Back in the golden age of 2011, the live-action film Green Lantern was released. This was three years after Nolan completed his Batman trilogy with The Dark Knight Rises and two years before the official launch of the DCEU with Man of Steel. And even some of the elements in Green Lantern point to it being the start of the DCEU (such as A-lister Angela Bassett playing Amanda Waller with very little screen time). Whether that’s the case or not, DC’s decision to turn Green Lantern into a live-action movie property before some of their other characters, like Wonder Woman or the Flash, seemed kind of risky. Given all of the changes that Hal Jordan had gone through in the comics, like becoming Parallax and the Spectre, not to mention the thousands of available supporting characters in the form of the Green Lantern Corps, making the Green Lantern into a hot commodity in the same vein as Batman would have been quite a challenge. However, DC and Warner Brothers decided to meet that challenge, to some very tepid results. But is Green Lantern really as bad as people remember?
If you’ve seen Green Lantern or heard anything about it, you’re probably thinking ‘yes’. In most respects, you’re not wrong. Ryan Reynolds was, cosmetically, a great choice for Hal Jordan. He had (and still has) a great physique that played well into the athleticism of the character and filled out the suit well. However, Reynolds’ acting style didn’t quite fit Hal Jordan, a heroic, if not a little stiff, character. Sure, Reynolds added a touch of levity to what would otherwise be a heavy-handed opus to responsibility. Throughout the movie, Jordan questioned his ability to be a Green Lantern and the entire time, Reynolds seemed nonsensical in his emotional range. “I don’t know if I can be the hero everyone wants me to be” was the theme of the film. Keep going on like that, buddy, and I’ll feel the same way.
Hell, even the choice of a CGI suit was a head-scratcher. It was supposed to symbolize the power that engulfed the Green Lantern and helped to protect him, but it just didn’t look good. It looked silly and detracted from the visual of the movie. I wasn’t surprised to learn that the reason behind the suit was since a huge chunk of the movie was set in outer space, it was easier to just model a CG Ryan Reynolds than to figure out the physical wire effects and green screen placement.
Sadly, Hal Jordan was the only character who gets any sense of characterization — if you call “I can’t be a hero/I can be a hero” characterization. Blake Lively as Carol Ferris was unflinchingly stoic. Her Barbie-doll acting lent little to the role of a strong-willed, highly capable fighter pilot/businesswoman. Besides being told that she used to date Hal and was a great pilot, she becomes little more than Hal Jordan’s arm candy. Yet her character was still more realistic than Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond. As a foil to Hal Jordan, Hammond was just… there. He had some kind of history with Jordan and Ferris, but the writers decided to gloss over most of that. Hal, Carol, and Hector grew up together, Hector had a crush on Carol, and that’s the extent of it. Their history doesn’t add much to the story or explain Hector’s motivations well. He wants to be Hal but given the amount of attention everyone showers on him, who wouldn’t?
Green Lantern had a lot of things working against it; negatives that will prevent it from every ranking high on anyone’s “Best” list, but it also has a few good parts. Hal’s imaginative uses of his abilities made many scenes fun to watch, such as the scene in which he turned a falling helicopter into a toy car speeding along a racetrack. Hal’s training at the hands of Kilowog, though highly forgettable, redeemed the movie slightly. Even Sinestro stole the attention in what little screen time he is given. There’s also Tom, Hal’s friend and coworker, played by Taika Waititi. Waititi has great comedic ability and really made every scene in which Tom appeared fun. Well, except for the one where he delivered the cringeworthy line “Don’t they (meaning superheroes) always get the girl?”
Even though I mentioned Sinestro as a high point for the film, he’s also a source of head-scratching as well. Comic fans know Sinestro as Green Lantern’s arch-nemesis, wielding a yellow ring powered by fear. But in the film, he was a member of the Green Lantern Corps and an ally of Hal, though he doesn’t believe much in Hal’s abilities. In the post-credits scene, Sinestro puts on the yellow power ring, but the film doesn’t set up this heel turn well. Or at all, even. Sinestro was the driving force behind the creation of the yellow ring to defeat Parallax, the big evil threatening the universe, but we never got the sense that he was power-hungry at all. Throughout the film, he wanted to, and does, do the right thing; the yellow ring was a means to an end, not something he sought for personal gain. So, this change came out of nowhere, committed only because Sinestro needed to fit that mold of arch-nemesis.
Most of Green Lantern‘s fatal flaws can be easily identified, such as the tepid characterization, cliché action, and hit-or-miss dialogue, but it is by no means a terrible movie. It’s never going to stand in the Pantheon of Great Comic Book Movies alongside films like The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Spider-Man 2. But there have been worse superhero movies to come out in the past ten years, with a few being a part of the DCEU itself. If DC decides to make another Green Lantern movie, I hope they don’t start from scratch. Similar to the way Marvel turned The Incredible Hulk into a quasi-sequel of Ang Lee’s Hulk movie, Green Lantern is a perfectly suitable introduction to the huge mythology that is the Green Lantern Corps. All the information is there, the foundation already laid; all WB has to do is build a beautiful structure on top of it.
