When I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie, I had a lot of reservations. He is such a complicated, other-worldly character, that I doubted his ability to transition to a major motion picture. Turned out my doubts were right. Despite DC's best marketing efforts, including a heavy run in the comics and a new cartoon show, this movie was an epic failure. This is probably because it committed the great sin of alienating both the mainstream audience (by being too weird) and angering the loyal comic book geeks (by changing too many things in an attempt to relate to the main audience). Green Lantern came out in 2011, was directed by Martin Campbell and stars Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard.
Right up front, I'm going to take a point off for their choice of villain. Parallax is far too abstract a villain to be fighting an already abstract hero. The average fan might know who Sinestro is, but very rarely will you find someone who knows about Parallax. And if you do find that rare soul, they would tell you all the reasons why this movie's Parallax is completely different and worse than the one in the comics. I understand the necessity to make changes for movies, but these changes need to improve the characters and make them easier to understand. That did not happen here. The more you try to understand Parallax, the more confused you get. OK, so he's the embodiment of fear, and he usually acts like a mindless monster, but sometimes he talks and acts like he's got a big, master plan. He sucks the fear out of people, which also sucks out their skeletons and kills them? And his body is a giant head made out of clouds with a lot of tentacles? Completely bizarre. How can an audience enjoy a villain when they can't wrap their minds around it?
I'm going to take another point off for the old Hollywood cliche of making the beautiful girlfriend perfect at everything. In the comics, Carol Ferris is in charge of a multi-billion dollar company, which is more than enough for anybody to handle. But here, they also made her the second-best pilot in the world. Let me guess, she's also a world champion kick boxer? Come on! She doesn't need to also be flying the jets! Running the company that makes them should be good enough.
Luckily, a surprisingly intense scene brings the score back up to a 4. It was actually pretty dramatic and emotional when Hal was crashing his plane and remembering his dad blowing up in his plane. In such a poorly-made movie, scenes like this are a rarity and keep you invested just enough to make it through the end of the movie.
Another thing I wasn't expecting was the appearance of Amanda Waller. Yes, she was too skinny and nowhere near the powerful, intimidating figure we saw in the Justice League cartoons, but I was still happy to see her, and for that, I will add a point.
The score will jump to an above-average 6 for the first time Hal Jordan recites the Green Lantern oath. The oath itself (and even the idea of it) is incredibly cheesy and lame. But they somehow found a way to make it actually sound kind of cool. Having his eyes slowly turn green while he spoke was also a nice touch.
This next point I'm going to take off is something I rarely focus on: the director. For some reason, Martin Campbell loves using closeups. That in itself, isn't a bad thing, but he didn't seem to understand the purpose of closeups. Too often, the camera would zoom in and linger on a random character, implying some sort of significance. I'd start racking my brain, trying to figure out who this person was in the comic book world, only to realize that character was a complete nobody. Campbell's other mistake with closeups was overdoing it on the obvious must-have closeups. Like when Hal was sent to Oa and started to become the Green Lantern. The camera got uncomfortably close to him and gave the audience a great shot up Ryan Reynolds' nose. We didn't need to see that!
We always knew the special effects were going to be incredibly important in this movie, and unfortunately, this movie let itself get too caught up in the special effects to give enough time and attention to the script, actors, etc. Interestingly, they got the big stuff right. Oa and all the aliens were amazing and interesting. I actually wish we would have spent more time there. On the other hand, the filmmakers got caught up in the little details, especially Green Lantern's suit. Honestly, I don't think a single person would have cared if they just gave him a normal suit. Instead, they outsmarted themselves by making his suit out of pure energy. The end result was a needless amount of CGI that ended up looking like crap. Half the time, it looked like Ryan Reynolds' head was floating above this odd, throbbing mass of green energy that was kinda shaped like a skinnier version of his own body. And what was with his stupid mask? It was somehow both too big and too small at the same time. I say, either completely cover the nose or not at all. Anyway, I'll take a point away for the stupid suit, but add a point for Oa and the aliens, so we're still at a 5.
The only non-human Green Lantern I know is Kilowog, who was done very well here. He was big enough, he was tough enough, he had a great look and a good voice, to boot. Although his screen time was far too brief, he was a rare enjoyable moment for me in this movie, so I'll add a point for him.
But I'll take off another point for the speed of Hal's decision to quit being a Lantern. He trains with Tomar-Re and Kilowog for about two minutes, then he fights Sinestro for less than one minute. After being beaten by a man who's been a Green Lantern for years, Hal Jordan decides he doesn't have what it takes and decides to quit after being a Lantern for about ten minutes. Seriously? How the heck did he make it through pilot school if he quit after the first teeny bit of adversity?
I'll drop the score to a 4 for the biggest plot hole in the whole movie. The Guardians of Oa tell Sinestro that one of their own, an immortal, all-knowing Guardian, once tried to control the power of fear, but it overtook him and turned him into the embodiment of fear, Parallax. Immediately, Sinestro suggests that they use the power of fear to create yellow rings to fight Parallax. Wait, didn't you just hear about how fear corrupted even of the best and wisest creatures in the galaxy? Why do you think you'll be able to do it better? And the worst part about the whole thing is that the Guardians agree with Sinestro! You know, for being the supreme protectors of the universe, you guys sure are dumb.
I'm going to take off another point for the way in which Green Lantern revealed himself to the world. He's at a party and he sees a helicopter about to crash. Now, there are at least 7,000 different ways to solve this crisis, but it seems like here, Hal asked himself, "What's the stupidest way to stop a crashing helicopter?" And he probably did come up with the stupidest way: a giant Hot Wheels car to catch the helicopter and zoom it around on a track complete with an unnecessary jump. To make matters even worse, I saw a commercial for toys to recreate this exact scenario. It's almost like the toy company came to the filmmakers first and said, "We need you to work this into the movie somehow." And like obedient sheep, that's exactly what they did. Seriously, though — Green Lantern can create anything and the first major thing you have him make is a giant Hot Wheels car? Talk about selling out in the lamest possible way.
But the funniest moment of the movie does deserve a point. That's when Carol easily and quickly recognizes Hal through his retarded mask. She makes a great point: "Just because your cheekbones are covered, doesn't mean I won't recognize you." Of course, this is a strange way for the movie to admit that they made a stupid mask. It would have been better for them to make a better mask (or be really bold and not have one at all), but it still was neat to poke fun at a universally-overlooked flaw in all superheroes.
I'll now bring the score down to a 3 for Green Lantern's unexplained appearance that stopped Hector Hammond from killing Amanda Waller. Seeing Hammond go nuts on them was rather interesting, but suddenly, out of nowhere, G.L. shows up. We didn't see anybody call him; we didn't see his ring tell him to go there. Nothing. There's a fight going on and here's our hero to save the day. (Of course, he failed to save Hammond's dad, the senator.) I wonder if there's a deleted scene here, or if this was just the result of lazy writing. Either way, it sucked.
I'm going to take off another point for the strange relationship between Hammond and Parallax. So a small bit of Parallax was left in Abin Sur from their fight in the beginning, which then went into Hammond during the autopsy. This piece of Parallax then gave Hammond psychic powers? Why? And then the two were connected and Parallax decided to use Hammond to get revenge on Hal because, you know, he has Abin Sur's old ring, and it's a lot more important to kill him before destroying Oa, the center of the universe.
The score then falls to a 1 when Green Lantern goes before the council of Guardians to deliver an extremely cheesy speech, in which he ... asks for permission to fight Parallax alone before he destroys Earth? Why would he have to ask and why would the Guardians say no? All I know is Hal said a lot of stupid stuff about courage and heart and it was supposed to be inspiring but was just really stupid instead.
We then hit a rock bottom zero when Hal decides to give Hammond the ring for some reason. Hammond then uses the ring to blow up a few things, before Hal explains that the ring has to choose you and he summons it off Hammond's finger and back to his hand. Wait ... so, the ring has to choose the person and it only works for that person ... so why was Hammond able to use it to blow all that stuff up? And what was the whole point of this, anyway?
Mercifully, I will add one last point for the second time Hal recites the oath. I just got chills listening to it. Yes, the music helped, but it mostly goes to Ryan Reynolds' delivery. I wouldn't think they'd be able to recite the oath in a non-lame way in the movie, but they pulled it off — twice! (It was just everything else they did in a really lame way.)
Final score: 1
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