Green Lantern Review
By: Joshua “To infinity and beyond?… By the power of Grayskull?” Richey
I’ve got a confession to make: I walked into a screening of The Green Lantern tonight wanting to hate it. I was wanting nothing more than to walk out of that theater tonight laughing and mocking it like I did on the opening night of Transformers 2. You see, to me, the Green Lantern character – like most of DC’s characters aside from Batman – has always seemed silly. The idea behind the Lantern has always seemed great on paper: a space cop that, with the help of other space cops, defends the universe using a ring that can create anything that their minds can conjure up. Cool idea. But once you started reading the comics and seen how that idea was played out, the less appealing that it all became. I remember reading them as a child and rolling my eyes whenever Hal Jordan or one of the other Green Lantern’s would use their ring to create a brick wall or something as meaningless as a basketball hoop. Really? Unlimited power with the ability to create anything and THAT’S what you went with? REALLY!??!
That all said the possibility of a Green Lantern movie seemed like a great idea. With the success that Marvel has had with releasing films for Iron Man and Thor, and seeing them work their way to making The Avengers a reality, it would be absolutely insane for Warner Bros. and DC to not try to do the same thing with the Justice League – DC’s answer for The Avengers. While doing a Justice League movie would be far more difficult to pull off than The Avengers – Batman’s at the tail end of a great trilogy and the director and star have expressed zero interest in being part of a Justice League movie; the Superman franchise is in limbo; Wonder Woman’s recent television pilot wasn’t picked up; The Flash has been in development hell for 10 years; and Aqua Man…well, he still talks to fish — it seemed like making a big budget film involving a character that wasn’t as well known as Batman or Superman was a step in the right direction. I’ll be honest, while I love Martin Campbell, I was very confused by Warner Bros. decision to hire him as the director of a film like this. The man is responsible for my two favorite James Bond films (Goldeneye and Casino Royale) but I wasn’t sure how his gritty style would work with a movie like this that was going to require so much CGI.
But enough of all that. Let’s talk about the movie itself…
The Green Lantern is the story of Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a cocky test pilot that’s living in the shadow of his late father. Hal has the reputation for being a wild card in the cock pit, but he’s the best pilot there is. That cocky (aka Van Wilder-like) demeanor ends up biting him in the ass during a test run for Ferris Aircraft’s new drone-powered airplanes. As Ferris’ best pilot, the company uses Hal to showcase to Senator Hammond (Tim Robbins) that these new drones are the future of air combat. Wanting to prove that he can beat these “unbeatable” planes, Hal goes to extreme lengths. While he does manage to defeat the drones, he also loses control of his plane – thanks in part to a very ill timed flashback to his father dying in a plane – and crashes. Meanwhile, up in space, Parallax, a powerful alien that feeds off the power of fear, has escaped and comes after the alien that imprisoned him, Abin Sur. Abin Sur, the leader of the Green Lantern Corps, is fatally wounded in battle with Parallax and sends his ring off to find a worthy successor. Abin Sur’s ship crashes to Earth and his ring selects Hal Jordan as the newest Green Lantern. While Hal is off learning about his new responsibilities as protector of sector 2814 and trying to earn the respect of his fellow Lanterns, Senator Hammond’s son, Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), is exposed to the power of Parallax during an autopsy of Abin Sur’s corpse. That power begins to consume Hector and he becomes a threat to not just the Earth, but to the entire galaxy as well. DUN DUN DUN!
As I said during the first line of this review, I went into Green Lantern wanting to hate it. Fact is I didn’t. I don’t think it’s a great movie…hell, I don’t even think it’s all that of a good movie…but it’s not the shit flick that other critics would have you believe or that I was hoping for. While it’s nowhere as good as X-Men: First Class, Thor or Iron Man, the film is a far from being the worst comic book adaption that you’ll ever see. It’s sort of like when you watched Fantastic Four. Did you enjoy that movie? No, nobody enjoyed that movie. Were you completely disappointed? Well, no, not really. In the end, it’s what you expected. It’s cheesy as hell; it takes itself far too seriously; the writing is bad…but it’s what you would expect a Green Lantern movie to be like.
While I can’t fault the film for being cheesy and taking itself too seriously, I can blame them for a few of the other factors that drag this movie down. Believe me when I say that The Green Lantern is the absolute worst looking $200 million dollar movie that you’ll ever see. The special effects in this movie are at times borderline Playstation 2-esque. Its way too dependent on CGI and it really hurts the final product. Hal’s inconsistent, completely CGI suit, Parallax, a giant Hot Wheel’s race track that Hal creates to save citizens from a crashing helicopter (yeah, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds)…it all looks terrible. The biggest victim of this films shitty CGI is Oa, an alien planet that is home to The Guardians and the base for the Green Lantern Corps. When Hal Jordan arrives at Oa, you, the viewer, should be awe. The moment of the big reveal is built up to seem epic. But when we see it, you’re just like “Why does this look so bad?” This is Oa! This shouldn’t look like a game that I’d be playing on my Dreamcast back in 1999.
Then there’s the story. Now I know that we shouldn’t have high expectations for a movie in the story department when it’s based off a comic book, but there are some things in Green Lantern that just simply must be addressed. For starters, even I, someone that isn’t a huge fan of The Green Lantern mythos, know that the most important goal for a Green Lantern movie to accomplish was to establish the relationship between Hal Jordan and Sinestro. You see, for those that don’t know, Sinestro is the leader of the Green Lantern Corps (awesomely played by Mark Strong in this movie) that takes Hal under his wing and unwillingly mentors him, despite the fact that he doesn’t think that the human race is ready for the responsibility. This is a very important relationship to establish because, eventually, Sinestro will turn evil and it’ll be up to Hal to stop him. That said, Sinestro and Hal are on screen at the same time for maybe 5 minutes in this entire movie. They have no relationship. I was completely stunned by that. The audience needs to know that relationship so that the big turn will seem like a big deal. Once I realized that the movie was about over and that they had completely abandoned the relationship between Hal and Sinestro, I just assumed that they were maybe holding out so that they could deal with that in a sequel. But that’s not the case, either. Stay after the credits and you’ll see the filmmakers blow their load on that scenario as well. It just seems like the studio was more interested in making a Van Wilder in space movie than they were a legit Green Lantern movie.
For those of you who that have no idea what the hell I was just talking about, you won’t care about all that. Instead you’ll get to witness what is, at best, a mediocre comic book movie.
If you’re a fan of the Green Lantern comics, chances are that you’re going to enjoy this movie, though you’ll have a lot of complaints. Just know that it’s not as good as the Green Lantern: First Flight animated film that Warner Bros. released a few years ago. For those that aren’t a fan of the comics, you’ll see the movie once, you’ll go “meh,” and then you’ll never watch it again. And for those that are going to see it just for a shirtless Ryan Reynolds…well, you’ll enjoy it the most. The dude can’t keep his shirt on.
After 1,500 words, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we give The Green Lantern 3 intergalactic o-faces out of 5.
