Review of Green Lantern

Of all the blockbusters coming out this year, this was the one I wanted to see. Green Lantern was one of those comic book characters that just can’t be done right in the past. He is an intergalactic space cop wielding one of the most powerful weapons in the universe; a power ring that could manifest anything its wielder can think of. A character like GL demanded a truckload of CGI and in the past, the technology just wasn’t there.

It is now. If they can do Avatar, surely they can do Green Lantern!

So I was really looking forward to the movie…then I read the reviews! 29 out of 100 on Rotten Tomato; 2 out of 5 on IGN; I haven’t seen a score above 3 out of 5 yet on any reviews! After watching the movie, I have to say my views are mixed.

First off, I have to say the movie is not as bad as the critics say. I can see the reason why critics hate the movie so much but there were parts of the movie that I truly enjoyed. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, and it was a choice that worked out surprising well for the movie. I’m not a big fan of the choice but Reynolds has the mixture of cockiness and doubt that is Hal Jordan.

I also enjoyed the CGI of the movie. When Hal first reached Oa, it was the highlight of the movie. The alien architecture of Oa was beautifully tendered and it was so filled with people that you can truly believe that it is a living, breathing place. Hal’s training (and his failure of the training) made a strong point that the Green Lanterns Corps is a tough group that has the hard job of policing the galaxy.

If only the movie would have stayed on Oa (or in space) longer!

That was the main problem I had with the movie. The best part of the movie (Oa, the space travel) was just too criminally short! Green Lantern is a space cop; the Green Lanterns Corps is a galactic police force; yet over 75% of the movie takes place on Earth! That’s like a Star Wars movie where the Jedi don’t hop from planet to planet or a Star Trek movie where they don’t boldly go where no man has gone before (like that crappy movie when Kirk and Spock when back in time to save whales). It was as if director Martin Campbell (or maybe the studio) couldn’t be sure the public will accept a movie about a superhero in space and had to move him back to Earth for a more “human” perspective. That to me was a cop-out.

However I cannot put all the blame on the director because the script didn’t help him. Now I don’t expect a great movie script from a superhero movie but the scriptwriters should at least make sure their work make some sense. There was a part when Hal went back to Oa to ask for help to protect Earth from a threat. When he reached Oa, the Corps leader Sinestro (Mark Strong) was making a yellow ring of fear to combat the same threat. Halfway through Hal’s speech about protecting Earth, the speech somehow became one about NOT using fear to protect the world. Uh?

The senselessness of the script even went beyond the film…into the cookie! Nowadays, movies add on a short scene after the credits end to “promote” the coming sequel of the film *cough* Kungfu Panda 2 *cough*. Green Lantern has without question the worst cookie I had ever seen in a movie. I mean why in the world would Sinestro put on the yellow ring at the end of the movie? The threat is over, the enemy has been defeated, and then he put on the ring of fear? If that scene had happened in the middle of the movie (when the enemy is still around), I can still understand it but at the end? After the defeat of the enemy? What sense does that makes?

That’s why I can see why critics hate the movie. All the ingredients of a great movie are there. The plot, the action, the CGI, all are there; but the movie was let down by a stupid script and some poor decisions by the director. That is too bad because Green Lantern could have been great but instead it became just another by-the-number summer movie let down by a poor script.