Green Lantern is not a particularly good movie. That said, I do think the critics are being a little hard on it. Everywhere I look, people are tearing it apart. One friend of a friend actually walked out. I'm sorry, but I just don't see where it was that bad. It's not brilliant, but what do you really want from a comic book movie? And this is a superhero who has powers from outer space, who uses a magic ring to conjure giant hands to punch people. Most people knew this going in. And yet, for some reason audiences were apparently expecting the gritty realism of The Dark Knight.
GL has never been one of my favorite super heroes. I don't like the "wish it and it will happen" nature of his powers. It's too much of a Deus Ex Machina - when you have a character that powerful, writers just don't have to work as hard. Heck, I don't even like the color green. So admittedly my expectations of the movie were low, and therefore easily met. So for what it's worth, I thought the movie was a lot of fun.
There's a few minor spoilers ahead, so watch out.
Some of the reviewers complained about the special effects, but I thought they were beautiful. There were a couple of examples of Special Effect Failure - one of the Guardians of Oa looked like he was rendered on a Playstation 2, and Hal's head seemed to change size now and then compared to his costume - but overall I loved the look of the film. I recognized a lot of the other Lanterns from the comics and cartoons, and I was very impressed at how realistically they were able to render characters that looked impossibly silly in the other media. I loved GL's outfit. I know it was the subject of a lot of internet backlash when it was first revealed, but I think the end product was great. I loved how it seemed so alive, with little light pulses constantly running through the lines of the outfit, almost reminiscent of Tron.
Ryan Reynolds was perfectly cast. Some people don't like how he played the same immature jerk he always plays, but I personally believe that's how Hal Jordan is meant to be played. In the Golden Age of comics, a "man without fear" meant some square-jawed boy scout with a one-dimensional personality. But in the more realistic modern age, fearlessness means you're too cocky and smug to be afraid when you should be.
I was particularly impressed with Sinestro. Everything about him, down to the most subtle facial expression, was spot-on with how I always pictured him. I am a little disappointed, however, that they still called him "Sinestro". Guardians, seriously, y'all are supposed to be some of the wisest creatures in the universe, but... his name is "Sinestro", you didn't see it coming? I was kind of hoping they would call him something else at first, and he would rename himself Sinestro once he got the yellow ring. Or at the very least, maybe they would give him a bit of backstory explaining how his name came to be.
With a power based on will, I was very afraid that the final confrontation would be some boring "Beam-O-War". You know what I mean, like in Harry Potter 4, when Harry and Voldemort have their wands locked. I was all set to see Hal shooting out a green ray, against an opponent's yellow ray, while both characters grunt a lot with the strain of their willpower, until Hal's finally wins out. I hate that kind of thing, as it's too easy to write, and not very satisfying on-screen. And then I heard that one of the villains was a cloud-like entity, and I was even more afraid. Having seen similar battles in Fantastic Four 2 and the first Hulk movie, I wasn't looking forward to such a vague battle. But the fights are actually pretty satisfying, with Hal using his powers in a lot of clever ways.
One of my favorite things in the movie was the lampshading of his so-called secret identity. Whenever Hal showed up with his little green mask on, I said to myself, "Oh, come on! There's know way they don't recognize him!" And I was right. Two people in the movie recognized him right off, not because he intentionally revealed his secret identity to them, but simply because they're not idiots.
I say this a lot, but I don't usually care whether a movie is bad or good, as long as it's not boring. Green Lantern did not bore me. But modern audiences must have higher standards than I do (and yet these are the same people keeping reality shows on the air). I think this goes back to my earlier blog about "All-Or-Nothing People": Since Green Lantern wasn't mind-blowingly excellent, then it sucked. People have lost the ability to rate a movie as "just okay". Unfortunately, "just okay" movies are some of my favorites.
Btw, I apologize for all the TVTropes links, but it's one of my favorite sites, and GL is a very tropey movie.
