There's more than a few comic books that I follow on a regular basis, but among my favorites are the ones featuring the Green Lantern Corps. While the name "Green Lantern" is most commonly associated with the group of heroes who've called themselves that since the '60s, it's been around for a lot longer. It was originally coined in 1940, when Martin Nodell and Bill Finger created Alan Scott, who wielded a magical green ring and lantern in his fight against crime. Adopting "Green Lantern" as his superhero pseudonym, Scott became popular enough with readers to be one of five DC Comics characters created during the decade to receive a comic book all to himself. He was even a charter member of DC's original superteam, the Justice Society of America.
But as the "Golden Age of Comics" ended and comic book sales sagged in the period following World War II, DC pulled the plug on Green Lantern's book in 1949 and cancelled the Justice Society's book in 1951. That didn't mean he was forgotten, though. After DC successfully brought back The Flash with a sci-fi twist, DC editor Julius Schwartz charged John Broome and Gil Kane to do the same with Green Lantern. Broome and Kane reimagined the character as Hal Jordan, an Air Force test pilot whose ring wasn't magic, but a piece of intergalactic technology entrusted to him by a dying alien.
As time has passed, we've gone from one Green Lantern to a literal army of thousands. Hal Jordan is far from the only character currently using the name, but he's one of the most famous. So when the Green Lantern franchise was adapted into a live-action movie, it was Jordan who was pegged to be the star. I've been eagerly anticipating the movie since it was first announced, since the Green Lantern Corps have become some of my favorite superheroes since I started reading comics a few years ago. It's too bad, though, that the movie is less than impressive.
Centuries ago, a group of beings known as the Guardians of the Universe harnessed the green essence of willpower. Forging this essence into rings that grant their bearers superpowers, the Guardians created an intergalactic police force, the Green Lantern Corps.
With thousands of members recruited from all across the universe, the Corps has managed to defeat every threat that has challenged them. But a new foe has arisen in the form of Parallax (the voice of Clancy Brown), quite literally the living embodiment of fear. Parallax is a seemingly unstoppable monster, destroying entire worlds and killing multiple Green Lanterns as he heads for the Corps's home planet of Oa.
Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), one of the proudest members of the Corps, is mortally wounded during a battle with Parallax. He crashes on Earth and instructs his ring to find the most suitable person to replace him. The ring finds Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a cocky and irresponsible test pilot who is unprepared for induction into the Corps. The ring whisks Hal away to Oa for his training, though the various Corps he meets aren't pleased with the idea of a lowly human being among their ranks.
The training is so rough that it ends up convincing Hal that he doesn't have what it takes to qualify for the Corps. He returns to Earth to discover that he's got a huge mess on his hands. The government has obtained Abin Sur's body and brought in xenobiologist Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) to study it. During the initial autopsy, Hammond is infected by a lingering piece of Parallax's energy. This infection drives him insane while giving him both advanced telepathy and telekinesis, allowing him to take petty revenge against people he doesn't like. It also catches Parallax's attention and sends him straight for Earth. But because the Guardians themselves fear Parallax and cannot find a way to defeat it, Hal takes it upon himself to save Earth alone.
The last two decades have been really rough for live-action adaptations of DC comic books. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies have been successful, but the rest have either been absolutely terrible or underperformed at the box office. Green Lantern itself has been up against a tremendous amount of negative reviews. And while the movie isn't terrible, it is disappointing. It could have been a whole hell of a lot better, but it's only okay. It's really just kinda there, to tell you the truth.
But it's not the fault of the director. Martin Campbell, probably best known for his work on the James Bond flicks GoldenEye and Casino Royale, is at the helm for Green Lantern, and I thought he did an okay job. I didn't really know what I was expecting out of his direction for this particular movie, since those two Bond movies, despite their ties to the action genre, don't exactly make me think he'd be the guy to direct an effects-heavy comic book movie. But Campbell was not a bad choice to direct Green Lantern. The movie is lively and well-paced, and any errors within it are more than likely due to the editing process than any fault of Campbell's during production.
But while I thought Campbell's direction was adequate at the very worst, I should point out some of the more talked-about elements of the production. One is the much-maligned CGI. A lot of people have been ragging on the CGI, and I will concede that there are parts of it that look really fake. I mean, it looks like Ryan Reynolds had his head edited onto a Pixar cartoon when he's in the Green Lantern uniform. But considering that the costume and Hal's weapons are energy constructs created by the ring, it can be understood why these things would look not quite real. It still doesn't explain why Oa looks unconvincing, though.
Then there's the 3D effects, which didn't really do much for me. It didn't add any real atmosphere, and not much popped. I'm pretty sure this is one of those cases where a 2D movie was converted into 3D after filming was completed, which could explain a lot. Green Lantern's conversion isn't terribly awful, since there are a couple of moments where it looks really cool. But those moments aren't enough to justify the movie having to be in 3D.
But let's move along to the acting, which is hot or miss. Ryan Reynolds isn't the first guy I'd have picked to play Hal Jordan, mostly because Green Lantern isn't a straightforward comedy (even though it does have its humorous parts). But Reynolds does as good a job as he can. He's charming and likable as always, but he has a few odd moments where he comes off as bland. I don't know what it is, but there are a couple of scenes where he's very unlike the Ryan Reynolds everyone is familiar with.
And I have to admit that I enjoyed Peter Sarsgaard a lot. He approaches the role in such a way that makes both he and the character fascinating to watch. Sarsgaard also approaches Hammond in much the same way Tom Hiddleston played Loki in Thor, only the character runs out of steam near the end due to some lousy writing. But for much of the movie, Sarsgaard plays a great villain that I wish had been treated better by the climax.
Mark Strong is also very good as Sinestro, the proud Green Lantern who in the comics would become one of the Corps's greatest villains. His role is sadly way too small, which I can also say for Angela Bassett and Tim Robbins. Michael Clarke Duncan and Geoffrey Rush are in the same boat as well, providing fine voice work as Green Lanterns Kilowog and Tomar-Re yet having roles that are way too small. It's like they're barely in the movie at all.
But the worst performance comes from Blake Lively, who plays Carol Ferris, Hal's primary love interest. She's terrible, exhibiting very little in the way of personality. Lively is so flat and wooden that she actually made me pine for Kim Basinger's Vicki Vale from Batman. It's one of those awful performances that you can actually watch the trailer for the movie and immediately know that she's gonna suck. To her credit, she's not as bad as January Jones in X-Men: First Class, but she's still horrible. Just because Lively is cute doesn't mean she was the right person for the part.
But worse than Lively's acting is the script, written by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Michael Green and rewritten by Michael Goldenberg. And when I say the script, I mean this thing sucks out loud. It's terrible. I fell in love with the Green Lantern comics because of the absolutely awesome stories that Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi have been writing over the last couple of years, but the writers of the movie pretty much said, "Screw that, we're slapping together some hunk of emerald-colored crap and calling it the script for a Green Lantern movie."
There is practically no character development to speak of; what is there is treated poorly. A lot of the gags are way too corny. The romance between Hal and Carol is handled tepidly at best. And why were characters like Sinestro, Kilowog, and Tomar-Re diminished to the point of having only a few scenes each? Just because Ryan Reynolds is the star of the movie doesn't mean that Hal Jordan has to be the only Green Lantern to get more than three scenes. I just... wow, the more I think about the script for this movie, the more frustrated I get. How hard would it have been for the writers to do a straight translation of the "Secret Origin" story arc that Johns wrote in 2008? Or at the very least, couldn't they have hired Johns and Tomasi to write the movie? Would that have been so hard?
All that yammering and I still don't feel I've scratched the surface of how barely adequate Green Lantern is. It isn't the offensively horrible waste of film that a lot of professional critics are claiming that it is, but it could have been a lot better. I'd probably put it in the realm of comic book adaptations like Ghost Rider or Batman Forever, where they're okay movies but nothing special. And that really breaks my heart, too. I love the Green Lantern comics, and I was hoping for a movie that I could hold up and proclaim that this was one reason why I loved them. But unfortunately, all I've got is disappointment. The movie is probably worth checking out on DVD or on HBO, but don't feel like you have to rush to see it right away
Final Rating: **½
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