The Film: Green Lantern
The Premise: Hal Jordan is a cocky test pilot who despite that fact that he’s a daredevil is also really afraid of things sometimes. This is because his dad, also a test pilot, crashed his plane and died when Hal was just a wee lad. One day, an alien spacecop who has been mortally wounded by an evil yellow alien cloud crash-lands near Hal and gives him his magic green ring and lantern-shaped power source. He also tells Hal that now he gets to be a spacecop, then dies. Hal flies into space to the planet Oa to train as a spacecop, but one of the other spacecops gives him a hard time, so Hal goes home. Meanwhile, Hal’s not-really girlfriend is being stalked by Hector, a nerdy creep who plays chess. Hector gets to perform the autopsy on the spacecop Hal found, and in doing so becomes a telekentic nerdy creep who no longer plays chess but has a pulsating, freakish forehead. Hector tries to kill his own dad for some reason, and then Hal saves Hector’s dad in supercop Green Lantern guise, even though he quit. Then the evil spacecloud comes to town, and it kills Hector, but not until Hector and Green Lantern (Hal) fight and Green Lantern saves his boring not-really girlfriend (but not Hector’s dad this time, he dies). Then Hal goes back to the planet Oa and asks the other spacecops to help him fight the evil yellow cloud, but they say no, and Hal says that he didn’t need their help anyway and it turns out he didn’t because he goes back to Earth and defeats the spacecloud by himself because he was finally able to conquer that fear he never really had. But the other spacecops show up anyway. Then the film ends. Then one of the spacecops turn yellow, which means he’ll be in the sequel that no studio executive in their right mind will ever greenlight, magic ring or not.
Is it Good?: Did you read my description?! NO! This movie is awful! The only real debate is whether it is simply mediocre or truly awful. I’m here to make a case for Green Lantern being one of the most legitimately terrible big spectacle blockbusters of the last year, maybe the last decade. I’d rather watch Van Helsing, Batman and Robin and Transformers Revenge of the Fallen in one sitting than sit through this boring, stupid piece of shit ever again.
Let’s start with the plot. It is seriously as dumb as my description makes it sound. It’s the sort of thing an elementary school kid would blather out breathlessly on the playground to his snot-nosed pals. There are plot points that literally make no sense at all. Hal is a test pilot, but he’s afraid? Of what? Crashing? If he was really afraid, he wouldn’t go near a plane to begin with! Shouldn’t being afraid of crashing be, you know, normal for a pilot? The only reason this character trait exists at all is because in order to be faithful to the excruciatingly dumb mythology of the Green Lantern comic book character, Hal needs to be afraid. Because fear is represented by the color yellow, and…yeah.
Which brings me to the most important point and the true Achilles heel of this 200 million dollar piece of shit – the character of Green Lantern. It’s a bad idea! It’s a bad idea for a superhero, it’s a bad idea for a comic book, and it’s a really, really bad idea for a megabudget sci-fi blockbuster! The idea of a spacecop is OK, but everything else about the Green Lantern character sucks! Magic ring that can make green constructs out of your will? Dumb. Lantern power source? Dumb. Test pilot? Dumb. Green outfit and mask? Dumb! Weakness to the color yellow?! Dumb dumb dumb!!! Green Lantern is seriously the lamest superhero ever, lamer than The Flaming Carrot and Squirrel Girl. The fact that Warner Brothers would pick this to make out of all of DC comics’ iconic superheroes is frankly baffling.
Ok, so I’ve shown my hand, or at least my prejudice against green superheroes. (Not true, I love Green Arrow!) Putting aside my belief that this whole concept is just stupid to the core, the movie itself is just a lazy, boring slog. There is nothing here that will engage you; not character, not action, not spectacle and certainly not story. Despite all the green space mysticism there isn’t an ounce of magic to be found anywhere in this movie. You can feel the lack of love for the material just oozing off the screen in big CGI clumps. As soulless as say Michael Bay’s Transformers movies are, at least there is a sort of demented glee in those films, the glee of coke-snorting madman running amok with hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal. Green Lantern can’t even give you that.
And let’s talk about Ryan Reynolds. Now, I don’t hate Ryan Reynolds. But I do not want to see him as a superhero ever again. We nerds can agree that he should have been the Flash (an infinitely cooler and more interesting superhero, also owned by DC/Warner Bros), but coulda, shoulda, woulda. They didn’t make The Flash, so Ryan just couldn’t wait to put on the tights and jumped the gun by starring in this sickly green turd. Sorry bro. I never want to see you as The Flash, or Deadpool, or the Gentleman Ghost or whoeverthefuck you’re attached to play in the future. You blew it. You tried to bring your patented douchey fratboy charm to this film and it failed. It may have worked once on ScarJo, but you may want to consider the fact that she has since dumped you, and now she’s in a superhero film with Robert Downey Jr. , and probably sleeping with him. You sir are no Robert Downey Jr. Please never darken my door in a pair of tights ever again. Not even in the blackest day, or the darkest night.
The other cast members, Peter Sarsgaard, Tim Robbins, Mark Strong, the yellow spacecloud – they all fare better than Reynolds. But really, in a film this bad, who cares? It’s a lost cause. Ok, there’s one person who is worse — Blake Lively, who has the most ironic last name ever if her dead-eyed, slack-jawed performance is any indication. This chick makes Sam Worthington seem like a fount of charisma. She is a void, a chick-bot, a plasticine mannequin that pouts and stares and seems to have no purpose or place in this or any other universe. I don’t believe she is real at all. In fact, if it wasn’t for rumors of a Blake Lively sex tape, I’d think she was no more real than Kilowog, a dumb bulldog-alien spacecop that hassles Hal when he’s away at spacecop school. I think I’d rather watch a Kilowog sex tape, frankly. It’d be sure to be more lively.
Thankfully this movie couldn’t generate the sort of money that guarantees a sequel, so we won’t be abused with this nonsense ever again. Sure, Warner Brothers said that they were going through with a sequel at first, but notice how talk of that has died down? That’s because you don’t waste millions and millions of dollars on a movie nobody liked then turn around a do it again. Or if you do, you do it for a cool character like the Hulk or Hellboy or Ghost Rider starring Nic fucking Cage! You don’t do it for limp-dick Ryan Reynolds and you certainly don’t do it for this green fart of a character. This is one property I’d like to see sucked into a green hole never to return.
Now if someone wants to make a ROM: Spaceknight movie, consider my tickets purchased! In IMAX 3D!
Random Anecdotes: This was directed by Martin Campbell, a guy who has made some good blockbuster movies like Casino Royale and Goldeneye. He seems to have no idea what he is doing making a Green Lantern movie. Stick to James Bond, Marty.
Cinematic Soulmates: It wants to be Iron Man, but it’s not. Not even close. I put this film in what I call the 2011 triumvirate of stunning mediocrity along with Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides and Conan the Barbarian (2011).
29 comments
Get to the point… did you like it? Ha.
Sidenote: Martin Campbell also directed the Mask of Zorro, which was pretty good. Worth checking out for those that like old-school action-adventure stuff.
This was a very accurate depiction of the comics and honestly one of the best comic book movies since Iron Man and The Dark Knight. Haters who can’t stand GL in general? Yeah, they gonna hate. But that’s their personal weakness, not the character’s or the movie’s problem.
I will fully cop to being a Green Lantern “hater”. That said, this is not a good movie even minus my prejudice.
I vaguely remember giving this a favorable review over at GUY. It’s faults are many, but I enjoyed Reynolds enough in the role. Not nearly enough Mark Strong. Still, the stuff that sucks sucks mightily. I don’t thing Campbell had a real fondness for the material. Didn’t find the film offensive, just dull.
We should pool our funds together and finance a ROM picture.
This movie is god. damn. awful. If it is an accurate representation of the comic, then that also means the comic is awful. I’ve never read the comic, but I don’t accept that. I don’t accept that they couldn’t make a good movie out of a character that has been popular for decades. This movie has MOVIE problems. It doesn’t matter how “faithful” it is to the mythology.
If we make too many changes to the source material, do we have to call it RAM? Hey-oh!!!!
Kidding aside, I think the new chapter in the life of CHUD should be a crowd-sourced film based on a forgotten (read: cheap) property that nobody wants to touch. D.A.R.Y.L. 2, anyone?
This movie is just so frustratingly bad. I thought they got a lot of the casting and design stuff quite right, but just totally drops the ball on the story level. With the budget that this had, they could have gone for something that actually felt big, but it’s constrained by it’s attempt to be a “superhero movie”. Secret identities and love interests aren’t what make GL work when it does, and that’s the stuff that they tried to focus on. If they had basically taken the “First Flight” DTV movie and expanded on that a bit, they could have had something.
That said, the pilot for the Bruce Timm CGI series was pretty fun.
Sebastian OB, I will simply have to disagree with you. Green Lantern is an…Awesome film. Sure, it is not perfect, as Hal should not be afraid of being a superhero. The problem in the film lies not in Ryan Reynolds performance, but in the writing. Hal should have been confident through the entire film. Him not wanting to be the Green Lantern for Earth was the one lame thing about it. I thought Blake gave quite the…Lively Performance. Also, The next…2 months are a…Terrible time at the cinema. Not one film arriving between…12/2/11 to 2/10/12 looks…watchable. I will be more than happy to watch…Green Lantern again, during that time. I hope there is a sequel! Let Mark Strong be…EEEEEEEEEvil as Sinestro, and let Blake Lively be…Star Sapphire, and then add…Another Green Lantern to join Hal. The WB could sell it as…Lethal Lantern! Have Michael Jai White as John Stewart aka the…2nd human Green Lantern.
Duke, I would never try to diminish your enjoyment of a shitty film.
As you guys probably know, there is a Marvel analog to Green Lantern, a rip-off if you will called Nova who is the same exact concept but without the goofy, non-sensical iconography. Plus he has a cool helmet and costume. My point is, a Nova movie at maybe half the budget of this stinker might be worth watching.
Clearly you don’t like the film, the character or the premise. We got it.
While I don’t love this movie, I don’t hate it either. I went in to see if after reading tons of bad reviews and then equally baffling forum posts by people who saw the thing, saying they loved it. Personally I thought that it was an average film. Not awful average. It could have been great with stronger writing – if for instance they’d followed the Emerald Dawn storyline instead of launching straight to Parralax. Ryan Reynolds was not awful, he was good and let’s not excuse the bad characterisation in the script for his lack ability. He looked conflicted on how to play Hal and that was understandable since the material required him to be a hot shot pilot with security issues. No test pilot can ever go into the air with the kind of issues they wrote for Hal. The rest of the cast was great, even Skaarsgard who got that ridiculous storyline. I think there needs to be a sequel so we can see Strong as Sinestro was amazing by the way. And I’m glad they kept the source material, the Guardians and Oa could make for an epic space adventure, they just needed a better storyline and a more invested director. I certainly enjoyed this more than the Pirates film.
I had no desire to even give this a shot. The character is awful, the trailers looked awful, and the reviews were awful. “Thanks for chiming in, MaxYumTime, not having even seen the movie, jackass”.
You’re welcome.
Sebastian OB, I do agree that either a…Nova or Rom Spaceknight film would be…Awesome! Also…Captain Marvel or Quasar, would also be similar to the concept of Green Lantern, in that they are spacecops, saviors of the Universe et al.
I want to see a Bazooka Joe or maybe a Jughead movie next.
Or maybe Wimpy. That guy LOVES hamburgers!
The Geoff Johns years have been good to the comic. My upkeep is spotty at best but both Rebirth and Sinestro Corps War are great reads if you’re ever in the market for graphics.
When I inevitably get an iPad or some other tablet in the nearish future, I figure comics will make a reappearance in my life. I’ll try and remember that Lantern run.
They’d get his hat wrong.
So many problems with this.
They need to make a CAPTAIN UNIVERSE film. For those of you unfamiliar with the character, the Captain Universe powers and suit would transfer to a different person every issue. I think the powers/suit would transfer to someone who was in need of it or something like that. For a while even Spider-Man wore it. This could be a cool franchise for a film studio. Because the story demands that the suit finds someone else with each new film, your franchise could literally go on forever. This eliminates the need for reboots and pesky sequel contract negotiations, as re-casting is necessary for each film. Come on, this HAS to happen.
ROM I’m all for that!……Man its great too hear ROM even get mentioned anymore!
Squirrel Girl is hot. That’s all I got.
ROM needs to come back in comic form first and also a Nova movie would kick ass!
eh, I didn’t hate it.
When did CHUD hire Dane Cook to write movie reviews?
Sorry, this movie is nowhere near as bad as Batman & Robin. I managed to sit through all of Green Lantern, but I couldn’t get through fifteen minutes of B&R.
GL is my favorite superhero, and I STILL agree with most everything you said about this movie. The writing was horrible throughout and the only thing I kept thinking was “wasted opportunity.” That being said, it still really wasn’t any worse then Thor.
Make that “THAN Thor”
I don’t think it’s a bad idea for a superhero at all. The possibilities are endless with a power of being able to make a construct based on anything you imagine, plus the willpower to hold it together. No problem with that. A good GL story is GREAT… but unfortunately, this movie so completely dropped the ball and squandered the premise. You never got an epic feel, no real stakes, mostly just posturing. This movie blows, and hopefully we’ll see GL done right in a decade or so.
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