Green Lantern in 3D Review

Having reasonable expectations for any film that you’re about to watch is important.  My expectations for The Green Lantern were low, extremely low, lower than my expectations for the dreadful Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and we all know how I felt about that pile of shit.  Why were my expectations so low for The Green Lantern you might ask?

• Films based of DC Comic properties are a little more hit and miss than their Marvel rivals.  Not that all Marvel Comic movies turn out great (i.e. X-Men First Class) but DC doesn’t seem to learn from their mistakes.
• Good DC Comics Films
• Superman
• Superman II
• Batman
• Batman Returns
• Batman Begins
• The Dark Knight
• Watchmen
• The Bad
• Swamp Thing (so bad it’s good?)
• Superman III
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
• The Return of Swamp Thing (just bad)
• Batman Forever
• Batman & Robin
• Steel (with Shaquille O’Neal)
• Catwoman
• Superman Returns
• Jonah Hex

The Green Lantern should earn the next spot on “The Bad” list though by comparison to some of the other films listed it might be the best film of a bad lot.  That being said, a nice pile of shit is still a pile shit.

I imagine I had a similar facial expression throughout most of the four hour runtime. Wait what? It wasn’t four hours long?

The Green Lantern tells the story of an Air Force pilot named Hal Jordan who’s personal and professional life is going into the toilet.  One night a dying alien with a powerful ring crash lands on earth, the alien tells his ring to choose a successor and I’m sure you can figure out who the ring chooses.  As it turns out the alien is a member of the Green Lantern Corps. who are intergalactic protectors of the universe and the entire universe is threatened by a gigantic alien/space octopus that thrives on fear.  It’s up to Hal Jordan to conquer his fear and become the next Green Lantern and save Earth and the rest of the universe from the evil space octopus before it’s too late.

You said we were going on a romantic picnic? I don’t wanna go back home with grass stains on my ass.

Where to start with the problems of The Green Lantern?  That’s actually pretty easy but it’s a huge issue… casting.  I’m not sure why Ryan Reynolds continues to get cast in comic book film adaptions, this is his third foray into comic book territory after playing Hannibal King in Blade Trinity and Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  What’s amazing is that each character has almost the exact same personality.  They’re all cocky smartasses just like almost every other Ryan Reynolds’ character in every other Ryan Reynolds’ movie.  You would think he would get tired of playing Van Wilder after a while but here we are.  Can he occasionally get laughs?  Sure, but he can’t create any sense of drama.  At one point in the film, which I’ll describe as the Rocky III “I’m afraid” speech moment, I snorted loudly with laughter which caused more chuckles from the audience than anything he said in the entire film.  What’s sad is the scene in question wasn’t suppose to be funny, it’s supposed to be an emotional turning point for the character and obviously I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t convinced.  There are some actors that can transition from comedy to drama or that can at least pull off drama in small doses… Ryan Reynolds isn’t one of them.

Take her seriously!  She’s a serious pilot and a serious woman in a serious world.  She’s seriously serious about her serious jobs.  Woman power!

Almost as unconvincing as Reynolds is Blake Lively.  She plays his love interest and is a fellow pilot and vice-president of an air plane company.  They manage to have no romantic chemistry, we’re suppose believe that they are childhood friends even though there’s a 10+ year age gap between them, and she’s not a convincing as brunette either (I know that’s a petty complaint but she looks ridiculous).  I found the plot of their being aliens with power rings to be more plausible than her being a jet fighter pilot or being the vice-president of an air plane company.  I’m sorry, I know that sounds sexist but if you watch the movie and believe that for one second then you’re a better person than I am.  Denise Richards’ playing a nuclear scientist in The World is Not Enough was a more plausible profession than Lively being the twenty something pilot/executive.  Give me a break.

Peter Sarsgaard is our earth bound villain who’s connected to the evil space octopus.  He plays the role well but he’s not very threatening.  He’s full of daddy issues which leads us to another strange casting decision, Tim Robbins.  What dipshit casting director thought that anyone would accept Tim Robbins being the father of Peter Sarsgaard?  Tim Robbins’ casting is pointless; he doesn’t bring anything to the film and I think his casting was just an attempt to add a mature actor’s name to the film to help with its credibility.

The father/son resemblance is staggering right?

The Green Lantern might win this year’s Movies Hate You Too Award for Token Casting for Angela Bassett.  She might be the only person of color (excluding aliens) that has a speaking role in the film.  It might just be a coincidence but it’s just a little odd for her to be the only “real” black person in the whole movie.  The only casting choices that really worked for me was the casting of the Green Lantern aliens.  Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes, Kick-Ass), Michael Clarke Duncan (Armageddon, The Green Mile), and Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech, Pirates of the Caribbean) voice the main three alien Green Lanterns and Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption) voices the evil space octopus.  While I said their casting works they can’t carry the movie.  I would have enjoyed seeing more of the Green Lanterns but their screen time is limited.

The film is confidently helmed by Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale).  He’s proved even with some of his shittier films like Vertical Limit or The Mask of Zorro that he can direct exciting action.  Unfortunately he has too many factors working against him that don’t even include the severe miscasting.  The Green Lantern jumps around a lot between the Hal Jordan  story on Earth story and the Green Lantern Corps. in space story.  Honestly I found the space story much more interesting since the human story is such a paint by numbers farce with several plot points stolen right out of Top Gun.  The miscasting coupled with wooden dialogue and a bland story would make any director’s job more difficult.  Add to that some extremely shotty CGI work that looks like it’s straight out of a SYFY channel film and you have yourself a proper mess of a movie.  It’s amazing how these comic book films keep coming out and they keep making the same mistakes.  Special effects should blend naturally with the rest of the movie, they shouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb and take the audience completely out of whatever small amount of flow they’re in.  There are at least two scenes in particular when the audience laughed at the effects.  They were suppose to be tense action scenes but obviously when the audience is laughing at the cartoony effects something went wrong.  The space octopus often times looks like a muddy mess, I’m not sure if that’s how it was supposed to look or if they ran out of time or money but the end result wasn’t impressive.  Supposedly The Green Lantern cost $150 million to make; I’d love to know where that money went because it wasn’t spent on cast talent, plot development, or special effects.

I saw a video of an octopus eating a shark on the internet. I found that more interesting than this CGI piece of shit.

The Green Lantern is presented in both 2D and 3D.  The 3D presentation is technically fine but it didn’t wow me.  I don’t recall any gimmicky effects which surprised me considering how few good decisions were made when making the film.  I wish they would have skipped the 3D entirely and reinvested the money into making a better 2D film.  If you’re compelled to see The Green Lantern at all see it in 2D and save yourself a little bit of money.

With a runtime of only a hour and forty-five minutes The Green Lantern is relatively short by comic book standards but it feels more like it’s two and half hours long.  Four people got up and half way through the movie; I can’t remember the last time I saw four people just get up and leave a film opening night.
This is the third comic book film of the summer and we still have Captain America coming next month so you have lots of options for comic book films so I’d suggest seeing something else or just saving money because this movie blows.

Bonus Picture- We ran into Green Lantern dorks before we went into the theater.  They ended up sitting behind us.  We felt safer sitting next to such large breasted raccoon eyed protectors.

Before fighting for justice the Lanterns must fill up on Panda Express