Green Lantern (4/10)

 

Green Lantern (4/10)

I was nervous going into Green Lantern. The VFX in the trailers looked extremely campy and I was afraid they were going to distract from any potentially redeeming qualities the movie might have had. Literally the exact opposite happened. The effects were one of the strongest aspects of the movie and the other facets really brought the whole ship down including the droning and disconnected story, some of the worst bits of dialogue ever to appear in a superhero movie (“don’t you always get the girl?”), and a lifeless display of acting by Blake Lively. Not that I was expecting much from her to begin with, but that’s another discussion for another day.

The glaring issues with the story are the extremely slow pacing and a severe lack of character development and motivation. Green Lantern clocks in at just over 100 minutes and we don’t even see Hal Jordan for the first 15-20 minutes. I understand the need to provide backstory, but cut the fat and get our main character involved already! There was also a very disappointing lack of action for a superhero movie. Two fights? Really? Well, three if you count the extremely rushed “training” sequence where Hal has the shortest learning curve of any superhero in the history of superheroes (Seriously, he just gets these powers and basically masters them in 10 minutes?). The only legitimate action occurs in the last 20 minutes and the whole thing climaxes before you even realize what happened. There were several comments from the audience along the lines of “Is that really it?”

Outside of Hal, nobody else’s character is really dissected (even his backstory leaves a lot to be desired) and it leaves the subplots feeling very disjointed. I guess it’s too late now, but a note to DC writers: Please give your characters other motivation besides some kind of Daddy issue. If not for the terrific acting job by Peter Sarsgaard, Hector Hammond would have been the least interesting superhero villain in recent memory. Don’t blame Ryan Reynolds for this underachieving mess as he does the best he can with what he was given. His whimsical yet emotionally vulnerable performance does a good job of portraying the beloved DC character, but without a good set of developed supporting characters it’s tough to really get invested in Green Lantern.