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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.

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