space
head
head head head
Home Contact RSS Feed
COMICS   •   MOVIES   •   MUSIC   •   TELEVISION   •   GAMES   •   BOOKS
Movie Review: Green Lantern
space
BAADASSSSS!   |  

Week of Geek: Green Lantern

Green LanternGreen Lantern
Directed by Martin Campbell
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Mark Strong, Peter Sarsgaard
Release date: June 17, 2011

I went into Green Lantern expecting a solid summer action movie and that’s exactly what I got. Therefore, I don’t get a lot of the hatred directed towards this film. Critics have been giving this long-gestating DC comic book adaptation a regular blanket party and for most of the same reasons that those same critics spazzed out over Thor. Personally I’ve never been a fan of the character and outside of some episodes of Super Friends and the occasional glance at an issue of the comic, I don’t even know that much about the Green Lantern. After seeing the movie, it’s evident I have some catching up to do. Good thing I have access to some of his recent appearances in animated DTV movie form.

The movie opens with a brief rundown of the history of the Green Lantern Corps, the galactic police force at the center of the action, narrated by Lantern Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush). Afterwards we jump right into the action: on a distant, uncharted planet the being Parallax (voiced by Clancy Brown, but I could barely tell) is unleashed and begins a campaign of terror throughout the universe, feeding on the fear of its victims. Lantern Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) is charged with stopping Parallax, but is mortally wounded in battle and must flee to the nearest inhabited planet to choose his successor before his death. Landing on Earth, Abin Sur’s ring, one of the primary sources of a Lantern’s power, chooses hotshot test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Jordan is haunted by the death of his own father Martin (Jon Tenney), something that pushes him into depths of loneliness and irresponsibility to the dismay of his colleagues, particularly his on-and-off love interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively).

The ring’s glowing green power brings Hal to the location of Abin Sur’s crashed ship and has the ring imparted to him before the alien dies. Soon he is journeying to fantastic new worlds, including the planet Oa, the home of the Green Lantern Corps and the Guardians, omnipotent alien beings who harnessed the green energy of will that gives the Lanterns their strength and the yellow energy that powers Parallax. Jordan is put through a brutal training regiment by his instructors, Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan) and Sinestro (Mark Strong), the latter of whom leads the Corps, but is reluctant to take up Abin Sur’s mantle out of a fear that eats at him internally. With Parallax on a path of destruction heading for Earth and a scientist named Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) infected by the being’s evil power, Hal Jordan must become the hero he was born to be or his planet will be lost and the Corps powerless against the dark might of Parallax.

At the end of the day Green Lantern is a movie that isn’t as good as the sum of its parts. The story suffers from a reliance on cliches in the dialogue and a lack of faith that the universe-spanning epic scope of the comics would translate well to the big screen. Thus the majority of the film’s action set pieces are relegated to Earth and feel like they could be in any Spider-Man or X-Men movie. The best moments are the time we spend getting to know the Green Lantern Corps and their history and the galactic battles with Parallax. In spite of some shiny FX that cries out “Xbox cut scene,” the scenes that take place off Earth are visually stunning and capture the goofy spirit of the comics without falling into pointless camp. The planet Oa is wonderfully realized and the individual members of the Corps are a marvel to watch, and the casting of the Lanterns who guide and train Hal is absolutely perfect. Mark Strong makes a great Sinestro, prickly towards humans but dedicated to his duty as a Lantern, and Michael Clarke Duncan and Geoffrey Rush do amazing vocal work as Kilowog and Tomar-Re.

The human characters, on the other hand, are a serious mixed bag. Ryan Reynolds is not a perfect Hal Jordan, but his mix of charm and humor makes his somewhat stereotypical “maverick pilot” character bearable and sympathetic. His transition to hero status is hamstrung by a sloppy script (midwifed by four credited writers) that at times resembles a head-on collision between The Last Starfighter and Team America. Blake Lively is a good love interest, but that’s the extension of her character development. Peter Sarsgaard makes for a decent villain despite having almost nothing of importance to contribute to the story. His performance improves once he starts mutating into a big-headed baddie. The rest of the cast is a who’s who of acclaimed actors and character faces intended to lend the movie some prestige with non-comic fans, but it’s a pity that performers such as Tim Robbins (as Hammond’s senator father), Angela Bassett (as a government scientist), Jay O. Sanders (as Carol’s father and Hal’s boss), and Jon Tenney are relegated to background extra status for most of the movie.

Don’t get your hopes seeing James Newton Howard‘s name in the credits; despite being one-half of the famous Batman Begins/The Dark Knight music scoring team, Howard’s musical contribution to Green Lantern lacks punch and is little more than a collection of electric guitars and repetitive synth beats (the standard fallback score for any action movie or superhero epic made these days). The cinematography by Dion Beebe crackles with color and light and the production design work by Grant Major is some of the best I’ve seen in a movie this summer. Stuart Baird, a man who knows a thing or two about editing a superhero movie (he served as film editor on the 1978 Superman: The Movie), does what he can with the material but the final product looks like a hastily-assembled rough cut.

That leaves New Zealand-born director Martin Campbell, a dab hand at orchestrating large-scale action that comes from helming the James Bond movies Goldeneye and Casino Royale (my personal favorite Bond movie) as well as The Mask of Zorro and some fine British television work, shouldering most of what doesn’t work in Green Lantern. Campbell just seems lost when the action goes galactic, preferring to chop every single shot into pieces and throw it in a blender with some rubber cement. He seems more at ease with the Earthbound events, but that isn’t a good thing when you’re making a film with a mythology that extends far beyond our known universe.

Green Lantern is a fine movie, ideal escapism for a sticky hot summer day, but with the materials present it could have been so much more. I hold out hope that the inevitable sequel will be better. In brightest day, in blackest night, someone please get this damn character right.

4 Comments »

  1. Good review, Badass.  I’ll be seeing it tomorrow with an open mind.  Here is my favorite review of Green Lantern so far.  It’s completely incoherent by some Finnish film reviewer attempting to write in English.  It’s like something Borat would write.

    [Link removed]

    Comment by Jenny Murphy — June 18, 2011 @ 1:17 am

  2. Spammer! Stop flooding comments all over the web with links to this morons reviews, it’s classless and rude to the reviewers on GoD and everywhere else.

    Comment by Rocketeer — June 19, 2011 @ 12:47 am

  3. I was extremely saddened by this movie because it put everything that I wanted in it, and simply didn’t have a clue at all about how to deal with any of it. It proved that knowing is not the same as understanding, and that’s what made my sadness toward it even worse. It started out great, with the first 30 minutes being the best, before purposelessly jamming it with the series’ fan favs and wasting all the brilliant casting that they had. 

    Comment by cromeyellow.com — June 20, 2011 @ 8:40 pm

  4. OK, in Hal Origins his father dies in a plane crash so criticizing that
    is wrong that was a good adaptation. I do think the way it was done is
    wrong. It should of been done like the opening of Secret Origin where
    Hal’s dad plane starts to malfunction in mid air not on the ground and
    he tries to protect the people below by flying the plane away before it
    explodes to save people standing below. This is a crucial moment in
    Hal’s life. Yes I think it was not portrayed right in the film but his
    father dying in that plane a hero is a major plot point that can’t be
    changed. I was also sad that they left out all the stuff about him being
    reckless as a kid and joining the air force against his mothers wishes
    and her disowning him for that. The part where he gives up everything he
    loves because he loves his mother and wants to see her before she dies
    only to be one day too late is very heart breaking. Then for years he
    blames Carl Ferris, who supposedly is just enjoying himself playing golf
    and stuff, for the death of his father only to find out that Carl
    Ferris felt just as much pain as Hal had when his father (Carl’s best
    friend) died and that he himself had spent years beating himself up and
    was dying from the guilt. Hal finally sees how the way he treated his
    family over the years was wrong. I think it was a mistake to leave all
    of this out of the movie because it is very central to who Hal Jordan
    is. I think it would of made for a much better deeper movie but they
    were probably marketing towards kids and didn’t think they would like it but it was still a mistake in my book.

     

         Second problem was the misuse of where Hector got his power from.
    They could easily lifted the exact origin from the comics. They Had both
    the ship and abin’s body. All they needed was for Hector to inspect the
    ships engine and get exposed to the fuel. Also Waller’s hair in the
    scenes just looked fake and horrible.

    I really wished they had set Sinestro up better. In the comics he is a
    great Green Lantern and he loves being one. When Hal finds out the
    tryant he is being on his home world to keep order he turns him into the
    guardians and is exiled from the corps which is why he hates Hal. In
    this movie they end on pretty good terms and the all of sudden he puts
    the yellow ring on at the end and is evil. Now Sinestro is egotistical
    and power hungry but he wouldn’t of gave his rank up in the GL corps
    freely. Hopefully the after credits scene takes place half way through a
    sequel like the Thor scene in Iron Man 2.

    Pacing was off in some places and just one noticeable plot hole where
    Hal just shows up to fight Hammond. Hopefully this stuff will be in a
    directors cut.

    So now I did have quite a few problems with the film I did thoroughly
    enjoyed seeing one of my favorite comic book characters on the big
    screen. It wasn’t a bad movie and I still really liked it.

    3.5/5

    Comment by Sean Drevin — July 1, 2011 @ 10:39 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

space
space
Previous Article
space
Next Article
«
»
space
space
space
Amazon.com
space
You may have noticed that we're now AD FREE! Please support Geeks of Doom by using the Amazon Affiliate link above. All of our proceeds from the program go toward maintaining this site.
space
Geeks of Doom on Twitter Geeks of Doom on Facebook Geeks of Doom on Instagram Follow Geeks of Doom on Tumblr Geeks of Doom on YouTube Geeks of Doom Email Digest Geeks of Doom RSS Feed
space
space
space
space
The Drill Down Podcast TARDISblend Podcast Westworld Podcast
2023  ·   2022  ·   2021  ·   2020  ·   2019  ·   2018  ·   2017  ·   2016  ·   2015  ·   2014  ·  
2013  ·   2012  ·   2011  ·   2010  ·   2009  ·   2008  ·   2007  ·   2006  ·   2005
space
Geeks of Doom is proudly powered by WordPress.

Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press

Geeks of Doom is designed and maintained by our geeky webmaster
All original content copyright ©2005-2023 Geeks of Doom
All external content copyright of its respective owner, except where noted
space
Creative Commons License
This website is licensed under
a Creative Commons License.
space
About | Privacy Policy | Contact
space