Green Lantern [2011]
It has been slightly shy of a decade since Green Lantern, huh? It was universally panned, and both put Green Lantern's reputation in the dumps since then. Green Lantern himself was out of the 'main seven' rotation for the Justice League movie, and the Green Lantern cartoon got canned shortly after release. The Lego Movie and Deadpool both mocked this movie, if in a more good-natured fashion than most. It also got people super-angry when Ryan Reynolds was announced to play Deadpool -- a fear that was quickly quashed since Ryan Reynolds was never the problem with this movie.
Regardless, though, I've booted up Green Lantern last week and...
It wasn't actually that bad. Hell, even giving it some time to cook in my head, it isn't that bad. I can easily think up of a couple of superhero films like Batman v Superman or Avengers: Age of Ultron that could easily give the movie a run for its money in sheer messiness, and the ill-fated Fantastic Four reboot was far, far worse. Green Lantern, it seems, was simply a bit too... generic. You've got your origin story told across a good half of the screentime, the villain gets an origin story, you get a training montage, the villain gets replaced by a scarier one, and then we get a big CGI battle where the bad guy is defeated. The biggest problem with Green Lantern is simply the fact that it doesn't innovate.
Neither do 80% of the superhero movies out there, Marvel, DC or otherwise, so what's the problem, really?
Let's quickly go through the parts of the movie that they did well, in quick succession. This is not going to be a super-long review. The good stuff is, well, Ryan Reynolds' performance as Hal Jordan. Perhaps not the writing, which ends up causing Jordan to not feel as interesting as he could been, but Reynolds' performance really nails the devil-may-care jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold Hal Jordan as he appears in most of his more memorable appearances in the 2000's-era comic book run. Reynolds is a fun leading man, and Carol Ferris, played by Reynolds' now-wife Blake Lively, is also a pretty decent, if generic, love interest.
Mark Strong's performance as Thaal Sinestro is also easily my favourite aspect of the film, and one that I remember so fondly even when I first saw the movie in 2011. Strong's performance across like three or four scenes perfectly captures the snobbish, well-meaning yet extremist mentality of Sinestro. Peter Sarsgaard also plays a very well-done Hector Hammond, capturing the mental instability caused by years of self-image problems, and it's a shame he literally wasn't allowed to do much. I also liked the large amount of cameos that draws upon so many minor Green Lantern characters, and I squeed when I spotted Stel or Rop Lot Fan or Bzzd among the background characters. And secondary characters Tom, Abin Sur, Kilowog and Tomar-Re are portrayed relatively well, too, if they weren't really given a chance to shine.
But where did it go wrong? Obviously, one of the oft-derided aspects of this movie is the weird veiny costume, something I surprisingly don't have a problem with. I'd definitely love a more traditional costume, don't get me wrong, but I did get what the film makers were trying to go for, with the costumes supposedly being actual constructs created by the armour. And it's a shame, considering the actual aliens and the ring constructs actually look good -- using more practical effects for the costumes would definitely work better.
One big problem with Green Lantern is simply its inconsistent pacing and tone, really. It really wants to jump from one set piece to another, jumping from one side-character to the next and abandoning the previous one almost instantaneously. We get a long introdump about the Guardians of the Universe, the Green Lantern Corps and the entity Parallax within two minutes of beginning the movie, then we go through the whole 'Abin Sur crashes and the ring finds its way to Jordan'. Then the plotline gets divided between the Earth plot with Hal being kinda-discharged from Ferris Air for his madcap daredevil antics, while dr Hector Hammond gets involved in a government conspiracy regarding Abin Sur's ship. Meanwhile, we also have the Guardians and the Lanterns trying to deal with the cosmic threat of Parallax, who has been somewhat reimagined here as a Galactus-style entity going around destroying worlds.
And the movie was messy in that aspect. It jumps from one scene to the next without abandon, and while it might've worked had Green Lantern been released a couple of years earlier, but 2011 was when it was dueling against the slow buildup of the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut, as well as coming off the critically well-acclaimed Nolan Batman movies. It's not quite enough for a superhero movie to simply be 'entertaining', and Green Lantern honestly only fell flat by virtue of comparison, in my opinion.
And, well, there are enough weak elements running around to pull this movie down. While it was neat to tie in together the whole 'Guardians are not as infallible as they may seem' thing and Parallax as a villain together, it does kind of feel half-baked and an unearned revelation that no one ever mentions that Parallax is actually possessing the corpse and/or body of a Guardian as he rampages.
Also under-utilized are the supporting cast, and Jordan literally just bounces from 'civilian Earth-buddy' Tom to 'love interest' Carol to 'nice apathetic dude' Tomar-Re to 'harsh drill sergeant' mentor Kilowog to 'you are not worthy' rival Sinestro. While the performances given by the actors are well-done, none of the emotion feel earned. Add that to Sinestro having a sub-plot of crafting a ring of fear to fight Parallax which absolutely goes nowhere other than the mid-credits scene of Sinestro wearing the yellow ring (which is badass) but it really feels, again, half-baked.
We get Amanda Waller (!) to represent the government agent that works with Hammond's demanding father to investigate Abin Sur and his ship, but Amanda Waller does not do anything throughout the movie. She exchanges a couple of lines, gets thrown around by Hammond when he rampages, survives and disappears for the rest of the movie. Waller's fate is essentially the same that Tomar Re, Sinestro, Tom and even Carol experiences, and I think that's one of the weaker parts of the movie.
But easily the weakest part is the comparison between villain and hero. It's easy to note that a hero is only as good as his villain, and neither Parallax nor Hector Hammond are actually that good. I really wished that they didn't bite off more than they could chew, and simply settled on a single threat. Or maybe have Hammond team up with Parallax (or another villain entirely). They really tried to build something up with Hector Hammond, by setting him up as a foil to Hal Jordan. Both are exposed to alien things, but while Jordan gets a magic ring that welcomes him to an army of space cops and allows him to create anything, Hammond gets transformed into a grotesque, pulsating big-headed man with crude telekinetic abilities. Jordan gets the girl, Hammond only gets scorn. And the climax of Jordan and Hammond's antagonism is somewhat reflected when Jordan gives Hammond the ring to try... but it falls flat because neither of them really end up exploring their characters, and Hammond literally gets killed off seconds later.
Add that to the fact that Hammond doesn't actually start to menace anyone until the last fifteen minutes of the movie, and you get a problem.
And Parallax? Parallax is a hot, hot soup of concepts that doesn't gel together well. He's an ancient entity of fear, he's a failed experiment by the Guardians to create a better weapon than the Green Lanterns, he's a fallen Guardian, he's a planet-devouring entity, he's Hector Hammond's master... and none of these concepts end up actually showing up. Parallax in the comics is a pretty cool threat -- the true cosmic embodiment of fear that possesses Hal Jordan and forces him to face his own fear. Here? Here he's just a swirling black mass of smoke and death and eeeeeevil that ends up being kind of disappointing. The strange decision to portray him as a gigantic mass of brown-black smoke that sometimes glows in sickly yellow glows also makes Parallax look like shit. And I mean that literally, not figuratively.
The way he's beaten is quite shit, though. Nevermind the fact that Parallax's nature is never really elaborated on beyond 'wow, evil space monster!' with vague winks at his comic-book origin of using the colour yellow and feeding on fear, but he just swirls around like this gigantic smoke tentacle, eating people because of evil reasons and ending up chasing Hal Jordan into space and falling into the sun because he never took Kilowog's Ring-Slinging 101. That climax was pretty bland, if serviceable... but it really could've been done better if Jordan actually inspired Sinestro, Kilowog and the others to help out.
And, well, Jordan's writing itself establishes him as a cocky pilot with a devil-may-care attitude with Carol Ferris and the more senior Green Lanterns, but it never actually puts him through any sort of development and he ends up just being... generic Silver Age hero at the end for reasons. It makes his argument with Hector Hammond ring out hollow, as, yes, he does have everything from Ryan Reynolds' chiseled looks and perfect teeth to a hot girlfriend that is patient with all his bullshitting around to a super-powered magic alien ring to membership in an intergalactic police laid out neatly in front of him.
So yeah. Green Lantern is not a good movie. In fact, all things considered it might be one of DC's worse efforts. But it's really not that bad, and to hear people talk about it really makes it sound like there's absolutely nothing irredeemable about this movie -- when it's not. The only real crime this movie has is trying to do too much while not doing anything different, because it's got a very good cast and semi-decent CGI (Pooprallax is still annoying). It's just a shame that it ends up being such a mark on the Green Lantern franchise that it's not until 2020 that we're getting another live-action Green Lantern adaptation at all.
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