> http://tags.lifehacker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png <![CDATA[io9: bruce lee]]> http://io9.com/tag/brucelee http://io9.com/tag/brucelee <![CDATA[Will Seth Rogen Make You Care About The Green Hornet?]]> No, probably not. Not even Rogen's self-deprecating humor can generate enough buzz to make me want to sit through this bargain-basement superhero movie. Rogen says Hornet, which he's co-writing and starring in, will be about a superhero whose sidekick (Kato) is more famous than he is. But to us, it's just more proof that movies have scraped the bottom of the superhero barrel.

Rogen has been writing the script with Evan Goldberg (Superbad). The movie is based on the radio serial and the later Green Hornet TV series and will have Hornet's Asain manservant Kato. But even Rogen's jokes about getting Kato to say cocksucker fall flat on my ears.

I think perhaps even Rogen may know that this movie is really just an excuse for him and his buddies to get high and run around in superhero outfits:

"To us, it was just this funny notion that, when you say Green Hornet to someone, the first thing they say is, 'Hey, Bruce Lee played Kato in that show.' We really wanted to make this hero-sidekick movie. ... For years we'd really been trying to write a movie that was kind of about a hero and his sidekick. When we heard the Green Hornet movie was up for grabs, we thought that could be the perfect way to do this story, because he is the only hero whose sidekick is more known than he is. We thought it would be a good way to tell this relationship story and just do a big crazy action movie."

Sorry Seth, the Green Hornet is a terrible superhero — who wants to watch a movie about a better than average crime-fighter or poor man's Bruce Wayne? Didn't we learn our lesson from Mystery Men? Do we really need/want another bumbling Hancock? Pick something else to parody or keep making moves about weed. That seems to be working. Leave the fat superhero jokes to comedy hacks. I fear this could be the beginning of the end for Rogen.

[Sci-Fi]

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<![CDATA[Green Hornet Wasn't Always a Paunchy Jewish Canadian]]> Everybody's buzzing about how Seth Rogen is attached to play superhero Green Hornet in the movie adaptation he's also writing. That means most people will think of the Green Hornet as a paunchy, Jewish hero if this thing actually gets made. Since most audiences today aren't familiar with The Green Hornet, we've put a shorthand guide together for your edification.
  • The Green Hornet appeared on the radio back in 1936, pre-dating the first appearance of Batman by only three years. However, both men wear masks, have cars that do neat tricks, and feature sidekicks who save their bacon on more than one occasion.
  • Britt Reid, newspaper magnate by day, masked crimefighter by night, is The Green Hornet. He's a distant relative of The Lone Ranger (no, we aren't making this up) who travels around in a car he calls "Black Beauty." Hi-yo.
  • The Green Hornet is a wanted criminal in the city, and he uses that notoriety as leverage when dealing with criminals.
  • The only people who know the Hornet's identity are his secretary Lenore Case and the district attorney, Frank Scanlon.
  • The Green Hornet's sidekick and chauffeur Kato was changed from Japanese, to Filipino, to Korean during the run of the show, although he was famously played by Bruce Lee when the series came to television.
  • While he may not have worn a utility belt, The Green Hornet did use two specialized guns. One fired knockout gas, and the other one delivered "Hornet Stings" in the form of electric shocks.
  • His car featured drop-down tubes that could fire rockets, had a knockout gas nozzle, could launch a flying surveillance device from its trunk, and even featured "infra-green" headlights that could let the driver see in the dark.
  • On the radio, the Green Hornet's theme song was "The Flight of the Bumblebee," complete with a theremin providing the sound of a buzzing hornet.
  • When The Green Hornet came to television in 1966, it was on the heels of the success of Batman, and both programs aired on ABC. Although Batman was played up to be campy, The Green Hornet was played straight. Both series featured the same announcer, were made by the same production company, and wouldn't you know it... Batman met The Green Hornet on his show.
  • Sadly, The Green Hornet never had the sticking power that Batman did, probably because a newspaper publisher who punches people just isn't all that exciting. Batman had scads of nifty gadgets and a Batcave, but all The Green Hornet has is a couple of funky guns and a car that looks... like a car. As a radio serial, The Green Hornet worked best in your imagination, just like The Shadow did. When Alec Baldwin brought that character to the screen in 1994, it tanked pretty hard. Billy Zane's 1930's comic-strip movie adaptation The Phantom did even worse in 1996.

    So maybe instead of trying to make film adaptations of popular radio dramas and comic strips from the 1930's, Hollywood should create something new and cool. As much as we love our imagination, there is just no way we can picture Seth Rogen as a pugilistic publisher with a secret identity.

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