Here we are, less than a month into one of the biggest summer blockbuster seasons we’ve had in years, and not a single big-studio film has failed to live up to the expectations set forward by those studios.

It seems that the mid $50 million range is just where every film hits in the first weekend, as Warner Bros’ Green Lantern pulled in an estimated $52 million against its $200 million production budget. Not a complete letdown, as Warner’s are still looking to move forward with this toyetic film franchise.

In second place this weekend, Super 8 had less than a 50% dropoff from last week, pulling in an estimated $21 million this weekend, and topping the film off at $72 since its debut.

Another first weekender, Mr. Popper’s Penguins rose to the occasion in third place this weekend with an estimated $18 million, which isn’t bad considering the film was one of the only non-franchise family films hitting theaters this summer.

Finally, Fox’s X-Men: First Class is still holding strong in its third week, with an $11 million pull for the weekend and over $280 million worldwide since the release. With a turnout like that, you can expect to see Fox prepping Matthew Vaughn and his cast for a second film in the very near future.

All things considered, next week looks to be quite tame. Pixar’s Cars 2 will likely take the weekend, with upwards of 4,000 theaters showing the film. On the other end of the spectrum, adults get Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel in Bad Teacher from Sony.

Green Lantern is a comic-book movie that’s ripped straight from the comic book. To some people, that will be a plus, to others a minus; more specifically, those who enjoyed the cartoonyness of The Fantastic Four movies can appreciate it; those who didn’t and want a half-hearted “message” to justify their camp will not.

The premise is ridiculous: The Green Lanterns are a gang of buff aliens sworn to protect the 3,600 sectors of the universe. One day a nasty alien called a “Parallax” shows up and starts bumping off the Lanterns, including one Abin Sur, apparently the protector of earth’s sector, who escapes to our planet, mortally wounded.

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a test pilot and “man without fear” (fearlessness being a big plus to the Lanterns) who’s chosen by Abin Sur to take up his mantle, or ring, or lantern, or whatever. Soon after Hal’s traveling through the galaxy to the planet Oa, where fish men and talking brick shit-houses explain the origins of the Lanterns.

There’s the obligatory scenes of Hal’s cross-training, which introduces us to the power of the Lanterns—basically anything goes so long as it’s green and comes from the ring all Lanterns wear; they can fly, construct objects of any size and shape, and, presumably, whip up some dynamite green eggs and ham.

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UGH!

Allow me to start my review with a bit of onomatopoeia that demonstrates my frustration with this score. Green Lantern is supposed to be an epic space sci-fi adventure. This score does a poor job of relaying that message. It is just one misstep after another, but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

James Newton Howard is a fantastic composer, so when I heard he was going to be writing the music for Green Lantern I was thrilled. He has a great ability to turn even horrible movies into amazing scores, which I guess comes from being M. Night Shyamalan’s go to composer.

Giving the score duties to Howard makes a lot of sense as he collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the two previous Batman films. Unfortunately instead of letting him write music in his own style, we get a Dark Knight apping score that sees Howard doing his best Zimmer impersonation.

I might be a bit hard on the music here, it does have some really decent tracks that by themselves are quite nice. It also tries to develop it’s own iconic hero theme more than the Bat films did, so I applaud the effort. The biggest problem is that the music just feels lazy, like some one along the process just gutted the enthusiasm from the people making the music.

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Ryan Reynolds may be running around in a computer-generated suit all weekend on the big screen, but you don’t need to rush out to the theaters to join in on the Green Lantern Corps fun, because MIMOBOT has got you covered with their brand new line of Green Lantern-themed USB drives.

With characters like Hal Jordan, Tomar-Re, Sinestro (seen here) and Kilowog, you can purchase all of your favorite Corps members and have them storm your data storage dilemmas with their capacity of up to 16GB.

The drives also come with some pretty sick features already pre-loaded, such as tons of wallpapers, icons, avatars, and even a killer animated desktop screensaver for you diehard fans out there.

These drives can carry some of your most important and bulky files, and they even come at a pretty decent price. Ranging from 2GB all the way up to 16GB, you can get these from anywhere to $22.95 to a solid $59.95 for the top-line capacity drive.

You can pick these drives up right away over at the MIMOBOT website, and check out some of the high-res images of each character after the jump. Green Lantern’s Light!

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Who doesn’t love a good old fashioned sneak peek? Everybody does, which is why we’re bringing you a heaping chunk of clips from next weekend’s super hero blockbuster Green Lantern.

In the clips, we’ve got just about everything you’ll be looking forward to in the film (minus any big spoilers, of course) such as the origin of Hal’s oath, the introduction of Dr. Hammond, some great moments with the aliens on Oa, and a few bad ass ring manifestations from GL himself.

The clips are just enough to get any fan on the fence about seeing the film, especially after seeing the first shots of Reynolds’ CGI mask. For the die-hards, this will only make you want to see the film a little more, again without spoiling anything.

Be sure to check out the full 7 minutes of clips after the jump, and catch Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Peter Sarsgaard, Blake Lively, and many more in Warner Bros’ Green Lantern next Friday, June 17th.

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This week is all X-Men, but next week begins the time of Green Lantern as it’s the next major superhero film to hit this summer. The live-action film hits theaters on June 17th, but way before that, you’ll be getting the geek’s fan favorite choice as Hal Jordan, Nathan Fillion, lending his voice in the animated anthology Green Lantern: Emerald Knights.

The film is a series of stories surrounding Jordan and a few other members of the Green Lantern Corps as they fight crime across the universe. There are some pretty impressive names attached the film alongside Fillion. Roddy Piper, Henry Rollins, Kelly Hu, Arnold Vosloo, and Elisabeth Moss all lend their voices to fight space crime.

In a recent interview, King of the Geeks Fillion discussed how much he’s always wanted to play the Emerald Hero, even since childhood.

As a child, when you’re pretending you’re different super heroes, Green Lantern was the easiest because all you needed to light the fire in the imagination was the ring.  Superman, you need a cape; Spiderman, you need a full face mask.  That wasn’t tough to come by in a winter town like where I’m from, but they’re just too hot to wear in the summer. So to be Green Lantern, all you needed to do is suck a lifesaver down to the right size, and to make sure it’s a lime one – slip it on your finger, and you were good.

Sounds like a match made in heaven to us. Check out a brand new clip from Green Lantern: Emerald Knights after the jump and be sure to grab the film on DVD and Blu-Ray next Tuesday, June 7th.

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While there have been tons over the past decade, this is certainly the biggest year for superhero films in theaters. Between X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Captain America and Thor, we’ve got more than enough magic, aliens, and science to keep putting butts in seats all year round.

While we’re finally getting films for The God of Thunder and the Green Lantern Corps, which is something nobody ever thought would happen, where does that leave the rest of the B-list characters in the Marvel and DC universe, such as Hawkman?

That’s where a brand new comedy short from Frog Island about how the rest of the superhero community feels about the winged hero wielding Nth metal to allow him to fly and fight intergalactic crime.

Some great moments and potshots and some less than popular comic film heroes, and we even get Yogi Bear star TJ Miller to star as our favorite emerald hero. Check out the short after the film and be sure to catch Hawkman in theaters probably never (or until Nolan decides to back the movie).

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This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt inch ever closer to the magical 100th episode of the show. It’s getting closer every day but until then, they still had this episode to do and do it they did.

This week’s topics include lots of new trailers including Green Lantern and The Muppets, the state of 3D movies at the Box Office, the technical glitches of some movie theater chains on the East Coast, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Torchwood: Children of Earth and much more. Sadly, they also talked about Charlie Sheen, Ashton Kutcher and Two and a Half Men . . . but only for a minute.

Of course, the boys made some picks this week including Matt’s pick of John Carpenter’s They Live and Chris’ pick of the book Bossypants by SNL and 30 Rock writer and star Tina Fey.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

When people talk about movies they are most excited to see, they will normally stick to the big budget action adventures, raunchy comedies, or thrillers.  It is rare to see a grown adult get publicly excited about the newest children’s animation or cheesy chick-flick.  But when all is said and done, and we are alone in our living rooms browsing Netflix, most of the time we are actually in the mood for something light and fun.  Just admit it, we all love the occasional cartoon for family comedy.

This week we have two classic family franchises getting rebooted, a trailer for a superhero film that just doesn’t seem to want to ever come out, and a guilty pleasure indie flick.

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Just in time for the weekend and, perhaps, the end of the world as we know it comes this brand new Green Lantern trailer from Warner Bros via Yahoo Movies. In it we get a lot more action and see what that power ring can do in the hands of an expert.

Plus, we get a lot more about the origin of the Green Lantern Corps as well as a bunch more footage not seen yet, at least to the general public. This trailer will be shown in theaters in 3D. Sadly, we only go 2D here (for now).

Check out the brand new trailer after the break. Green Lantern arrives on June 17th.

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If you thought the upcoming live-action Green Lantern film was going to be the beginning and end of Hal Jordan’s journey as the Emerald Knight, you’re way off. The first Green Lantern of Earth will continue his intergalactic patrol in the upcoming animated anthology Green Lantern: Emerald Knights from Warner Home Video.

In the same vein as Batman: Gotham Knights, the animated feature will be comprised of several short stories surrounding Hal Jordan (to be voiced by fan favorite Nathan Fillion) and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps as they fight evil throughout the galaxy.

Joining Fillion in this star-studded cast of voice actors is Kelly Hu, Elisabeth Moss, Henry Rollins, Arnold Vosloo, and Roddy Piper.

In the clip we have for you, we meet Arisia (Moss), the newest recruit to the Corps, as she makes her way to a briefing from the Guardians of OA about their eldest foe, Krona.

Take a look at the clip after the jump, and catch Green Lantern: Emerald Knights on DVD and Blu-ray June 7th.

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You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, right? Well, not exactly — at least in this case. Warner Bros. has released a brand new trailer for the upcoming Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds as the title character.

In this new one we get a much more complete picture of what the movie is trying to accomplish both visually and story-wise. More Reynolds, more bad guys, more Oa and more action are, with each new trailer, making this look like one of the films to beat this Summer.

I don’t know about you but this is really starting to look darn good. Having not seen it yet we can only guess how it compares with Thor, Captain America and more but if the movie holds up as well as the trailers seem to indicate it will, we’ve got a real fight for comic book movie supremacy this Summer.

This Summer seems like a great time to be a nerd, geek or fanboy/girl.

Check out the new trailer after the jump. Green Lantern hits theaters on June 17th.

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