Review of Green Lantern (2011) by Brandon C — 31 Aug 2015

A fun superhero film that gets too caught up in the fun to take itself seriously. Green Lantern while yes it stays close to its source material deviates too much into a cartoon rather than a serious comic book adaption. Green Lantern has been serous in Justice League cartoons and its modern comics but bringing the famous character with decades of history to life on the screen was just not done properly and I do not blame director Martin Campbell or Ryan Reynolds.

Martin Campbell is a very talented director and has an impressive resume, but I do not knock his directing ability even though this film is truly lacking depth or seriousness. The visual effects and CGI are actually outstanding and quite impressive but however at times it felt more like CGI you would see in a Transformers movie rather than the jaw dropping CGI of a film of Avatar caliber. Ryan Reynolds I think may have been the perfect star for Hal Jordan but due to its campy script was not given the chance to prove himself as a real Green Lantern. And by campy script I mean GL constructing humorous and childish things such as what was it a race track with his ring? Green Lantern is meant to be this badass and extremely powerful superhero but in this film is not really given a chance to prove this.

As said Reynolds gave a good performance as did Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong as Sinestro. The origin stories as well as showcasing the look and atmosphere of the Lantern corps on Oa and the guardians was actually straight out of the comics, even Strong's sinestro proving to be a Lantern at first who eventually becomes the Corps most feared enemy, which after the credits was meant to set up a sequel but it doesn't look like we will be getting that any time soon.

Marvel has been pumping out successful films like crazy lately in their shared universe with Iron man, Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America all leading to The Avengers. Even outside their shared continuity with the awesome X-Men First Class! DC on the other hand created the pinnacle of all superhero movies as well as crime films with The Dark Knight Trilogy but this film just simply can't come close to caliber of any of these films. DC is planning on a shared universe like Marvel but whether this Green Lantern film after its flop will be a part of that remains to be seen, there is some good to salvage (Reynolds, Strong, etc.) but the bad outweighs the good and must be retconned or rebooted.