Nothing coming out in theaters this week caught my interest, so I thought I'd write a DVD review instead. Although to be perfectly fair, neither The Thing nor Footloose could be nearly as bad as what I have for you today.
There was once a time when Hollywood relied on the most recognizable of comic book heroes, such as Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, and X-Men, to bring in their big bucks. After Marvel made such recognizable franchises into movies, they figured that their names were big enough to release just about any hero in big-budget films. Thus, we were given the series of films building up to the Avengers series; Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc. Meanwhile, DC and Warner Bros. had been relying solely on the Batman franchise, but with that coming to an end next year, they wanted to see if they could pull off the same tactic that Marvel pulled off. I would easily have followed this hype, except the advertising for Green Lantern wasn't all that spectacular. Trust me when I say that this film is a lot worse than it was advertised to be.
The film follows a jet pilot named Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds. He finds an alien named Abin Sur whose dying words tell him that he was chosen by his powerful ring to be a part of the Green Lantern Corps, an alliance spread across 3,600 sectors of the universe. Abin gives Hal the ring and tells him to state the oath in order to gain his power. Once Hal does so, he's sent up to the base planet of the Corps known as Oa, where he meets Tomar-Re, Kilowog, and their supposed leader, Sinestro, played here by Mark Strong.
Lately, members of the Corps have been dying, and Abin Sur was able to get the message across that their deaths were caused by a yellow-lit monster that calls itself Parallax. The Corps are then sent to a mission to defeat this monster, but after a bit of training (and this is where it gets stupid), Hal feels that he's not good enough for the mission. Why? Because the ring chooses people who are fearless, and Hal suddenly realizes that he is afraid. So, he leaves the Corps and goes back to Earth, spending most of his time moping and having cliche pep talks with his friends.
Saying that the script for this film is derivative would be an incredible understatement. I haven't read the comics, but if they were as lamely assembled as this shitty script, I think I would find more depth in a newspaper comic. Every superhero cliche imaginable is thrown in here, but for no good reason. There's one scene where he's walking up to his car, and out of nowhere, he just gets beaten up by thugs and has to use his ring to defend himself. There's another scene where he shows his new suit to a friend of his, and that friend says out of nowhere "Doesn't the hero get the girl?", and that leads to the infamous confession scene on the rooftop of Hal's crush. The dramatic scenes are laughable, and the humorous scenes are so far from laughable that it gave me a stomachache.
Even the whole idea of Hal saying he has no fear when he obviously does and has to learn to face it is poorly assembled. Why does he have fear to begin with? Because he doesn't want to die just like his father did. BO-RING! And it doesn't help that Hal is bland in just about every way. Supposedly, he's supposed to be a cocky wise guy, but while I have liked Ryan Reynolds in other films (BURIED IS A FANTASTIC THRILLER), his portrayal of the character is irritatingly bland. He's already a miscast to begin with, but I don't even think he knew what he was supposed to do here; his character is thinly written, and he isn't given a whole lot of direction.
This wouldn't be so bad if the film had some visual flair, but the production value reaches a whole new low here. Supposedly, the film had an impressive budget behind it, but it's all wasted in this mess. The live-action scenes are shot on a cold, lifeless, and poorly lit set, and the scenes on Oa, what few there are, don't look much better. It's bad enough that the characters are ugly even by sci-fi standards and the planet looks dark in the dull way, but the CGI is blurry and poorly rendered, much like something out of a video game. I might have been able to forgive this had the film been a TV movie, but this was meant to be a major theatrical release with hundreds of millions of dollars behind it. There is no excuse for this.
Green Lantern is an absolute disaster of a comic book movie. The story is blatantly derivative, the characters are bland and forgettable, Reynolds pulls off a terrible performance, and the production value is equivalent to that of a TV special when having such a big budget behind it. If DC wants to continue making their other heroes into movies, then they'd better put more effort into them (and not just money) if they expect to catch my attention during their next round.
This film is worth $0 out of $20.
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