I never really read much Green Lantern. I wasn’t really ever a DC guy. Overall I felt that DC books were aimed at a demographic younger than I ever remember being. I read a little Batman but that was really it. Supposedly the silver age Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories actually inspired civic debate and wrestled with social issues but I’ve not read them.
I actually came across Green Lantern because I hate Superman. Well maybe hate is a strong word; he bores the piss out of me (except for Superman Returns[film]; that was quite good. And also Red Son[comic]; that was awesome.). So when I heard they were going to kill Superman off; I immediately became interested in the story. And to give the title credit; it was highly entertaining watching Doomsday kick the crap out of the Justice League and murder the man of steel. And as I was reveling in the funeral and mourning period (yes, I am a bad person) DC began a whole resurrection story line.
And that actually was pretty entertaining as well but I’m veering from my main point.
During this resurrection story; aliens destroyed DC universe LA (of course they did) and since that’s where Green Lantern lived he became involved in the story. There was exactly one issue of GL in the whole deal and that’s the one issue I read. And it was actually pretty cool. The Lantern found his home and his friends had been nuked and he proceeded to beat the holy hell out of the aliens. He had a knock down drag out fight with Mongol that ended with a satisfactory breaking of an alien face with a sledge hammer. I had been briefly exposed to the power ring concept when the Eradicator beat the crapola out of Guy Gardener a month or so earlier, but I wasn’t clear on the whole deal. This was before Wikipedia so all I was able to glean was that yellow and green were some kind of opposing forces.
So other than that one issue and a couple of episodes of the animated Justice League (waaaay less stupid than expected, bordering on decent) I came into Green Lantern fairly uninformed about the character.
I have to say, whoever constructed the early previews for this film ought to be harvested for stem cells. The bar for the trailer/preview has been raised way too high for this kind of crap to be tolerated. Seriously, I was prepared to skip this movie based on the first preview. I wouldn’t have seen it at all had I not decided to start reviewing again. I’d say the craptacular previews cost Warner Brothers at least 20 million in the opening weekend.
But whatever; the film is not near as bad as previews would have you believe. It’s also been pretty much panned by critics. But most critics are predisposed against sci-fi in general, let alone comic book sci-fi. The best way to get a well-reviewed sci-fi movie is to cast half the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The movie started out rocking and rolling. There’s doings afoot in the galaxy; a very bad guy/entity who feeds on fear (yellow energy) escapes from “prison” and the galactic cop (that’s what the Green Lanterns are) tussles with him and is seriously injured. The cops don’t choose who comprises their forces; the rings from which they draw their power do. The injured cop’s ring leads him to earth and it chooses a military test pilot as the new Lantern.
The idea of the choosing is that the ring can basically do whatever one can will (willpower is green) it to do and can only be defeated by fear. Test pilot Hal (Ryan Reynolds) apparently is fearless or isn’t affected by fear; so the ring chose him (1st human to be chosen). So Hal is whisked away to a far off planet to be trained to fight the fear monster. (Parallax)
I had always thought Green Lantern to be a more somber fellow than Reynolds; (though other nerds have informed me that Reynolds is a solid choice for Hal) but he’s a natural action hero and is his usual charming self in the movie. The movie itself is pretty entertaining up until the point we get back to earth. I for one would have been fine with a movie set entirely off earth; those were the scenes that worked the best. I’m also not clear what Peter Sarsgaard is doing in this film. He’s a human that ends up being an earthside lackey for Parallax. He did a fine job playing an insane scientist; but I don’t know that his side tale is good/necessary/worth anyone’s time.
This movie might also hurt Blake Lively’s career. I’m pretty sure all her dialogue was crafted according to an algorithm for inspiring pure hatred.
One of the better supporting performances is turned in by Mark Strong’s Sinestro, a fellow Lantern. However, story wise, this character does go through a few changes that don’t feel particularly earned.
Overall this was not a good film, though I enjoyed the 1st half of it or so very much. If you’re a stickler for immaculate CGI, you might find things here to gripe about. The biggest drawback is this is not an easy character to introduce. There is a great deal of backstory and mythology in this story and the filmmakers may have tried to explain too much and they didn’t have enough time left for a good fight at the end. I think this might be one of those properties that is best served by keeping the story in space and dropping the viewer into the heart of the action and explaining as little of the backstory as possible. I liked this better than X-men 1st Class; but that may have been because I know so little about the story in Green Lantern.
Bottom Line; this is the studio that put out Dark Knight. We expect more.