Green Lantern 3D

I’d never heard of Green Lantern as a comic book superhero before. No big surprise there, I’m not a particularly avid fan of the genre. I know about superheroes that have made it to the big screen, but I don’t know their comic book counterparts. In the pre-release articles and interviews half the time I’d get confused with this and The Green Hornet. I can’t say I was hyped, and the trailers did little to excite me. Then lacklustre reviews landed all over the place and, in my mind, the idea of going to see Green Lantern seemed remote to say the least.

So how come I went?

In short, because Mrs. Comet and I had a babysitter available and the film was showing more than anything else that we fancied watching at a convenient time. And, being in 3D, we figured we’d treat ourselves to the full experience. Mrs. Comet always likes Ryan Reynolds. And so that was that. We went. We saw.



We wished we hadn’t.

I really wanted to like it. Despite the negative publicity and my lack of enthusiasm I settled into my seat with my 3D glasses on and I wanted to get on side with the movie and enjoy it for what it offered. But Green Lantern is so mixed up in tone, so glaring with its flaws, it ultimately defeated my optimism.

The plot instantly rams itself down your throat and forces you to swallow. A voiceover and a lot of special effects (get used to them) explain how the universe is presided over by a legion of peacekeepers called Green Lanterns who are chosen for their specific qualities that make them suited for the job. They use the green power of ‘will’ to fight for good because that’s what colour ‘will’ is.

Uh-huh. OK.

Anyway, there’s this baddie who uses the power of ‘fear’ (which is yellow, of course) and in a quick action sequence is set loose and this tentacled cloud mass of evil nearly kills a Green Lantern. The dying Green Lantern crashes on Earth and there his green power must seek out a new hero to bear the ring and become a member of the Green Lantern corp.

No prizes for guessing that hotshot-with-daddy-issues Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is going to be that guy.



The rest you can already second-guess. Hal is bequeathed the power, begins to learn what he can do (basically he can conjure up anything his imagination can muster and make it real), wrestles with his capability to be the hero to prove his worth as the first human member of the Green Lantern corp, to get the girl, and, ultimately, to take on the big bad tentacled cloud mass (it’s called Parallax) and save the world. As preposterous as it sounds you’ve seen it all before.

What’s the problem then? Well, let me explain via example. The bit where Hal Jordan gets selected to be the Green Lantern sees him wandering home, minding his own business, when he is suddenly engulfed in a green sphere and then propelled at a rapid rate before being dumped on the floor to be confronted with a dying alien in a spaceship. Within seconds he’s helping the alien out, trying to save him. It’s not what you’d call a believable reaction.

Same goes for when he’s whisked to an alien planet (Green Lantern Corp HQ), jetted through space in the very same bubble, and dumped with a mass of alien races before he’s being battered and insulted in the name of training. He takes it all incredibly well, casual, until he decides that he’s fed up of being treated like a piece of shit and quits. Don’t worry, it isn’t a permanent quitting thing (otherwise this would be a short and tragic film, as opposed to a long and tragic one).

It’s not really Reynolds’ fault, he struggles to hero up with full-on charisma as best he can, but he’s saddled with a script that sees him play a pilot that doesn’t think twice about destroying millions of dollars worth of jet for the sake of showing the limitations of technology, and the only pathway to empathy we’re supposed to have is because his dad died when he was a kid and so that’s made him afraid of commitment and, you know, stuff. (His character arc basically comes down to admitting he’s really afraid deep down and then dealing with it.)



Blake Lively plays Carol Ferris, the most unlikely jet fighter pilot and military business strategist you’re ever likely to see. It’s a bit of a shame because, as Hal’s love interest, there’s chemistry between her and Reynolds; their characters are fine it’s just they don’t fit the world they’re supposed to exist in.

Don’t even get me started on Jordan’s best friend, a geek whose only function is to have nerdgasms whilst Jordan delivers some Green Lantern-related exposition. The rest of the movie is populated with conniving politicians (Tim Robbins, WTF!?) and semi-villains (Peter Sarsgaard who basically suffers a mutation, howls a lot and introduces a bit of jeopardy before Hal has to face off with the actual proper villain) and occasional family members who don’t seem to have a purpose beyond filling in time before more effects sequences happen.

Only Mark Strong as Green Lantern Sinestro delivers a performance that feels perfectly-weighted, even if he does look like a really sunburned Roger Sterling from Mad Men.



Again, though, the script dictates that his character is shackled by stupidity. When faced with Parallax all set to tear their world apart he watches his best Green Lanterns get wasted then spends the rest of the movie telling Hal Jordan he’s pathetic and on his own if he wants to save the world whilst he gets busy fooling around with a MacGuffin being set up for sequels (probably where the ‘sinister’ part of his ‘Sinestro’ name will kick in, if the franchise ever stumbles into another instalment). In fact, the whole bunch of Green Lanterns come across like a set of dicks; arrogant, imperious and utterly useless.

Director Martin Campbell was on far firmer ground with the rebooted Bond franchise because here he struggles with tone. If this is a family film it’s got too much bad language. If this is an adult film then it’s got vapid, one-dimensional chararacters. It ignores the problem Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer endured with a CGI’d mass as main villain and the problem with the Green Lantern’s power is that he can imagine anything which a) makes everything he pulls out of thin air (bright green, no less) seem ridiculous and b) makes you think that he should have imagined something better.

If the Green Lantern really wanted to impress, he should have imagined up a better movie. This is a mess. A bright, green mess. In 3D.