Review 204: Green Lantern

Green Lantern is... well to put it straight forward, it's a mess. As Jeremy Clarkson would say, "It looks great, drives like a Crème brûlée",

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax (Clancy Brown) threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax... he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.

The plot sounds great but trust me on this, it isn't. The problem for me is that they (Warner Bros/the producers/the writers) didn't know what they wanted Green Lantern to be e.g. a Spider-Man esque superhero drama, a Batman Begins dark, gritty, serious, twisted, complex, emotional origin tale, an Iron Man realistic, cool, fun, dark superhero drama, sci fi epic, Star Wars epic and it's ended up as a sort of browny-green mush of all five and without a balance structure, it's like they were trying to through in a much and as little as they could.
As well as being tonely uneven, narratively it feels unfocused, all that I saw happening in this film was random, random, random and more random stuff going on and it takes way too long for anything to happen. I'm not saying nothing happens it's just that random drama goes on instead of character development and it just feels like unnecessary filler until Parallax arrives.
The film is also just full of ludicrous plot points e.g. Sinestro (Mark Strong) trying to harness the yellow energy of fear to fight fear and other point like that and that along with the random drama/filler get to much for me to handle that I can no longer suspend my disbelief.

Director Martin Campbell's direction is frantic, dispirited and uneven. He stages the action scenes so frenetically he appears to be cut off from the rest of the film and not having his heart in the making of it.
The problem I also think is that Martin Campbell old school type of film director. I could litteraly see him struggling to keep this special effects overload under control. The editing is choppy, attention deficit (there are some scenes in the film that lead to choppy flashbacks e.g. during the drone fight scene Hal looses control of his plane and there are these random flashbacks of his dad being killed in a plane crash) the score is ellectronic nonsance and is not up to composer James Newton Howard's usual standards and the action scenes are brief and forgettable.

This is a well made, good looking film however, the special effects are pretty impressive for the most part, though the character design for Parallax looks like a Giant Turd and the CG Green Lantern costumes admittedly looks pretty silly.
And for a superhero who can create anything using his imagination, the constructs that Hal produces range from silly to downright cartoonish i.e. using his ring to create a Hot Wheels car to save a senator's life - I really wish I was making that up.

The cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty of Oa, the production design is spectacular, Oa in particular is an idealic planet with cities and skyscrapers covering its surface with points of Green Lantern energy shooting from the surface into space. The costumes by gorgeous, the props are well crafted, the make up is rich, the creature design is incredible, the scenery is breathtaking, the sound effects are cool and there are some nice flashes of humor sprinkled throughout.

The acting is clueless, the performances of Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard are incompetent in this film.
Ryan Reynolds is just hopeless as Hal Jordon, he starts off as cocky, irresponsible, underachieving pilot/playboy - kinda like Ryan Reynolds and never seems
Obviously, Hal not supposed to believe he has what it takes to be a Green Lantern at first but the script just doesn't allow him to grow and develop as a person.
he doesn't have that kind of "oh this guys so dam cool" or "God I love you..." vibe like Christopher Reeve as Superman or Christian Bale as Batman or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine or Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man or Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man or Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

Blake Lively is wet and boring as Carol Ferris and doesn't have any of that sassy appeal or strong independence that other Superhero love interests e.g. Kirsten Dunst is Mary Jane Watson or Margot Kidder as Lois Lane or Natalie Portman as Jane Foster or Gweneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts,

Peter Sarsgaard is just utterly, utterly useless as Hector Hammond, he's normally a terrific actor but here he is just reduced to playing the embarrassingly thankless role of a winny scientist, who becomes possessed by Parallax and becomes his hapless henchman. 

Mark Strong, Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan are sadly wasted as Sinestro, Tomar-Re and Kilowog, they were good, they just go drastically underused and have little screentime and bearly leave an impact as a result.

The rest of cast e.g. Tim Robbins as Senetor Hammond and Angela Basset as Amanda Waller have to little to do to make an impact.

Green Lantern is a huge disappointment, but I wouldn't mind seeing a reboot, 1.5/5

The Anonymous Critic.