Green Lantern (2011)

In brightest day, in blackest night, no comic movie will have a script so trite. Let those who worship CG’s might, beware the awful Green Lantern blight. The latest DC comic to make its way to the big screen is a disappointing mess on nearly every front.

Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, the most well-known of the six Earthling Green Lanterns over the comic franchise’s 60-year history. At the start of the film, he is a hotshot test pilot for an aeronautical engineering company headed up by the father of his childhood love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). She’s also a pilot but being groomed by her dear old dad to take over the company. Hal, too, is walking in his poppa’s footsteps. Ever since Jordan the senior (Jon Tenney, looking handsome as ever in brief flashbacks) died on a test mission right in front of young Hal’s eyes, the soon-to-be super has been faking fearlessness and tempting fate.

That must be why when he’s transported hundreds of miles in a computer-generated puff of green mist to the swampy crash-landing site of a dying purple alien named Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), Hal hardly bats a long-lashed eye. Just another day at the office, I guess. The mist comes from a ring, powered by a green genie lamp that harnesses the energy of willpower to combat evil across the universe. It was first invented by a bunch of diseased Yoda-looking aliens, who conscripted a squadron of 3,600 warriors, called Green Lanterns, and assigned them to different quadrants of the galaxy. They have the ability to conjure anything their mind and will are powerful enough to conceive. The ring chooses only the most fearless to wear it, since fear is the enemy of will, as we often hear in the film’s cheesy dialogue.

Which brings us to our super-villain, known as Parallax. It’s supposed to be the pure concentrated power of fear and has been destroying one innocent planet after another–not to mention the powerful Abin Sur and at least four other Green Lanterns–but it looks more like a dryer lint monster in a Snuggle commercial. It’s made of grey smoke, has tentacles, a sharp-toothed grin, and the voice of Clancy Brown. Ooooh, scary.

Fuzz Wuzzy Fear Monster does have an ally on Earth, though. It seems a part of him hitched a ride in Abin Sur’s wounds. So when balding,loser scientist Hector Hammond (Peter Saarsgard) is called in by the government to examine the marooned alien’s body, he winds up infected by it. Since Hector also has issues with his powerful senator dad (Tim Robbins), he turns into a deformed, veiny big-headed villain with telepathic powers.

Good God, Green Lantern just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?

But I’ve barely scratched the surface on just how bad the written-by-committee script really is. The list of credited screenwriters includes Michael Goldenberg and TV scribes Greg Berlanti, Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim, although I’m sure there were more than just those four. They seemed to be working in some sort of tag-team fashion, as it’s the only explanation for the film’s uneven episodic nature. Episode 1: the one about the dogfight. Episode 2: the one about the pretty girl. Episode 3: the one about the strange alien planet. It just keeps going like this for the film’s entire 114-minute runtime. Little seems to connect each of these discrete pockets of story, other than the fact that each is pat and predictable. And boring.

Director Martin Campbell (who also directed the Bond franchise re-boot, Casino Royale) takes the helm of this generic, cheap-looking sinking ship. Yes, I said cheap. And that’s in spite of the hefty budget used to add in Hal’s sparkly, green muscle suit in post-production. If 1997’s Batman & Robin taught us anything, it’s that the costume can often make or break the believability of our superhero. Batman is just not badass with nipples and a thong codpiece. Likewise, it’s hard to take Ryan Reynolds’ handsome face seriously when it’s pasted onto a fake, sinewy body rendered in chartreuse.

The computer effects do work in depicting the mystical planet of Oa, the home base of those ancient will-harnessing little guys and the entire Green Lantern Corps. Here, it is used to create an animated-looking backdrop of a world, peopled with Hal’s strange intergalactic co-workers, including the haughty head Lantern, Sinestro (Mark Strong). I appreciated that this world was far from realistic, but the film doesn’t do enough to contrast the strangeness of Oa with Earth. As Hal, Reynolds lets out an almost-Keanuesque “Woah” in response to seeing it…and then simply moves on.

Still, Reynolds is the best part of this otherwise pointless film…and not just because his abdominal muscles are worthy of spandex and a cape. He has the right nonchalant, golden boy energy for this kind of character, as well as the range to tackle some of Hal’s darker demons (see him in Buried if you don’t believe me). But there’s not enough origin story, character development, or even mindless action for him to show it.

From the terrible computer-generated superhero suit, to the dull, nonsensical script, there’s nothing to get excited about in Green Lantern. Unless, of course, you keep your eyes glued to Ryan Reynolds’ glutes. To be sure, they’re the only thing that kept me going.