I've been a comic book fan pretty much since I saw "Swamp Thing" in 1982 with my grandfather in Florida. Sure I had seen "Super Friends" and "Superman: The Movie" among other cartoons, movies and TV shows, but I really didn't avidly read comics until this point in time. After the movie, my grandfather took me to a comic book store and bought me a few comic books. I don't remember all of the titles we got that day, but Swamp Thing and Green Lantern were among them. And it's been a long crazy ride ever since.
Green Lantern has been my favorite hero ever since (his books are the only one's I've consistently read since 1982 -- even when I stopped reading other books in college, I still read Green Lantern). Why? He's got a magic ring that he can pretty much do anything with. If he can think of it, he can create it. Who wouldn't want that?
So...pretty much since then I've been living with this character and his mythos in my head: my own movie building itself over the years...so there was a good chance for disappointment when an actual movie finally appeared. And the very first trailer released almost made all those fears about how "wrong" a Green Lantern movie could potentially be come true. Luckily, a second trailer seemed to waylay those fears.
So, how's the actual film? As a fan, it's a bit hit or miss. Sitting there in the dark and having the movie start with a voice over by a character we have yet to meet (Tomar Re) narrating what could be a complex info-dump brought to mind the opening of David Lynch's adaptation of "Dune". This was not a film I wanted in my head while watching "Green Lantern" (as much as I actually like "Dune"). Luckily, that "complex info dump" just skimmed the surface and moved on quickly to Earth and Hal Jordan and friends.
I'm not going to recount all that happens point for point, but the very basics of Hal Jordan's origin make up the film (recklessly cocky test pilot gets chosen by the ring of a dying alien "policeman" to replace him...he gets trained to use the ring and stops the bad guy) are all there. Yes...there is much more to it, but the film moves so fast through everything it's trying to introduce that it almost feels as if some stuff was left on the cutting room floor. There are holes in the backstory (Hal, Carol and Hector Hammond all seem to know each other from childhood, but this comes out only as the film progresses), there's not enough of the Corps (only Sinestro, Kilowog and Tomar Re get name checks or even any real screen time -- everyone else is pretty much there for Mattel to actually have a line of action figures that are more than guys in suits) and the end, while fun and action packed has a bit of logic missing to it (Hal defeats an unstoppable force all by himself is just a bit too much to swallow...it couldn't have hurt to throw in at least one other Lantern -- Tomar Re perhaps since he's from the neighboring sector-- who helps him for a bit of the battle before Hal single-handedly stops Parallax).
Surprisingly, after all the "controversy" of Ryan Reynolds as Hal we see him in action and I actually like him in the role. He's not perfect, but he's good and he's not Jack Black (who could have been Green Lantern a number of years ago if studio execs had gotten their way). He brings the right amount of cockiness and recklessness to the part without turning into Van Wilder. The scene involving Green Lantern's first public appearance is a great example. We get the chaos of a man trying to learn/control his powers coupled with a man trying to do the right thing.
The rest of the cast also hit the right notes. They may not be served well by some of the dialogue (which sometimes gets a bit cheesy in the case of Blake Lively and at other times gets a bit repetitious in reminding us that the rings run on willpower and that fear is bad), but almost all of them work what they're given the best they can. There's not enough of some characters (mostly the other Green Lanterns) and too much of others (Tim Robbins as Hector Hammond's Senator-Father is completely in "I'm smiling cause I'm getting a paycheck" mode).
The movie has some problems as far as I'm concerned (aside from James Newton Howard's score which is easily the worst score for a super-hero film in the history of super-hero films). The biggest problem as I mentioned is that it moves too quickly and doesn't go deep enough into the backstory of the human characters. We get that Hal, Carol and Hector all have some sort of history, but I wanted to see more of it. Hal has a family (brothers, nephew, etc) and we get one great scene with them and then they are never seen or mentioned again. Yet, the story is able to find a minute to give us the ENTIRE backstory of Amanda Waller (played here by Angela Bassett in a far different portrayal from Pam Grier's on "Smallville" whom I preferred) in flashback because she's going to obviously become the DC Comics movie version of Marvel's Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) by appearing in every other DC movie (well...except the Christopher Nolan movies). This makes the missing parts of the larger characters' backstory that much more glaring.
But the film is never boring and keeps up it's pace nicely. It's fun and entertaining, but far from perfect. Comic fans will enjoy the film but miss some of the deeper nuances of the original medium. Non-comics fans should enjoy the movie in spite of some cheesiness and plot-holes.
Stay for the end credits (you don't have to stay all the way until the end) to see the obligatory "set up the sequel" scene that makes no sense for the character it involves in the context of this film no matter how cool it looks or how inevitable the comic fans know it is.
No...it's not the film I always envisioned which was something akin to a sci-fi version of "Lawrence of Arabia" (but not like "Avatar" which was just a remake of "Lawrence of Arabia") with a structure that kept us on Earth from the start until the curve ball of the dying Abin Sur arrives. Keeping the space part a "secret" until it needs to come into the story might have given us a bit more to hook us into all the human characters better. But at the end of the day, it is fun and I hope it does well enough to warrant a sequel that can be more like "Spider-Man 2" or "The Dark Knight" and less like "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" or "Iron Man 2".
"Green Lantern" is a fun, if not perfect, start to a super-hero film franchise with loads of potential.
Next up: My favorite Marvel hero after Doctor Strange: Captain America.
Be seeing you.
