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In
brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil's might,
Beware my power... Green Lantern's light!
To say I have been looking forward to
the big screen adaptation of “Green
Lantern” would be an understatement.
I grew up reading comics and though I rarely
read them anymore, I still try to keep up
with my favorite characters. For some reason
Green Lantern and Green Arrow were always
high on my list. So with all of the great
superhero films that have been coming out,
I had some high hopes for Warner Brother’s
take on the emerald avenger.
Going in to the theater the other night,
we were greeted by hundreds of fans and
amazing balloon wall with a 3 Dimensional
Green Lantern Corp symbol. It was pretty
awesome admittedly. There were a lot of
festivities and giveaways to get everyone
pumped but we were ready to see the movie.
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What I was hoping to tell you today was that
“Green Lantern” was everything I expected
and more, unfortunately I cannot.
“Green Lantern” does a pretty good
job of pulling audiences into the origin of how
the power ring came to Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds),
his discovery of power it brings to him, the oath
that allows him to charge the ring, and where
the power comes from and his subsequent training.
But it also gives us two villains, one on earth
and another from space, and with this information
overload thrown into an hour and forty minute
movie, little is left to fully develop. It’s
a bits and pieces kind of film. There are great
moments to be sure but these parts do not a great
movie make (not to sound like Yoda here…)
Now I won’t tell you not to go see “Green
Lantern” as it is an entertaining movie,
full of some fantastic imagery (thanks to the
power of CGI) and action. As I mentioned, there
are some truly magnificent scenes. The first reciting
of ‘the oath’ is one. It starts off
as a comical scene, but when Reynolds finally
delivers it correctly, it is a goose bump inducing
moment for any comic book geek. The scenes that
take place on OA (the home world to the Green
Lantern Corp) are also brilliantly created and
look fantastic on screen, but again, they are
too short to fully appreciate. The characters
that are familiar to fans, like Kilowog, were
introduced but little was done with them.
Overall I think the problem just fell back on
the writers trying to give us too much story in
too little time. There was a lot of eye candy,
but nothing to draw you in emotionally. There’s
Hal’s love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake
Lively), but you never really care about their
relationship. They introduce Hector Hammond as
a scientist who, through no fault of his own,
becomes a super-villain but again there’s
very little emotional punch to what he goes through
and ultimately the chaos he creates.
I wouldn’t blame the actors, all of whom
turned in good performances, but more so the writing
and editing. Even Ryan Reynolds, whom I originally
thought was the wrong actor for the part, was
actually pretty good. The plot given here would
have been much better served if they had been
split into two movies thereby allowing greater
development of the characters and the story arc.
I also have to mention the fact that we saw it
in 3D. I don’t recommend paying the extra
dollars for this. Like every other live action
3D that has been released since “Avatar”
(the only one that did it right), the picture
is rather dark and murky. And in a film where
color means so much, it needs to bright and flashy.
The 3D processing made the image too muddy so
the few 3D scenes that looked good did not make
it worth seeing the whole film that way.
I do recommend seeing it on a big screen simply
for the visuals as some of them are stunning (as
long as you don’t see it in 3D) and the
action sequences are huge. The movie as a whole
is entertaining, but in an ‘all flash no
substance' kinda way. I would suggest seeing it
as a matinee, do not pay full price for an evening
showing.
And be sure to stay about a quarter way through
the credits. There's a nice little scene that
sets up a possible sequel, one I hope gets made
as it offers the promise of a better film.
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard,
Mark String, Temuera Morrison,
Studio: Warner Brothers
Opening Date: 6/17/2011
MPAA Rating: PG-13
http://greenlanternmovie.warnerbros.com/
DrJkyll gives Green Lantern a B-.
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