Green Lantern brings with it the universal breadth of Thor, a cloud-like villain similar to the one found in Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and a strange connection to Top Gun complete with dreams of living up to daddy, a blonde love interest, a destroyed fighter plane and the list goes on and on. Had Maverick not gone on to become the Navy’s top flying ace and instead became an intergalactic superhero this might be exactly what would have happened, and yes, he would even still get the girl.
I’ve never read the “Green Lantern” comic, but I have to assume the theme of will power vs. fear ran through it just as it does in this filmed adaptation. Ryan Reynolds stars as Hal Jordan, an Air Force test pilot that has been chosen to replace Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), a respected and dying member of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps that has crash landed on Earth after being attacked. This, of course, is the simple version.
I guess I could add a few details from the film’s cosmic prologue, telling you there are 3,600 peace-keeping “Lanterns” spanning from one sector of the universe to another and next we witness as three anonymous aliens are disintegrated by what ends up being the film’s villain, Parallax, a black cloud that feeds on the yellow emotional spectrum of fear, using it for its strength.
Alternatively, “Lanterns” harness their strength from the green emotional spectrum of will power and with it are able to do all sorts of things, such as construct anything their mind can imagine from a Gatling gun to a flamethrower to a couple of jets or even a beautiful necklace to give to their sweetie. Awwww.
So, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and just as you’d expect, Hal is egotistical, irresponsible and screwed up with daddy issues galore. Most of this is obviously wedged in just to make his transition from cocky test pilot to heroic superhero a little harder.
And now that you know your Maverick let me introduce you to Iceman, though I don’t think this guy is someone Hal will ever want to be his wingman. Meet Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), a professor and xenobiologist, who, despite all of this, still can’t impress his old man (Tim Robbins), a high-powered senator. Yet, through a bit of nepotism his father has given him a chance to leap frog the competition and become the lead scientist working on the recovered body of the alien that gave Hal his powers.
Perhaps because of the makeup and the crazy nature of the character, Sarsgaard looks and acts like he had the most fun of anyone making this film. Without going into too many details, his character ultimately becomes one of the film’s antagonists and you better believe a life’s worth of jealousy, inability to impress father and low self-esteem drive his mania. Oh, and there is also the matter of the girl.
Of course there’s a girl and Hector has pined for her as long as he can remember, but Hal used to be in the way and it’s starting to look like they’re at it again. Her name is Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), and she’s Hal’s fellow test pilot and the film’s love interest. As such she gets to ask all the stupid questions, utter all the cliched lines and serves as the damsel in distress when necessary. Cue loud, concerning music.
Elsewhere (yes, I’m sorry, but there is a lot to mention), on the planet Oa, which is where most of the members of the Lantern Corps seem to reside, we meet Sinestro (Mark Strong) who appears to be the leader of the Corps and an immediate doubter of Hal’s ability to be one of them. We also meet a fish-like “Lantern” named Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) and a giant hog-like beast named Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan). Tomar-Re and Kilowog are virtually non-existent in the story, but Sinestro gets a decent enough role and Strong plays him well, but the problem with this film is not the performances, but the script and the story.
With everything in front of you, you can probably piece together the entire narrative, though I’m pretty sure you’ll construct a tighter story than is presented here. Four people are given script credit on this feature and it plays like they had a solid base for an origin story, but they couldn’t help but continue to wedge in character details until that original idea became a distant memory. Not to mention, the character details are those cliched, hum-drum details that have been bogging down films for years, and we are reminded of these details over and over again. Then the love triangle kicks in and there’s no room left for the superhero stuff everyone came to see until it’s time to take on the big cloud and… Ugh, I’m spent.
Unfortunately, Sarsgaard’s “campiness” is the film’s only real highlight outside of some snazzy CG effects. Lively’s character is a cliched dead end, primarily due to the fact the love angle is so unbelievable and cheesy that you don’t for a second think there’s anything there or even if you do, you don’t care. Reynolds does just fine in the lead role, but there seemed to be an attempt to stay clear of the level of arrogance Robert Downey Jr. brought to Iron Man in hopes of avoiding a comparison, especially since the egos of the two characters seem to run incredibly close. The comparison was going to be made one way or another, and for that reason I wish they had gone for it more than they did. Storytelling freedom seemed to take a backseat to controlling the chaos to the point the whole project became stunted.
Director Martin Campbell isn’t the first person you’d think of for a project like this, though you can see glimpses of why he may have been chosen, but those glimpses stem from his lesser work such as The Legend of Zorro and Vertical Limit and not Casino Royale or even the level of camp he delivered in GoldenEye. I guess, in a way, he may have actually been the right choice, but too many hands in the cookie jar and the tinkering with the script resulted in a finished project he never intended to make.
Fans of the comic may enjoy seeing their favorite character on the big screen and I would never fault them for that. I also think kids around the age of ten can have fun with this film considering we’re talking about people that can fly and can land a crashing helicopter using a Rolls-Royce chassis (at least I think it was a Rolls) and a race track, but as far as non-comic reading adults are concerned there are just too many missteps for you to overlook them all and the level of fun just isn’t there.
