This year has been dubbed the “Year of the Geek” with regards to the blockbuster movie season. With Thor, Super 8, and X-Men: First Class under our belts already and Captain America: The First Avenger and Cowboys and Aliens just around the corner there is no lack of choices for whatever your geeky tastes are. Entering the geeky fray this weekend is Warner Bros. and DC’s Green Lantern – a rare foray for WB and DC into their relatively untouched roster of superheroes aside from Batman and Superman. So how does Green Lantern stack up? Unfortunately not that well . . .
Perhaps where this film suffers the most is a rushed, and undeveloped story and a gross under-use of some potentially interesting characters. The film really jumps right in to bestowing the power ring to Hal Jordan who is shortly after inheriting a power ring from the dying alien, Abin Sur, is whisked away to the Green Lantern base-planet of Oa. Here we are introduced to three Green Lanterns we will see shockingly little of after they attempt to train Hal Jordan in the ways of being a member of the Green Lantern Corps. After becoming frustrated and beaten down by his would-be trainers Kilowog and Thaal Sinestro, Hal simply gives up and returns home. Yes, after less than one day spent traveling to Oa, learning about the Green Lanterns, and getting frustrated because he can’t immediately wield his ring as well as some the the Corps’ best members, Hal Jordan returns to Earth and gives up. Running parallel to Hal’s story, we have Hector Hammond, a scientist and son of a U.S. Senator, become exposed to some remnants of the yellow, physical manifistation of the power of Fear, Parallax, when he is summoned to study the body of the deceased Abin Sur. This of course putshim on track to becoming the film’s main – but relatively weak – antagonist. The film whisks along at a steady pace as it desperately attempts to set up some romance between Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris and present scenarios on Earth that forces Jordan to don his ring and become a hero – including a crashing helicopter and an increasingly crazy Hector Hammond drunk from the power and influence of Parallax. It’s not long before our hero prevails in a relatively anti-clamactic showdown with Parallax and he is accepted by the Green Lanterns as a formidable member.
Nearly all of the main characters aside from perhaps Hal Jordan himself suffer from a lack of character development. Ryan Reynolds does a decent enough job as Hal Jordan, and we do see his character grow a bit over the course of the movie from being a brash and arrogant pilot, to being quite humbled, to finding strength and confidence in himself once again by the end of the film. Blake Lively as Carol Ferris wasn’t terrible casting, but does little more than serve as a love interest for Hal – though, she does have one of the funniest lines in the movie in a scene that I don’t want to completely ruin, but it involves the iconic (and not really effective in “real life”) way in which classic superheroes have hidden their identity over the years. Peter Sarsgaard doesn’t get much to do in the film as Hector Hammond aside from being crazy on screen and screaming a lot. Frankly, I thought Hammond was an incredibly one-dimensional villain that the writers tried to provide some humanity for with an unconvincing troubled relationship with his father and being “in love” with Carol Ferris – things that supposedly helped attribute to his going insane and evil, but fell flat. As a villain, Hammond never seemed that menacing or much of a threat.
Perhaps the most grossly underused character of the film is Mark Strong’s Sinestro. I really enjoyed Strong’s portrayal of the character but he was given shockingly little to do in the film. Most of his screen time is spend standing in front of the Green Lanterns giving a speech, or standing in fron of the Guardians giving a speech. There are a few scenes in which he’s given more to do, but they are rather brief. The scene in which he attempts to help train Hal is pretty strong as he not only physically pummels this new human Green Lantern, but also completely demoralizes him while doing so. There was obviously a lot of contempt for Hal since he is now the bearer of Sinestro’s mentor’s ring and it would have been nice to see more development in the relationship between Hal and Sinestro – especially for anyone who is familiar with the comics and knows where the Sinestro/Hal thing is heading. In this film, the two interact very little and it seems the progression of Sinestro’s disdain for Hal to his respecting of Hal happens too suddenly and with little impact since their relationship wasn’t really expanded upon.
There was also little use of some other familiar Green Lanterns that could have played a more expanded role in the film, such as Tomar-re and Kilowog – perhaps two of the more recognizable Green Lanterns from the source material, especially Kilowog. It seems as though they made their brief appearances, and then were essentially forgotten about until the end of the film.
As far as the special effects go, this was one of the aspects of the film I thoroughly enjoyed. I was quite concerned about the full-CG Green Lantern suits, but I thought the fit the characters well. Each Green Lantern donned a suit that was clearly a Green Lantern uniform, but varied a little depending on the wearer’s physical appearance – for example Tomar-re is a “fish-like” alien, there for you can see some scale details worked into his suit. The power ring manifestations were also well done.I was concerned how well they would translate on screen with the possibility of looking too cartoony, but the folks working on the visual effects for this film seemed to have taken a lot of time on the look and feel of all the CG in this film and it definitely paid off. This is a film that I’m sure most expect to be heavy on the computer generated special effects, frankly, it almost had to be, and it seems the studio allowed to ample budget to make sure the effects didn’t look cheap or too cheesy.
As for the climax of the movie and the battle between Hal Jordan and Parallax, I felt there could have been more. What was included wasn’t bad by any means, and it was quite exciting, but it seemed all too brief and Parallax for supposedly being such a large threat to the Green Lanterns as whole was fairly easily disposed of by such a new, human member of the Corps. It was fun though to see Hal Jordan truly become a Green Lantern and have confidence in the power he weilds and take it to a giant yellowy-brown glob of pure fear.
Some of this may sound a bit nit picky, but I hope none of it comes off as fan-boy anger. In the interest of full-disclosure my superhero “expertise” (if you could even call it that) tends to lean towards the world of Marvel superheroes. I’m not super familiar with Hal Jordan and the Green Lanterns aside from knowing the basics from Justice League cartoons and some collected storied in trade-paperback form, so I felt like I was able to go into this film with little expectations and an unbiased view on the character. The fact is, I didn’t hatethis film at all, but I also didn’t think it was that great. Most of my frustrations come from seeing some really good potential in this film and Warner Bros.’ inability to expand and capitalize on that. There were numerous opportunities for the script to expand on some character development and relationships, weave plot lines together better, and really produce some incredible action and visuals with all of the freedom that the Green Lantern power ring allows for. Ultimately though, the entire film felt quite rushed and at times just downright didn’t make sense on a few occasions.
I can’t recommend just skipping Green Lantern all together, but I wouldn’t recommend rushing out opening weekend either. It’s great to see DC and Warner Bros. exploring other heroes from the DC roster and I hope they continue to do so instead of just dipping into the Batman and Superman well over and over again. There just seems to be some of that “magic” lacking that Marvel has seemed to be able to tap into with the likes of the Iron Man films and the universe they’ve created that’s leading up to The Avengers. I honestly hope WB and DC can find their own stride with their films so we can see other superhero greats get the big screen treatment, but if Green Lantern is any indication of how they plan on handling these films, there is definitely room for improvement.