Well, well, well. If it isn’t Ryan Reynolds’ worst nightmare. While he’s famously known as R-Rated Marvel superhero Deadpool, he was also a superhero in a different universe. Green Lantern is a live-action rendition of the iconic DC Comics superhero, it’s one of DC’s first major forays into comic book movie adaptations.
This was also the first big-budget superhero film the Warner Brothers has ever done that isn’t Batman or Superman, and it’s quite obvious. The film underwent several development revisions and was even considered a comedy at one point. In the end, the film got bad reviews and barely earned its budget back.
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The Movie Review
The Guardians of the Universe has divided the cosmos into 3,600, each with one Green Lantern. For generations, the Green Lantern Corps – an elite defensive force of peace and justice, has existed in a strange realm. One such Green Lantern was Abin Sur, who fought and captured the fear-essence entity Parallax. He dies after the evil entity escapes in a different reality and fatally injures him. During his last moments, Abin Sur orders his ring to find a worthy warrior for the planet.
The Ring chooses a reckless test pilot named Hal Jordan, giving him superhuman abilities and the heavy responsibility of saving mankind. With many Green Lanterns slain and the Corps weakened, he’s the universe’s final hope.
Director Martin Campbell was chosen to direct Green Lantern, and he’s had plenty of experience in the action genre, finding success in Casino Royale and The Mask of Zorro. The trailer for Green Lantern generated a lot of excitement, but when it eventually premiered in theaters, the film didn’t do as well as people hoped it would. This is most likely due to a lack of a compelling story and a cast of characters that is much too large for a movie to have.
There are many things to dislike in this film: the performances are pretty shallow, and all characters, aside from our hero, are restricted to a few small scenes in which we get a faint idea of who they are.
The cinematography was alright, as well as the costumes, but they weren’t particularly exceptional or detailed. When it comes to the writing, the story starts off well with an interesting concept, but it’s muddled with too many characters, a boring pace, and a story that is too simple for such a long movie.
As a result, the majority of the scenes seemed to go longer than they should have. Not to mention, the script was messy and filled with clichés. Even Reynolds, who usually puts on a show, is unable to carry this film on his own. Generally, superhero movies are fun to watch even if they’re bad, but it was hard not skipping through scenes and staying awake watching Green Lantern.
I did like a few things: the music, James Newton Howard always makes the best scores so it somehow gave the film more quality. The CGI and special effects in the film were actually okay, but it’s not as great as other DC movies. It’s also a safe superhero movie, starting out with a pretty complex origin story.
The Bottom Line
In conclusion, Green Lantern had the potential to be a really fun superhero movie, it’s unfortunate that it fell in the wrong hands and was terribly miscast. It could be compared to the Fantastic Four films, in which they tried too hard to fit Hollywood conventions for the general audience. But even Fantastic Four was more watchable than Green Lantern, which is plain boring because of the plot and didn’t have interesting enough villains.
