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Green Lantern {Film Review}

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*WARNING! MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!*

Marvel has been long releasing their most cherished superheroes – X-Men, Spider-Man, Blade, Punisher, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and recently, Thor. Most have been successful and spawned many sequels (unlike Daredevil, which wasn’t well-received by critics and audiences, but led to the Elektra spin-off,  which did worse). So it was about time Warner Bros./DC Comics finally brought a superhero of theirs to the big screen who wasn’t Batman or Superman. Enter Green Lantern.

Created by Bill Finger and Martin Nodell in 1940, there have been many Green Lanterns, most notably the first, Alan Scott (1940) and John Stewart (1972). But it’s 1959’s fan-favourite Hal Jordan who makes the Emerald Crusader’s live-action movie debut.

The movie begins with an expositional monologue by Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), explaining about the planet Oa, the Green Lantern Corps, the ring they wear that harnesses the power of will and how they are spread out among 3,600 sectors in the universe.

He explains that one of their warriors, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) fought against Parallax (voiced by Clancy Brown) – an enemy who absorbs and uses the power of fear from living beings – and defeated him. Parallax is imprisoned in the Lost Sector (Sector 666. . . . foreshadowing much?), but it all goes downhill when an alien spacecraft crash-lands where Parallax is kept and he escapes (shouldn’t they have made that sector a no fly zone if they had the most dangerous being in the universe?).

Six months later, Parrallax attacks Abin Sur and mortally wounds him. Abin Sur luckily escapes, crashes on Earth and commands his ring to find a successor. Enter Ryan Reynolds playing our main protagonist, Hal Jordan.

Jordan is a cocky fighter pilot who just happens to have daddy issues (father died in a fighter jet accident) and thus causes his fear. Unfortunately, since Reynolds is known for comedy roles, it’s hard to take him seriously when he tries to bring dramatic weight in a scene. It’s not terrible by any means, but it doesn’t feel convincing enough. Most of the time he’s smiling at the camera and joking around (which really makes the tone of this film go off at times).

Blake Lively plays Jordan’s childhood friend/love interest, Carol Ferris. She works for her father’s company and is also a fighter pilot. Despite apparently having the chops to fly aircraft, she is still shamefully used as the damsel in distress at times. But it is amusing when she quickly realises Hal Jordan is Green Lantern (thereby trashing the ridiculous notions of heroes using a small mask to conceal their identity).

In the blue corner, Peter Sarsgaard plays our antagonist, Dr. Hector Hammond. You can see he is having fun playing the role, but comes across as hammy and chewing the scenery. Instead, the most impressive performance in the film is from Mark Strong as Sinestro (it was the 50s, having unimaginative evil names made it straight-forward). He gives much more emotion and conviction but unfortunately, doesn’t get enough development or screen-time.

What about the rest of the cast, you say? Tim Robbins? Angela Bassett? Michael Clark Duncan as Kilowog? Barely get enough screen-time to make them memorable or worth caring about. The problem with this film is that it goes at such a quick pace, there’s not enough time to take it all in. Bassett’s character vanishes near the end of the second act never to be mentioned again! Even the main characters are barely developed, so new information springs out of nowhere, such as Hal, Carol and Hector all apparently knowing each other as kids.

Ah, now. The visual effects. I have never seen a comic book movie that looked so fake and artificial since Fantastic Four in 2005. I was desperately optimistic about the CGI Green Lantern suit, but whenever Hal Jordan’s touring Oa, I couldn’t help but see Ryan Reynolds’ head just floating in a sea of digital imagery, which became really distracting. Even the sets on Earth looked cheap, especially the scenes between Hal and Carol.

The climactic battle was severely lacking entertainment. Yeah, the sequences where Hal springs a fuel truck in the air and then forms an AA gun to blow it up in front of Parallax was creative, but there was no excitement, jeopardy and no feeling about the possibility of Hal dying.

Overall; hugely disappointing! Martin Campbell has done some seriously good films in the past (GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro and Casino Royale) but here, it seems he has absolutely no idea what to do with the character. It is upsetting that Warner Bros./DC Comics only have this film this year, when Marvel has Thor, X-Men: First Class (both really good films, worth watching) and still have Captain America: The First Avenger waiting in the wings. I guess DC fans will have to wait for their old favourites in The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel next year.

Worst comic book hero film in 2011 summer blockbuster season.

2 out of 5

Green Lantern – Movie Review

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The light  burns,  but nowhere near as bright as it could have.

You can tell it is the summer blockbuster season can’t you? We have had one superhero movie a month so far and still got a couple more to go. None of this is a problem for me. I love a good superhero movie as much as the next child. When I took my Godchildren to see this film, one could almost say I was more excited than they were. I bounced into the cinema with excitement, flung on my 3D glasses with almost wild abandon and had the biggest bag of popcorn the girl behind the counter could create firmly in my lap.

The film started and it wasn’t like I was disappointed, just more like I expected more. You see, when so many films come out with people having special powers, a film needs to be unique to stand above what you have seen before. Otherwise, like quite a lot of the Michael Bay films, everything turns into something you have seen before.

To be fair, it is arguable that the Green Lantern is perhaps the lesser known superhero from the DC World and Martin Campbell, the director behind Casino Royale, does a good job with the opening sequence bringing those new to the Green Lantern world up to date.

Basically, throughout the universe exists a galactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps. Created by the Guardians, each member has a power ring, which grants the bearer the ability to create anything their mind imagines. When the guardian’s ancient enemy – a huge all consuming yellow cloud known as Parallax – is released and begins to feed on fear, Green Lantern Abin Sur (played by Temuera Morrison), takes on the threat and in the ensuing battle is gravely wounded. He pilots his ship to the nearest habitable planet so he can send the ring off to choose a worthy replacement.

Enter Hal Jordan (played by Ryan Reynolds), a test pilot whose brash and arrogant attitude lands him in all sorts of trouble and whose recent failures almost cause his employers to go bankrupt. In short, he is one step away from being a bum. It is after a bar brawl with some of his ex-colleagues that incredibly, the ring finds him and zap, the real story begins. I say the real story because it takes a whopping 40 minutes to get this far and before this, although there are special effects, things are far from interesting.

Once the film does get going, it does so with gusto and we see some interesting dynamics played out. While the ring chose Hal, Abin Sur’s other pupil, Sinestro (played by Mark Strong), sees only weakness in Jordan. And with Parallax threatening the universe and the existence of the Green Lanterns, Jordan has to overcome his fear and desire to run away from responsibility and commit to being a hero.

Ryan Reynolds does a good job as Green Lantern. He certainly looks the part and I think if anything, the script lets him down. Some of the arguments and some of the things that his character does just doesn’t make sense, whether he is on the road to being a bum or not, and it is these barriers which stop you from empathising with him or feeling anything at all for what is going on.

Blake Lively plays the lovely Carol Ferris, Hal’s co-pilot, co-worker and budding love interest. She is very charismatic on screen, yet strong-willed and feisty. In many ways you believe she is the one to bring Hal round to taking on the responsibly he has been given. I don’t mind saying I could just look at her all day and not say a word, but that would be rather stalker-ish of me.

From the start, there is a great deal of respect for the source material. DC, the producers, and the director stay close to the mythos of the comic book. This is a good and a bad thing. The characters, names, and places are pretty much all there, the effects, whilst not Avatar quality, are fairly decent and it is good to see the realisation of characters such as Kilowog, and Abin Sur looking and sounding every inch their comic counterpart.

The film does suffer from over use of CGI in places. For example, the homeworld Oa just looks like a giant screensaver. Only Parallax looks genuinely scary. As for the flight sequences – well actually, you get no feeling of flight whatsoever and most of the battles just seem average.

3D has its place in the movie and truly comes into its own when Jordan uses his ring and the power of his will is created on screen. Other than that, 3D effects are sparse and to be fair, the special effects are good enough without it. The problem is, that despite all the special effects, I was never truly left in awe by the Green Lantern’s power, I never truly believed in Hal Jordan’s cause and never truly felt like he was up against the odds or that he couldn’t win. If anything, I only felt annoyed by the length of time it took the filmmakers to get to the point where they could create a scenario big enough for him to believe in himself.

I know my Godchildren enjoyed the film tremendously, but compared to the other summer releases I would say that Green Lantern is a lot less involving than Thor and nowhere near as good as X-Men: First Class. Having said that, it might not be the worst superhero movie of the summer, after all Transformers and Captain America are both just round the corner.

My Final Verdict
Go watch it, but only if you really have to.

7 / 10

BLAKE'S NOT LIVELY – SHE'S AN OLD FOGEY; FIRST LOOK AT 'APES' PICS; PLUS DANIEL RADCLIFFE DOES HATE

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First Look! – Pictures from Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Total Film takes a look at the first pictures from Rise of the Planet of the Apes which opens later this summer. Andy Serkis plays chief chimp Caesar, created through motion-capture and CGI.

Director Rupert Wyatt explains, “We had a choice of using either live apes or CGI. Personally, I had moral problems with the idea of using chimps. And from a practical point of view it would be virtually impossible to get them to do what we need them to do within our schedule.”

Blake’s not Lively – she’s an old fogey?

When Total Film sat down for a chat with Blake about her latest film The Green Lantern, the Gossip Girl admitted “I very much think of myself as an old fogey.”

Responding to jibes from Green Lantern director Martin Campbell that she was “going on 60”, Blake confessed, “I don’t party, I don’t go out and I’m sure one day I’ll really regret not tapping in and really living it up and exploring all the frivolities of youth.”

Speaking about her transformation from blonde to brunette for her portrayal of the comic book’s character Carol Ferris, she added, “I do want to make the fans happy. In the end we did a test and I tried 14 different shades of brown because we wanted to have the exact right colour. It was elaborate.”

Daniel Radcliffe speaks exclusively to Total Film: “I just hated my performance”

Speaking exclusively to Total Film in the issue out now about the final installment, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Radcliffe revealed that he hated his performance in the 2009 film, The Half-Blood Prince.

“The Half-Blood Prince wasn’t my favourite installment overall. I just hated my performance. The film was good, but it’s a huge amount of exposition.”

“READ THE FULL STORY IN TOTAL FILM – OUT NOW”