Let's Review: Green Lantern

This film has received a lot of negative reviews, so when I went into the theater to watch it I was expecting certifiable crap. What I ended up getting was crap but not as big of a dump as I thought it would be. The way some reviews were critiquing it, I thought Green lantern was sending comic book movies back to the Stone Age, but it ended up disappointing me in how bad it was suppose to be. In any case let’s review Green Lantern.

The Negative

 

If there was one thing that continually bothered me about the film it would be the editing. Scenes were spliced, cut, mismatched, and placed in all sorts of orders that made no sense and really took me out of the movie. One scene that stands out for me is the origin scene, when Hal places the ring on the lantern and speaks the oath for the first time. This is supposed to be the big iconic moment of the movie (the iconic moment of any superhero movie) when he first gains his powers. The scene was spliced together with the scene of Hector Hammond gaining his powers through the Parallax infection. The scene would show 2 seconds of Hal, then 2 seconds of Hector, then back to Hal, then back to Hector, and so on and so forth.  This was a confusing choice on the editor’s part, because I had seen both scenes separately and completed in some of the movie’s trailers. Why would they go so far out of their way to ruin what should be one of the most iconic moments from this character’s origin by plastering it together with the villain’s origin?

 

The specific reason they did this is because of the complete mishandling of Hector Hammond’s character throughout the entire movie. Throughout the entire movie, they kept trying to get across that Hal and Hector were equal opposites, both gaining their respective powers at the same time, except Hal was destined for fame and glory as the hero while Hector was the discarded, disrespected son who becomes a monster. The problem is the film never sets this up properly. We get one scene that is almost 2/3 through the movie where we find out that Hal and Hector knew each other and had once been friends of some sort. Hal is favored by Hector’s father, while Hector is almost despised by his father. Before that moment the characters have no interaction with each other, instead they are both randomly featured in each other’s origin scene. Where have I seen this done so much better? The Spiderman movies. This entire relationship between these two characters was done so much better between Peter Parker and Harry Osborn. Their friendship was built up so well throughout the films so that when they finally confront each other in the 3^rd film it actually has some meaning to it. The relationship between Hal and Hector was mishandled and it ruined the emotional ties that were supposed to be felt when these two went into combat with each other.

 

My final problem with the film is that ALL THE SUPPORTING CAST MEMBERS ARE COMPLETELY FORGETTABLE. His best friend, the love interest, the entire green lantern corp., the scientist woman, the senator, none of them were really memorable when all was said and done.  I don’t even care enough to look up the love interest’s name because if she was memorable at all I wouldn’t have to look up her name after the movie was over. They were all just flat characters who were just there so that Hal and Hector had somebody to bounce their ideas off of. The Green Lanterns are in the movie for all of 10 minutes. We never really get a moment to truly experience what it’s like for the Green Lanterns at all.

The Positive

 

I was a big fan of Oa. Every moment with the Green Lantern’s was like getting a peak into an awesome universe that could rival some of the greatest galaxies the Sci-Fi genre has to offer. That said, it’s such a shame that it makes up so little of the film. I almost feel like the film should have kept all of the sci-fi stuff out of the film until Hal got the ring from Abin Sur, being done in a similar way to The Last Starfighter, and just have the rest of the film be in space until the climactic battle of Hal returning to Earth to fight the villain.

 

That being said, I actually really liked Parallax in the film. I feel like Parallax was a successfully pulled off version of Galactus that they wanted for the 2^nd Fantastic Four movie. He was a cosmic level threat that was coming to finish off the weapon that had once defeated him. At the same time, I also felt that it was a fair adaption of the villain from the comics. What we saw in the film wasn’t really Parallax but rather his presence possessing an individual and forwarding his goals by acting through them. That’s the kind of Parallax I remember from the comics and that’s what I kind of got from the film’s depiction.

In Conclusion

Green Lantern isn’t the worst superhero movie ever made, but at the same time I wonder who was on the cutting room floor who severely butchered this film. This film had the potential to be so much better than what it turned out to be. If only they had planned out the overall story a little better, this could have been something big. I want to see DC keep trying to give us something new. I’m really tired of only getting to see Superman and Batman films. I was really excited when I heard they were making a Green Lantern movie. I only hope that this fumble has deterred them from making more films about their vast number of characters. 2.5 out of 5.