The Emerald Warrior In His First Full-Length Feature Film....is A Poozer* !!

With all the follow-up successes (if mixed) Marvel had achieved with their comic book adaptations, of course DC would do well to try and follow up with the groundbreaking success of “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”. With the rather mediocre film but mixed success that is “Superman Returns”, DC is looking for the next big thing. “Green Lantern” is somewhat of an oddball choice to try to begin a new franchise, but I am rather both happy and at the same time concerned how the comic book character would make the translation into film. Well, “Green Lantern” is a film that brings the Hal Jordan character to life; no Guy Gardner, no Kyle Rayner and no Jon Stewart; just plain old Hal “Highballs” Jordan. The greatest Green Lantern whose light would shine both brighter and dimmer than anyone’s.

“Green Lantern” is a film whose execution comes as no surprise. There are two ways to approach a review of this film; as a comic book fan and as a lover of film. I am going to try to be both, seeing as comics and film are two of my favorite entertainment medium. The bottom line with the film is that it makes a rather risky assumption that all of its viewers would be fans of the comic and that those who aren’t wouldn’t have any issues believing into what it is trying to portray with its story.

                    

                   

                   

                   

                   

Hal Jordan (a severely miscast Ryan Reynolds) is a test pilot who likes to live life on the edge and seems determined to prove himself worthy of his father’s vaunted reputation. This makes Hal reckless and careless, at times overbearing but nonetheless very attractive to a childhood friend and sometime lover Carol Ferris (a radiant and very sexy Blake Lively). After a small mishap with a practice dog fight, Hal is taken to the crash site of an alien spacecraft whose mortally wounded pilot, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) is a member of the Green Lantern Corps that polices the known 3000+ space sectors of the universe. Given a ring of power, whose bearer is able to make constructs of energy that is limited only to his will and imagination, Hal is then whisked away to the planet OA, the home of the Corps and the Guardians of the Universe. Beginning a crash-training under the tutelage of Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clark Duncan) and Sinestro (Mark Strong), Jordan is found wanting because of his human qualities. But a threat from the past called “Parallax” (voiced by Clancy Brown) that has links to Abin Sur has re-surfaced and has enslaved a scientist called Hector Hammond ( Peter Sarsgaard) to do its work. Hal must accept his calling as a “Green Lantern” and to overcome great fear…

Marvel’s “Avengers” is looming in the horizon so it would be no doubt that DC is going to try for something similar (Amanda Waller is a good hint). As a comic book fan, it was easy for me to follow the workings of its script. I mean the film has serious deviations from the source material; the origins of Parallax lost a lot of its complexities, Hammond is reduced to a somewhat love-sick psycho, and Hal has undergone some serious changes to his character (he acts ala-Reynolds and not as Jordan, the one man Batman cannot intimidate). Some things bothered me a lot, while some I expected since it is also trying to cover as many bases of the “Green Lantern” mythos as much as possible. The qualities of the ring is underdeveloped and given a new feature, and the central green power battery concept has been abandoned to favor references to the recent events in the “Blackest Night” and the rise of the different “colored” emotions of power. (Green is for willpower while yellow is for fear, blue is for hope and so forth)

                    

                     

                    

                    

I guess it would be too much for me to expect the complexities of the comics to come alive with a 2 hour film, but I have to say the film starts off strongly despite some of its flaws. I was interested, until the direction by Martin Campbell renders the script feel rather disjointed. I am not sure if the film has been re-edited, but I found the screenplay very uneven; at times overwritten but also underwritten often. After Hal’s arrival in Oa, I found myself slowly losing interest, as the movie begins to lose its focus. Campbell has the right tools to link the elements together but I had issues with the way they were executed. There were times that I felt that the film jumped around, all of sudden Sinestro and his group faced Parallax, then he proposes a risky plan of counter-attack, then we see Hammond doing something else against Jordan. I was able to put together why Parallax wanted Earth all of a sudden (Earth is a haven for great emotional fear), but non-fans would find it rather a ‘come from behind detail’. Now, I had major issues when Jordan seemingly ‘quit’ and got to keep the ring. I am not sure, the film feels rather silly and clumsy in storytelling at many points.

Now, the film does give the feeling of being in space quite well. I mean, this was the planet OA as portrayed in the comics. It looks and feels like the planet I’ve read about in the comics. The changes to the GL ring quality and the costume were reminiscent of the Hal Jordan in “Rebirth” and I was rather happy that they made this faithful to the comic. (where are the white gloves though?). The visual effects were quite nice and does emulate the feel of an ‘emerald construct’ made of energy. Effects-wise, I was not disappointed, it had the right things to make the film feel like a “Green Lantern” film. Kilowog and Tomar-Re were products of CGI, and frankly they looked quite cool (kudos to the voice acting). The Guardians were the ones after the “Kyle Rayner-ION era” and it was nice to see a woman among them, they looked the same enigmatic creatures in the comics. The battles in the film have been toned down quite a lot to stick to the PG-13 sensibilities, there is hardly any blood and I have to admit the battles felt inconsistent at times. I do have to give credit that there were some key scenes that may prove good enough to impress the casual Green Lantern fan.

                      

                      

                      

                      

                      

Reynolds is miscast, and I wish he could’ve just stuck to the “Deadpool” character in “Wolverine”. His personality does not match the Hal Jordan in the comics; Jordan should be fearless and a little moody. He was careless often, but he wasn’t cocky or irresponsible. Reynolds makes his character as a clumsy bumbling fool that didn’t know better but I understood why the script went this route. I appreciate the attempts at humor but Jordan never spoke like this. Mark Strong does make for a good “Sinestro” despite the fact that he was underused. Blake Lively was well…so distracting. She was just so gorgeous, and the highpoint of her character was when Hal couldn’t hide his identity from her. (I mean c’mon, anyone would recognize the one they had sex with, no matter what).

Alright, I guess I’ve said all I could without spoiling the movie. So is “Green Lantern” a worthy comic book movie? As a fan, I could easily connect the dots, but the screenplay was a little lazy and definitely had a lot of tonal shifts that hampered my enjoyment of it. The film loses all the complexities of the source material and was more focused on including as many elements and "fan-service" as possible to try to satisfy what it thought were the requirements of the comic fan. I thought in doing so, it lost a lot of its potential, and while the film can entertain at some points, it sure wasn’t compelling as it felt unfocused and uninspired. “Green Lantern” is an attempt to test the waters, and like “Thor” it is not the definitive “Green Lantern” movie, but it is much further away from that standard. Yes, as expected, stay after the end credits as there is a cheap tease (that is if you care for one).

RENTAL [2 ½ Out of 5 stars]
*Poozer- A word Green Lantern Kilowog used to describe people from time to time. Kind of like a loser, jack-@$$ or "putz", or stupid useless rookie. Just for those who didn't know what it meant since they don't read the comic books... LOL!