Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together. – Kent Brockman
I do not expect too much from super hero flicks. They don’t require Oscar winning dialogue or even have to make total and complete sense. I just ask that they entertain me for 90 to 120 minutes and that’s about it. Brain goes off, colors flash a lot and I nod approvingly as the drool pools at my feet.
The Green Lantern I thought would provide this experience. They have a genuinely charismatic lead, a planet destroying space entity and a shitload of flashing lights. It might be, I thought, at the very worst a really bad variant of Iron Man. I didn’t expect The Dark Knight or even Spider-Man fucking 2 for that matter. I just expected a good time. That did not happen. I mean it really really did not happen. Let’s keep it short and just do the major glaring weaknesses of the film because frankly, you could do a 10,000 word essay over the proverbial shit hitting the fan in this thing and I have burgers to make.
– The actors are wasted totally and completely. Blake Lively serves no purpose what so ever. A bad cookie cutter female lead is nothing new, but Lively is here to briefly share hushed dialogue with Reynolds, get kidnapped and that’s fucking it. I know, I know dumb people need to see pretty people staring into each other’s eyes, but the love story subplot just ate up time that could’ve been used for something that anyone would’ve given a crap about. Back to that in a bit.
Peter Saarsgard provides us with Dr. Hector Hammond, our secondary villain. While he does provide a few nice and genuinely creepy moments, his primary role seems to be screaming in agony. This poor bastard is in pain from the word go and that doesn’t let up until he’s randomly slaughtered by his overlord for no coherent reason.
Ryan Reynolds is a decent guy as best as I can tell. Self aware, funny, great physique, nailed Scarlet Johansson a lot, what’s not to love? Welp here he plays one of those “witty selfish asshole” archetypes that should be right in his wheel house. Unfortunately the film isn’t really interested in making the guy anything more than a few bad one liners and an uncle who brings his nephew crappy gifts for his birthday. Oh there are random flashbacks of him seeing firsthand his father blowing up in an airplane that are supposed to provide depth I suppose, but really just provided a monstrous belly laugh. Anytime a hopeful child walks towards a jet with their father still inside and it proceeds to explode right in their face, I’m going to laugh. And hard. We will go ahead and call his take on Hal Jordan underdeveloped and leave it at that.
– This thing is banking heavy on it’s special effects and while some of them are pretty astounding ( The interpretation of Parallax being particularly effective), most of them are just hilariously awful large green objects that provide the nuts and bolts to wacky action set pieces. Want to see a helicopter land on a glowing green roadster after smashing into a crowd of people? Done. Springboard a semi truck with Warner Brothers cartoon style spring system? Gotcha. The effects not looking like shit ? Er, sorry, not so much on that one. I know the Lantern’s main power is his imagination and things happen to be green when he manifests them, but it’s just nearly impossible to get into the concept when every time it pops up you begin laughing wildly at Hal pulling out a comically big neon green machine gun and pumping a thousand rounds into a giant space beast.
– Halfway through the flick, I learned something vitally important: Never become invested in a scene because it was about to end quickly. The thing flies by interesting moments like Hal’s training which consists of a Michael Clarke Duncan voiced Kilowog briefly kicking the shit out of him, teaching him some life lessons and then getting the hell off screen. The home base of the Lanterns looks pretty nifty as do the other species who have taken up the good cause, but you get to see them for about 40 seconds, they don’t do anything and one of the films main good guys looks like Dr. Fucking Zoidberg. Everytime that sucker was on screen, I just kept thinking of Hermes saying “Come on, Daddy’s baby needs a new pair of shoes!” and Zoidberg replying “To hell with your spoiled baby! I NEED THOSE SHOES!” Yes he does! Anyways, yes fuck the interesting characters and different worlds man has not yet dreamed of, we need more of Hal and whoever the hell Blake Lively is playing sitting contemplatively and discussing their dysfunctional relationship. Cinema!
– Finally, the last 20 minutes. Never before has a film openly expressed that it’s out of money and interesting things to do. Parallax has finally made it to Earth after an hour and a half of hype! Oh wait, he’s going to leave now to chase the Green Lantern through the cosmos…and I think the movie just ended. Uh…okay.
Parallax as mentioned is actually an unsettling visual. The things huge, terrifying and speaks in epic. The entire film is built around how Sinestro and his best Lanterns could not defeat this fear eating hell beast and that they must sacrifice Earth so that they have time to fully realize their new weapon based on fear. They guarantee it to Hal that he cannot win. So what happens? Hal outsmarts this omnipotent weapon of destruction and then sucker punches it into the sun within 5 minutes of meeting the thing. All he suffers is minor scratches to the face. I’m sure this is to show us how Hal has come into his own, but it really just goes to show how much of a band of whining pussies the intergalactic Green Lantern society of fish people are. DO SOMETHING.
There’s a couple thousand more reasons to hate this thing, but I’m spent. The main idea is something so big, loud and green shouldn’t feel like a completely boring waste of time and that’s all this disaster achieves. I’m going to guess reboot within 5 years or a tortuously bad sequel where Sinestro eats all of the party dip and Hal has to whoop his fucking red ass over it.
