The Green Lantern Review

After watching The Green Lantern I feel like I’ve got a good knowledge of the Green Lantern universe and the origins of the man in the green suit – sadly I didn’t have much fun in the process.

First off, I’d like to say that I know absolutely nothing about the Green lantern, apart from the fact that he is green (...and a lantern..?) so for me at least, director Martin Campbell and the mountain of Screen writers who worked on the Green lantern, could have done whatever they wanted to distort the Green Lantern fiction to make it an interesting, or at least entertaining, film. Instead what they gave us was a rather generic super-hero flick which is so full of back-story and explanatory dialogue explaining what the hell is actually going on that it seems he forgot to put in the fun parts. In essence, I feel like the Green Lantern is just trying to do far too much, so much that it fails on its basic principle of being an entertaining film.

The Green Lantern is a rather complex film and to explain the plot seems like it might take a while, especially when you have to explain the whole concept of the green lanterns and all their high sci-fi higgledy piggledy – a problems which the films flounders over constantly. Let’s just say the Green Lanterns are a sort of universal police force who guard the universe from evil – they are green. Apart from this high sci-finess, the core of the film follows Hal Jordan, a fighter pilot, and part time douchebag, played by Ryan Reynolds, who is chosen by a Green Lantern ring after the death of the local Green lantern alien dude (he’s purple, so you know he is alien). From here, Ryan Reynolds must face his fears, learn to use his new powers, travel to space a lot, have some kind of love interest in the form of Blake Lively, and eventually fight off a big bad floating head who harnesses the power of fear as well as a not-so-big-headed human (though still quite big), Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) who has been infected by fear and given super human powers. I won’t spoil anything, but you knew before they announced the film how it was going to end.

So the premise of the Green lantern is far from simple. That is not to say that the film does a bad job of explaining what is going on, actually I felt like it did a rather good job of keeping the audience informed of everything in this highly complex fictional universe, sadly I felt that the way this was done was handled poorly (ah the return of my old favourite, the voice over!) and also that it was done at the expense of everything else. Simply, there just isn’t enough action to keep it entertaining throughout. Sure there is action that is somewhat entertaining and is evenly spaced throughout the film, but everything in-between this is either expository, or focuses on other, poorer, aspects of the film, such as Ryan Reynold's face. The first 15 minutes is case in point, explaining the complex space orientated aspects of the green lantern story through a lot of VO and what is essentially just an animated film with only a smattering of action. While, once Hal Jordan is introduced to the lantern ring and the order of the green lanterns, great swaths of time is devoted to explaining the order of the green lanterns to him. When the film returns to earth things do improve somewhat, either through a bit of earth bound lantern action or following the trajectory of Hector Hammond from geeky scientist to freakishly big headed super villain – a part that Peter Sarsgaard plays surprisingly well.

As for the other acting talents, there are no others apart from Sarsgaard that stand out. Blake Lively is nothing more than a pretty face, while Ryan Reynolds does little but stand there and look handsome and hunky; he is all too two dimensional. Even though there is an attempt to create some kind of back story to Reynold’s character, exploring to death of his father in a plane crash, his character is only faintly driven away from this generic superhero persona, a fact that is compounded as the film totally fails to build upon this aspect of Hal’s character, as if forgetting it was ever mentioned. In the end, though his character is meant to have gone from douche to reformed character, for me there was little change.

It was not all bad though. The action when it finally comes is enjoyable. The fact that the green lantern ring grants Hal the power to create anything he can imagine out of thin air leads to some rather interesting conflicts, especially when he is facing off against other lanterns. These green creations, though slightly cartoonish visually, at least add some flavour to a somewhat bland super hero character. That said, Hal seemingly has a rather dull imagination and hence never creates anything that interesting. All this action incorporates a lot of CGI, in fact there are great swathes of the film which feature either only Reynolds in front of a green screen, or are just fully animated – especially in the space scenes. Even Hal’s green suit is completely computer animated, a step that seemed rather unnecessary. All this green CGIness was an interesting look, but overall it just came across as rather cheesy and somewhat cartoonish in spots.

In the end then, The Green Lantern does little to elevate itself above other, similar, super hero films of the last decade while its highly complicated plot, though not under explained, was just too much for a running time of only 100 minutes. If you’re looking for a great time, you may not be fully satisfied with the Green Lantern, though it probably won’t offend you. If you’re a massive fan of all things Green Lantern, maybe you will be slightly happier with all this exposition. That said, perhaps the dozen screenwriters (there are alot!) have distorted the Lantern fiction so much that it will have you running for the hills, I’m not the one to tell you – all I know is that, as a form of entertainment, The Green Lantern could have been more entertaining.