The Green Lantern: Review

DC Comics have always been behind Marvel when it comes to making movies of their characters. With only two really big money-makers, Batman and Superman, they need to come up with a new hero from their back catalogue to bring in the bucks and so they bring us The Green Lantern. Trouble is, someone forgot to tell them that to bring in the money you've got to make a really good superhero movie.

I will try my best to explain the plot: Somewhere in the universe are a group of alien creatures who form the Green Lantern Corps. Out to protect the whole universe from evil and to be fearless. One of their kind battles against a giant blob like creature that finds fear and sucks the life out of the fearful. Injured, the hero goes off to find a replacement. He lands on Earth and the ring that all Green Lanterns have, selects Hal Jordan, a maverick, reckless fighter pilot. Now with the powers of The Green Lantern, being able to fly and to conjure up objects from his imagination, he must help in stopping the blob-like creature from killing all the fellow lanterns as well as the Earth.

This is the massive problem with this film. We don't know enough about the Green Lantern (unless you are a real comic-book fan-boy). We know about Superman and Batman so we don't need long explanations as to where they come from or how they became heroes. The Green Lantern, has such a complex background that we have to spend the first 45/50 minutes of the film being told about the Corp and who Hal is and what the Green Lantern can do, then we are given several sub-plots to play around with, as if we don't have enough on our plate.

To be perfectly honest, he is not the most exciting of superheroes either. So he can fly; so can Superman. So he can create objects using his mind; so can Professor X (sort of) from the X-Men. So he's green: so is The Hulk! Try as he might, Ryan Reynolds, who was so good in the excellent Buried, is a likeable enough actor but here he has to balance being a cocky show-off with being mister nice-guy and he cannot pull it off.

Then there's the over plotted sub-plots involving brand new fighter planes, the brainy son of a senator who gets alien blood inside him to turn him bad, the relationship between Hal and Blake Lively as the daughter of the creator of the new planes...one at a time please!

Director Martin Campbell, who we know can deliver excellent action movies (see Goldeneye and The Mask of Zorro for examples) seems to have decided to slowly develop the characters so we can help understand the complicated storyline but instead of helping, it makes the whole thing drag. At under two hours, this felt like it was never going to end. And of course to make matters worse...it's in 3D!

With so many superhero movies coming out, the film makers needed to just go and see Thor, or X Men: First Class, or rent Iron Man to see how to make a really good adaptation. Instead, someone must have made them watch Daredevil, Ghost Rider and The Punisher (the Dolph Lungdren version). Very poor indeed.