{"id":114,"date":"2011-06-21T02:22:14","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T02:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=114"},"modified":"2011-06-25T18:06:03","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T18:06:03","slug":"green-lantern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=114","title":{"rendered":"Green Lantern"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never really read much Green Lantern<\/em>.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t really ever a DC guy.\u00a0 Overall I felt that DC books were aimed at a demographic younger than I ever remember being.\u00a0 I read a little Batman<\/em> but that was really it.\u00a0 Supposedly the silver age Green Lantern\/Green Arrow stories actually inspired civic debate and wrestled with social issues but I’ve not read them.<\/p>\n

I actually came across Green Lantern because I hate Superman.\u00a0 Well maybe hate is a strong word; he bores the piss out of me (except for Superman Returns<\/em>[film]; that was quite good.\u00a0 And also Red Son<\/em>[comic];<\/em> that was awesome.).\u00a0 So when I heard they were going to kill Superman off; I immediately became interested in the story.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And as I was reveling in the funeral and mourning period (yes, I am a bad person) DC began a whole resurrection story line.<\/p>\n

And that actually was pretty entertaining as well but I\u2019m veering from my main point.<\/p>\n

During this resurrection story; aliens destroyed DC universe LA (of course they did) and since that\u2019s where Green Lantern lived he became involved in the story.\u00a0 There was exactly one issue of GL in the whole deal and that\u2019s the one issue I read.\u00a0 And it was actually pretty cool.\u00a0 The Lantern found his home and his friends had been nuked and he proceeded to beat the holy hell out of the aliens.\u00a0 He had a knock down drag out fight with Mongol that ended with a satisfactory breaking of an alien face with a sledge hammer.\u00a0 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\u2019t clear on the whole deal.\u00a0 This was before Wikipedia so all I was able to glean was that yellow and green were some kind of opposing forces.<\/p>\n

So other than that one issue and a couple of episodes of the animated Justice League<\/em> (waaaay less stupid than expected, bordering on decent) I came into Green Lantern fairly uninformed about the character.<\/p>\n

I have to say, whoever constructed the early previews for this film ought to be harvested for stem cells.\u00a0 The bar for the trailer\/preview has been raised way too high for this kind of crap to be tolerated.\u00a0 Seriously, I was prepared to skip this movie based on the first preview.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t have seen it at all had I not decided to start reviewing again.\u00a0 I\u2019d say the craptacular previews cost Warner Brothers at least 20 million in the opening weekend.<\/p>\n

But whatever; the film is not near as bad as previews would have you believe.\u00a0 It\u2019s also been pretty much panned by critics.\u00a0 But most critics are predisposed against sci-fi in general, let alone comic book sci-fi.\u00a0 The best way to get a well-reviewed sci-fi movie is to cast half the Royal Shakespeare Company.<\/p>\n

The movie started out rocking and rolling.\u00a0 There\u2019s doings afoot in the galaxy; a very bad guy\/entity who feeds on fear (yellow energy) escapes from \u201cprison\u201d and the galactic cop (that\u2019s what the Green Lanterns are) tussles with him and is seriously injured.\u00a0 The cops don\u2019t choose who comprises their forces; the rings from which they draw their power do.\u00a0 The injured cop\u2019s ring leads him to earth and it chooses a military test pilot as the new Lantern.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Test pilot Hal (Ryan Reynolds) apparently is fearless or isn\u2019t affected by fear; so the ring chose him (1st<\/sup> human to be chosen).\u00a0 So Hal is whisked away to a far off planet to be trained to fight the fear monster. (Parallax)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s a natural action hero and is his usual charming self in the movie.\u00a0 The movie itself is pretty entertaining up until the point we get back to earth.\u00a0 I for one would have been fine with a movie set entirely off earth; those were the scenes that worked the best.\u00a0 I\u2019m also not clear what Peter Sarsgaard is doing in this film.\u00a0 He\u2019s a human that ends up being an earthside lackey for Parallax.\u00a0 He did a fine job playing an insane scientist; but I don\u2019t know that his side tale is good\/necessary\/worth anyone\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

This movie might also hurt Blake Lively\u2019s career.\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure all her dialogue was crafted according to an algorithm for inspiring pure hatred.<\/p>\n

One of the better supporting performances is turned in by Mark Strong\u2019s Sinestro, a fellow Lantern.\u00a0 However, story wise, this character does go through a few changes that don\u2019t feel particularly earned.<\/p>\n

Overall this was not a good film, though I enjoyed the 1st<\/sup> half of it or so very much.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a stickler for immaculate CGI, you might find things here to gripe about.\u00a0 The biggest drawback is this is not an easy character to introduce.\u00a0 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\u2019t have enough time left for a good fight at the end.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I liked this better than X-men 1st<\/sup> Class<\/em>; but that may have been because I know so little about the story in Green Lantern<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bottom Line; this is the studio that put out Dark Knight<\/em>.\u00a0 We expect more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never really read much Green Lantern.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t really ever a DC guy.\u00a0 Overall I felt that DC books were aimed at a demographic younger than I ever remember being.\u00a0 I read a little Batman but that was really … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}