Anyone reading some of the reviews over at rottentomatoes.com might come to believe that Green Lantern is one of the worst movies of the year if not all time. I say that's slightly unfair.
Green Lantern is the story of Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a test pilot with some daddy issues; as a child he watched his father, a test pilot just like him, die in a fiery explosion while testing an aircraft. While he is grappling with his issues, he finds himself drafted by an intergalactic corps of space cops known as the Green Lantern Corps, whose most distinguished member has been mortally wounded fighting the Corps' greatest threat, a gigantic yellow cloud with an evil-looking head known as Parallax that feeds off fear, represented by the color yellow. This dying Corpsman, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), tells his power ring to choose his successor, and it chooses Jordan. The Green Lanterns derive their power from their rings, which in turn are powered by lanterns, which in turn are powered by will, represented by the color green.
Now, critics have bashed this film for everything from the script to the acting to the visual effects to the music, and while I do not entirely disagree with the criticism, I will say that this film is not as bad as everyone says it is. The dialogue isn't as bloodcurdling as the lines that Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox spouted in the Transformers movies. The acting isn't as bad as Jessica Alba trying to convince people she's a scientist in Fantastic Four. The effects aren't as bad as the melange of shit thrown at the screen in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The music isn't as bad as the Frankenstein's monster of a score that was devised for last year's Kick-Ass by no less than four composers.
That said, while it isn't all that bad, it is godawful nonetheless.
Now, I don't know exactly if Hal Jordan was a reluctant hero when he started out in the comics, but if he was, then the writers did a horrible job of translating that origin, and if he wasn't they made a huge mistake in trying to ape the formula of Spider-Man 2 and Iron Man. Reynolds simply doesn't do pathos well at all, and whatever little acting talent he might have is severely compromised by the leaden script which, while not quite Transformers bad, has some real clunkers scattered all throughout the proceedings. Blake Lively is lovely, like a younger Mia Sara, but with next to none of the personality she showed in Ben Affleck's The Town. Peter Sarsgaard turns in a pretty quirky turn as mad-scientist Hector Hammond, complete with the swollen, misshapen head, but at some point the prosthetic head he puts on starts doing the acting for him. Mark Strong turns in a solid performance as one of the top lanterns Sinestro, but again, the script lets him down with some really silly dialogue, as well as some rather abrupt character shifts later in the movie. Tim Robbins, who stars as a Senator and Hammond's dad, Angela Bassett as DC Universe mainstay Amanda Waller and the rest of the cast kind of just hang around for the paycheck.
The scenes set on Oa are, to me anyway, the best of the film and, despite some dodgy CGI, gave us a glimpse of what the film could have been like if its makers had been less preoccupied with keeping things down on earth.
(Spoiler alert)
I found a lot of the supposed "money" shots in the movie rather jarring and silly. In one scene, Hal Jordan comes up with a giant Hot Wheels car and track to stop a helicopter from crashing. The first thing that popped into my head was to wonder how much Mattel paid for that sequence, especially considering how much the car looked like an actual Hot Wheels vehicle, right down to the wheels. In another scene, while trying to catch Parallax, a squadron of, in Sinestro's words, the very best Lanterns, can only think of...a giant net, and shooting it with their apparently ineffectual energy blasts? And this...after they condemn Jordan for his lack of imagination and after ONE of them kicks Jordan's butt by conjuring up a miniature sun?
Not only that but (spoiler alert still on) an after-the-credits scene involving Sinestro feels downright gratuitous (i.e. no real basis has been laid for it in the script, even though GL comic fans know what Sinestro eventually ends up becoming). Mark Strong's performance deserved far better than for his character to make so abrupt a change, like another movie, for example.
(End spoiler alert).
Also, it kind of bothered me that the head of Parallax looked strikingly like the bad guy in Dreamworks' animated comedy Monsters vs. Aliens; it kind of blunted the dramatic tension right there.
In the end, the painful irony of this film is that, while the Green Lanterns' Power Rings are supposedly only limited by their wearers' imaginations, apparently the filmmakers' imaginations were quite limited, especially considering the reported $200 million that was spent on this movie.
What happened to this movie was a crying shame and is strongly reminiscent of the way Twentieth Century Fox messed up the Fantastic Four movies. I went into this movie wanting to like it because I could honestly sympathize with the GL fans who wanted their hero to make it onto the screen at all costs. I made myself like both FF movies (and even still actually enjoy watching the second one a bit from time to time), but with all of the rampant stupidity in this film I simply couldn't con myself this time.
Now, I maintain that this isn't the apocalyptic pile of crap that a lot of professional critics and armchair critics have made it out to be. I have seen a lot of worse movies, even comic-book based ones, but the real tragedy of this movie was that it had everything it needed to work: a great superhero and premise, a ton of money and a proven action director in Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro, all movies I loved) who to be honest was the main reason I had such high hopes for this movie, even after all the bad reviews started to surface. The willingness to go the extra mile for this movie to work, as evidenced by the massive budget, was there, but for some reason the skill simply was not.
Well, if nothing else, at least my wife and kids liked it.
Score: 2/5
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