Skip to main content

Green Lantern

My intent was to post a brief review after precisely one year of silence. If I had been able to keep to that schedule, I could have made a nice, happy review of the BD/DVD release of Battle: Los Angles. Instead, I missed that “deadline” and now I’m stuck commenting on Green Lantern.

If it were merely bad, it would be one thing, but the reality is that Green Lantern is awful. It is awful in that calculated and deliberate way that makes one suspect that everyone involved knew it was awful and conspired to ensure its awfulness. Really, this is a bad film.

I don’t recall ever reading Green Lantern as a child. I knew such a superhero existed, but the concept didn’t capture my imagination, not in the same way that Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. did. Nonetheless, I love a good to great superhero film. Loved Chris Reeve’s Superman; loved the first two Sam Raimi Spider-Man films; loved Watchmen; adore The Dark Knight; etc.

So Green Lantern stood a chance. Alas...

Green Lantern tells the tale of how test pilot Hal Jordon (Ryan Reynolds) becomes, er, Green Lantern. Launched by an egregious data dump of an opening narrative, we meet the descendants of Talos IV, er, the Guardians, who declare that they are the defenders of the Universe and have established the Green Lantern Corps. Each member of the corps is given a green lantern ring which wields the green light of the power of will, allowing them to greenly construct anything their green-powered imagination can imagine. (Really, it all sounds exactly like that.)

One of the greatest of the green lantern corps successfully imprisoned Parallax, a being that utilizes the yellow light of fear. But, surprise! With startlingly little effort Parallax escapes from his inescapable prison, hunts down that greatest of the green lantern corps, and smites him mortally.

Really...

This all happens to the tune of that dull opening narration. My eyelids were already beginning to droop. I considered the benefits to a lobotomy.

Our mortally wounded greatest of the green lantern corps is transported to Earth because the ring knows to find a suitable replacement and, voila, it greenily snags Jordon. Jordon, meanwhile, has been fired from being a test pilot that, you know, actually tests aircraft and does what is known in the world of The Right Stuff as “pushing the outside of the envelope.” Alas, in this alternate reality world, that’s frowned upon.

And he has “daddy issues.” I’m going to steal how MovieBob describes this because it’s perfect: The daddy issue is stolen bodily from Top Gun, but is more like Top Gun via Hot Shots.

It’s not just awful, it’s godawful. Worse, once established it is never brought up again. Ever. Even in Hot Shots, the daddy issue is key to resolving the film. Here, it vanishes like a green (or should that be yellow?) puff of diversion, never to be heard from again.

Martin Campbell is a competent director. He rebooted James Bond (with Casino Royale) and deftly handled trying to kick off a Zorro franchise (The Mark of Zorro). What’s clear here, however, is that while he can handle an actual, physical film, one with actual, physical action sequences, he is easily overcome by the morass known as CGI, his talent lost in a swirl of bits and bytes, ones and zeroes.

So much of this film is computer generated that, like Avatar, you wonder why they didn’t just go all the way and make it a full CGI animated feature film, a la Pixar. But then, that would have required them to have a good story and know how to tell it well, a la Pixar. More to the point, if this had been a Pixar film the CGI would have been at least excellent. Instead, its looks to be around a decade behind the production curve. The trailer for Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon looks better.

The production design is dull, the visuals are dull (Oa, the homeworld of the Guardians and the corps, is particularly horrible), the plot plods, all of the characters are dull. (Really, how does an actress named Blake Lively come across so dull?) I think I laughed at one punchline of dialogue, but for the life of me I can’t remember it right now. Nothing in the film stands out as memorable except how awful it is.

Ultimately, therefore, Green Lantern is not just awful, it commits the ultimate film sin of being boring. Avatar is an awful film, but it’s not completely boring (preachy, but not a total bore). Wanted is an awful film, but it’s not boring and because it so wildly revels in its insanity, God forgive me, I love it.

Bottom line: Avoid this film. Instead, go see X-men: First Class, a film that is vastly superior in every conceivable way.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home. Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes . In Batman Begins , I blamed Katie Holmes . Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal , who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film,...

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...

We pause now for a minor rant…

“My car has a flat tire.” “You should buy a new car.” Every time I hear President Obama and other Democrats talking about “health care reform,” that’s what the conversation sounds like. A health care crisis is declared and the only solution is to replace the entire system. At most, around 15% of the American population is without health care insurance. Ignoring the fact that for most of them, this is a matter of choice, it also means that 85% are insured. And of that 85%, something like 70+% like their current coverage and don’t want the government to touch it. So for the vast majority, the current system works and works great. Yet, because of the minority for whom it allegedly does not...toss it all, start again. Admittedly, regardless of insurance coverage, it all costs too much, but again, the only accepted approach to controlling costs are to throw out everything and turn it all over to the government. Tactics that are proposed to address specific cost issues are not consid...