Gondry's 2011 Green Hornet: an underrated, eccentric superhero oddity

Polygon writes that Michel Gondry's 2011 The Green Hornet — a Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg collaboration released on Jan. 14, 2011 — was an underrated, eccentric take on a non‑superpowered vigilante that has looked different in retrospect.

The film made very close to $100 million in North America and another $100 million‑plus overseas, earned a B+ CinemaScore and a typical superhero‑style second‑weekend drop, but was labeled a flop by critics and hamstrung by an inflated budget and the makers' own disappointment. Rogen plays Britt Reid, an accidental, feckless hero whose capable sidekick Kato (Jay Chou) supplies the actual abilities; Cameron Diaz plays Reid's secretary/reporter Lenore Case. Gondry's visual flourishes — hallucinatory, Matrix‑like martial‑arts sequences, practical stunts such as a car lodged and cut in half inside an elevator, and quirky gadgets like a knockout gas that once puts Reid in a weeklong coma — give the film a playful, toylike charm.

The article argues the movie helped prompt studios to impose stricter "house styles" on big superhero projects, and that in the following 15 years fewer directors with Gondry's visual imagination pursued such films. The Green Hornet remains neither the most loved entry for its creators nor a canonical superhero classic, but it still carries a wistful boldness whose value is open to interpretation.

Key Topics

Culture, Michel Gondry, Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Sony Pictures