Green is the Color of Will... and Mediocre Franchises
The summer season has officially arrived; that time of the year when all the effects-heavy tent-pole spectacles assault us week after week and we, the eager moviegoers, hope to find something entertaining that won’t insult our intelligence or tastes. Next to a Michael Bay film, the superhero movie is perhaps the most common prey to lowered expectations and snide snobbery. Let’s face it: for every Spider-Man 2 or Dark Knight, there is a Daredevil or X-Men: The Last Stand. So too can be said that for every Thor there is a Green Lantern.
Green Lantern stars Ryan Reynolds as a hotshot Air Force pilot named Hal Jordan whose flyboy daddy blew up when he was a kid. As an adult, Jordan is a quitter and overall failure; he knows how to run and how to fly, but that’s it (how this relates to watching Dad die isn’t clear). One night, Jordan is suddenly swept away by a green ball of energy and brought to the site of a downed spaceship (how it is nobody noticed the ship crash is a mystery). It is there that Jordan is faced with something way bigger than himself: the honor of succeeding one of the greatest members of an intergalactic police corps known as the Green Lanterns to fight a fear-preying entity known as Parallax. Jordan is informed by the dying alien, Abin Sur, that the ring, the source of a Lantern’s power, has chosen him. Before long, Hal is swept away to Oa, a planet that serves as headquarters for the Green Lantern Corps.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, the body of the alien is found by the government. A college professor named Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) is hired to examine it. Hammond also happens to have daddy issues, though they’re less clear than Jordan’s (it doesn’t matter since the movie seems to forget everyone’s daddy issues by its midpoint). While literally poking around the alien corpse, Hammond accidentally gets zapped by residual energy from Parallax, the being that mortally wounded Abin Sur. As a result, he is both deformed and granted incredible mind powers (we’re given one incredible scene that hints at Hammond’s potential as a villain, but he’s mostly reduced to a plot device for Parallax’s arrival on Earth).
Green Lantern is certainly entertaining enough, with some of the best special effects all year, and has an energy that is clearly modeled after Iron Man. But this film fails where that film succeeded: at making sense and not wasting a single character.
Jordan is introduced to an intergalactic corps of hundreds of aliens, but must win their acceptance. Why? Because he’s human. That’s right, these benevolent Lanterns can accept someone whose head is a cross between a bird and a fish, but they can’t accept the perfect model of Hollywood Hunkdom. Why? No reason – at least not one that makes sense of such idiotic hypocrisy. By the way, those oh-so-important Lantern characters (one played by Mark Strong and others voiced by Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan, respectively), they get roughly fifteen minutes of the 100 minute run-time. That means Jordan only takes about five minutes of the movie to learn how to use his powers. So much for a sense of awe and discovery.
Green Lantern is full of nonsense, particularly when it comes to Jordan’s powers (a race track, really? Also, shouldn’t there be a green energy field around him so he can breathe while he’s hurtling through space? If he did have one, where would the oxygen come from anyway?). But I couldn’t help wonder how it is that when the ring traveled 100 miles to find Hal, it couldn’t find a single person who was worthier of representing our planet? What does that say about his girl, Carol Farris (played adequately by Blake Lively, who proved her worth in The Town)?
All that pesky logic and character stuff aside, Green Lantern is fun. Despite its wormhole-sized flaws, it never feels like a complete waste, unlike many other superhero films (Elektra, The Punisher, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, etc.). It is light - especially on character - and breezy - too breezy. But most of all, it's entertaining. Also, Ryan Reynolds is charming and Lively is one the best superhero movie girlfriends (one of the film’s wittiest moments lays waste to the decades-old concept of secret identities protected by eyewear) – both actors help carry the film.
Green Lantern is nothing more than summertime eye candy; it is superhero mediocrity, like Fantastic Four, The Mask, or Superman Returns. That’s where this film’s real tragedy lies: Hal Jordan is a superhero unlike anything we’ve seen before, but treated in such a conventional manner that we may not see his return or the rest of his Justice League super friends any time soon.
5/10
Should you see it? Rent (only the hard-Corps should buy tickets, in 2D).
Green Lantern is now in theaters in 2D and 3D screens.