gist: van wilder is a cocky cockpit jockey who becomes the first human member of a space police force called the green lantern corps. he is given a power ring which, through his will and imagination, he can use to make constructs in his fight against evil. with the moled gossip girl in tow, he must prove his mettle by defeating the hydrocephalic hector hammond and ginormous being of fear known as parallax. all together now: in brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. wish i may wishi might have this wish i wish tonight!
reaction:after the success of iron man, and most recently thor, it was no surprise that dc would expedite the adaptation of their titles. however, instead of following batman's triumph with a better superman reboot or a wonder woman film, they chose to imitate their marvelous rival and decided to introduce a second-tier character to the theater patrons. i have no deep knowledge of the green lantern stories, but i knew the basics. it obviously had a more of a sci-fi lean than fantasy, and so i, and much of the moviegoers, expected a visually appealing, story-rich space opera. however, with the opening backstory narration failing to hook the audience, this movie was ripe for nitpicking from the get-go.
the keyword for this movie is convenience. the script was written in such the way that nearly every scene that moves the plot forward seemed convenient. with lots of telescopes in the world, i cant believe nobody saw abin-sur's ship enter the earth's atmosphere. he crashed on a beach and surprisingly, there was no one there. and when hal jordan was whisked away by the green orb thing, he was standing in an empty street. i could go on but that would be practically retelling the whole movie. this lazy script was also peppered with cheesy lines and im not buying the excuse that it was intentional, for humor, campiness, not taking itself seriously. ryan reynolds sure seemed serious when he said "he was afraid" like a little boy in a bad coming-of-age b-movie. but i'll get to the acting in a sec.
i dont know what happened but this surely wasn't martin campbell's cup of tea. his direction had a lot of misfires and there were many poorly executed scenes. some were just downright funny even though they were meant for laughs (parallax's end of the street attack). also i dont understand how green lantern can fly from earth to oa and back repeatedly and parallax's trip takes three-quarters of the film's run time. also there's suddenly a big event gathering the main human characters where some shit happens so that green lantern can showcase his power publicly for the first time. and then there's that mid-credits scene that in the context of the movie doesn't make any sense at all. put there solely for the purpose of teasing a sequel without providing proper character development for the involved party. i mean, green lantern's weakness against the color yellow wasn't even explored at all...
the film had its merits but they were few. the cgi was nice, but not wow-factor impressive. i liked the second skin suits that channeled an automan vibe with the animated chest logo. i liked how the suit was a construct, and therefore had to be cgi, and the cumbersome putting on of normal clothes in contrast with the insta-costume was a good touch. there's little bits of positives here and there (like the star sapphire nod) but the only other pluses worth mentioning are the performances of sinestro and hector hammond. the supposed eyecandy blake lively was pretty much useless other than being the love story foil, which felt forced. as for hal jordan, it's hard to look at ryan reynolds and not giggle at his attempt to win an oscar. he's convincing when he's being arrogant, but beyond that, the guy from buried was nowhere to be found.
anyways, i guess this has pulled back the possibility of a justice league movie a dozen notches. a haphazard amalgam of what worked from previous comicbook films, this green lantern's light is pretty dim.
good: hammond, sinestro, suit
bad: script and direction
ugly: hammond
verdict: 6 power rings
the grim lantern.
