Green Lantern Review

• 16th Jun 2011

Hal Jordan picks up the mantle of the Green Lantern, the representative of our part of the universe in Martin Campbell’s mega-budget first live action (if you can call it that amidst all the cartoony CGI) venture. Ryan Reynold’s takes on the role, and it’s no surprise that this dude is a bit of a schmuck. Reynold’s always liked the wisecracking anti-hero side to his superheroes (see Blade: Trinity and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Hal Jordan is no different.

So he’s a young cocky test pilot who likes to go with his gut, but gets distracted by his inner turmoil (daddy issues alert!!!) and ends up fired from his job when he goes a step too far on a test run. Meanwhile the Green Lantern universe (set up in the rather dull opening voice-over) sees an old enemy break free and wreck revenge on the Lanterns. The Lantern who looks after the section Earth is in gets mortally wounded and ends up looking for his nearest replacement. You can join the rest of the dots from there.

Once Hal inherits the ring and speaks the oath he heads off into outer space to see what it’s all about, and it turns out that he’d rather not have the job – so he chickens off back to Earth. But by this point a scientist by the name of Hector Hammond (a pretty good Peter Sarsgaard) has become infected and turned to the dark side. Oh and his head gets a serious case of elephantitis.

The story, the plot, the universe in particular, and the action are just far too ludicrous. You can see why any studio would hit the brakes at the prospect of making this film as it goes perhaps a step or two too far over the edge for a normal audience to really care for.

Some serious suspension of disbelief is required for this one. If a guy had this much power he could bring about world peace in no time. Ok, you could say the same for Superman, but at least those films for the best part detracted from asking such questions. Green Lantern though is a weird bit of fantasy that never full establishes itself well enough.

As for the effects that have been getting so much trouble from the press. Well it isn’t so much that they’re bad. With all the outer space stuff looking like something from The Neverending Story you can’t help but feel that it’s all a bit of a big cartoon.

If I have to give it points it would be for some of the sense of humour. Reynolds isn’t bad in the role and he has a few moments of levity to offer us. But it just isn’t enough to make it worth the while.

With so many big star, big budget comic book heroes hitting the screen this year, it’s no surprise that at least a couple wouldn’t quite hit the mark. Everyone thought it would be Thor, but instead it seems to be the boys in green with this and The Green Hornet not quite being the sum of all their parts. Let’s hope Reynolds has better luck with his mooted Deadpool project.

There is, like so many of these films, a snippet at the end of the credits. I suspect it’s to help set up the sequel – so immediate suspicion falls on Sinestro and the yellow lantern that the film conveniently forgets about. But I can’t say for sure as I was long gone before this screened. Green Lantern left me ready to race to the nearest exit.

Steven Hurst