Green Lantern Review

Being a comic book fan I'm fairly familiar with a wide variety of characters from them. I know of the various green lanterns, and of the somewhat complex mythos and lore that this particular character has. So I knew going into this movie, that it was going to be quite a complex task to get this one right.

Just as a disclaimer here, my favorite lantern is John Stewart, however I understand why the picked Hal Jordan as he is the better known of the human lanterns.

GL has had major bashings from fans and reviewers since it was first announced. Everybody was hating the choice of Ryan Reynolds as Hal "the man with 1000 nick names" Jordan. Hal has never been known to be a wise cracking jokester like Reynolds is, so the choice was a little odd to be honest. It also did not help that at the time GL was announced most fans were expecting him to get the lead for a supposed Deadpool movie. As it stood he was the only salvageable thing from the awful experience that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

With that out of the way, Reynolds' Hal is not bad. He's very different to the womanizing, no nonsense, of slight pedophiliac tendencies Jordan that is portrayed in the comics. However at the end of the day the portrayal is not the undoing of this movie, its one of the few things that can be said to be o.k in it.

The movie has quite a lot of story to get through before anything can really happen to Hal and needs to explain many things for the general movie audience that is unfamiliar with the character. This makes the movie feel a little bogged down at times, and feels like most of the characters are very underused. Which sadly is true; the fan favorites like Sinestro, and Killowog are relegated to mere cameos at best with no real substance or feeling of belonging.

Revolving primarily around Hal's induction into the Green Lanterns, the movie splits its time between Hal's earthbound problems and the Green Lantern's cosmic police work and galactic issues. However it fails to give either one the proper development so as to make the audience feel for any of the dilemmas Hal faces. You end up with too much information, and you don't really care about anything or anybody.

In the course of the movie we are introduced to the Guardians of Oa and the Green Lantern Battery. The Source of the Green Lantern Battery and the fallen guardian that transformed into the evil Parallax after being consumed by the yellow energy of fear. This is all well and good but makes the movie a little to complex to swallow in one sitting for the casual viewer.

Even the comics didn't bring in the guardians at the same time they gave Hal his powers (mostly because they hadn't been created yet, but still). They developed Hal and his new powers before bringing in all this plot and background story that's been evolving and getting ever more convoluted since the inception of Hal Jordan

The movie makers should have recognized this in production and kept GL's first outing into movie theaters a bit more linear and grounded. But like with Spider-Man 3, the need to shoe horn all this back story and characters into a 2 hour movie does not pay off.

The entirety of the, Guardians, Oa amd Parallax issue would have made for a great GL II script had they left it out and concentrated on introducing Jordan to the new audiences who are not familiar with the character. After all Green Lantern is neither Batman nor Superman, and could have benefited from more character development in this movie.

Personally , they should have stuck with Hector Hammond as the primary villain of the movie, showing him developing his powers in a slightly more drawn out manner, and showing Hal learn how to use his powers as he did in the comic books, by himself. That alone would have made for enough story line to fill the movie time and given enough screen time to develop all aspects of his Green Lantern persona

Of course the problems with the movie don't end there, no. The far reaching story line of course puts strains on the special effects and it shows. While the suit is pretty spiffy, neither it nor the mask needed to be a CGI effect. Reynold's has the physique to pull off a super hero body fine and without help, and a skin tight rubber suit with a physical rubber mask would have looked leagues better, and be cheaper to make. As it is, the mask looks really poorly rendered as if it were merely floating over his face, and the suit while impressive just did not need to be CGI.

The usage of the many Green Lanterns in Oa seems like an afterthought, with n real development given to them, and as such makes them feel like distractions to the main plot of the movie. Having them not appear in this first movie would have been a better alternative. Perhaps a sequel can delve more into their relationships with Hal, and the Guardians past as well as a more developed Sinestro

In the end the movie lacks coherent story telling, and throws to much trivia and background information to the viewer. Sometimes the old saying of "Less is More" is right on the money.

2.5 out of 5 Reels