"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!"
So goes the Green Lantern oath which has pretty much summed up everything you need to know about the character since he was conceived in 1959. Cheesy and generic but also slightly poetic and (for me at least) immensely cool!
It's easy to see why the Hal Jordan / Green Lantern character has a strong fan base. The idea of an intergalactic peace keeper (sort of a cross between the Men in Black and the Jedi knights) who fights interplanetary crime with the aid of a ring powered by willpower that can bring to life anything his imagination can conceive, (not to mention being a fighter pilot in his spare time) is a power fantasy wet dream for any twelve year old boy who never grew up. Despite vanishing into relative obscurity in the 90s the character underwent a revival in 2005 when Geoff Johns' seminal graphic novel Green Lantern : Rebirth literally brought Hal Jordan back from the dead and brought the Green Lantern Corps, the extended cast and the mythology to a multitude of new readers bringing him from niche obscurity to a (at least in the tiny world of comics) mainstream recognition.
While I only recently discovered Green Lantern on the page I was nonetheless as excited as any diehard fanboy when it was announced that the character would get his own film.
In fact a lot of people were invested in this film in many ways. Warner Bros had pinned their hopes on Green Lantern as a new money spinning franchise in light of the conclusion of both the Harry Potter series this year and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy next year. Hardcore fans were delighted that their favourite character would not only get his own big screen treatment but in a way that would break the mould of what people expect from a superhero film. Science fiction buffs were hoping the film would plug the popcorn friendly gap left by Star Wars.
It seems that pretty much everyone was disappointed!
While GL isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it is a film that has bitten off far more than it can chew! And with a relatively short run time (1 hour 40 mins) it has given itself faaaaar too little time to do it. The result is a series of disparate elements that are very likeable on their own but fail to come together cohesively as a film.
It's cardinal sin is not being able to make up it's mind as to what sort of film it wants to be. Is it a superhero film? A sprawling, epic space saga? A character study of Hal Jordan? An exploration of the theme of fear? Yes, the Green Lantern books manage to be all of those things, but then they've had fifty odd years of continuous publication to be able to do that! In trying to cram several key texts' worth of Green Lantern lore into a fairly short time frame the film falls short on a number of levels.
Firstly the film tries to stuff several books' worth of plot points into its narrative and as a result the whole thing feel incredibly rushed. We get a whistle stop tour of Hal Jordan's life, his train wreck of a relationship with his ex Carol Ferris (played by Blake Lively), a very very brief introduction to his brothers and nephew and an absurdly undersold flashback of his father's untimely death, unfortunately none of this is given enough time to sink in before we zoom off into space to start spending the special effects budget.
This is a shame because in the books these are quite compelling relationships. After witnessing his father's accidental death as a child Hal believes himself fearless "when your worst fear happens right in front of you- I thought there was nothing to be afraid of" and we see that this is responsible for his brash and cavalier attitude. The film also fails to show us that he has suppressed rather than overcome his fears which would have made it all the more plausible when he bottles out of the Corps half way through not to mention giving us a reason to want to cheer him up when he finally rises to the challenge.
In trying to bedazzle us with special effects wizardry the filmmakers have seen fit to short change the characters and their relationship and this hurts the film. Sinestro (played by Mark Strong) is the coolest character in the books and stands out as the best thing about the film but even he, the Darth Vader of Green Lantern is criminally underused and his tense relationship with Hal is underdeveloped.
After (and I'm not even fucking joking) ten minutes of training with the Green Lantern Corps' porcine drill sergeant Kilowog, Hal is flying around fighting GCI baddies while anyone in the audience not Green Lantern literate sits there wondering what the buggernuts is going on.
There are two villains. To cut a long story short they are Hector Hammond (a telepathic nutcase with a giant fod) and Parallax (the big bad nasty of the GL world who is... wait for it... a giant cloud with a face!). Peter Sarsgaard does a fine job as the awkward and pervy turned evil and loopy Hammond but Parallax (a creature that is supposed to be the living embodiment of fear) looks too flimsy and ephemeral to carry any sense of threat.
The film's climactic battle is pretty cool but since we haven't really gotten to know the main character throughout the film we have little reason to root for him outside of the fact that he's the goody.
It's been over two weeks since I saw the film and to be honest I'm as clueless as I was when I left the cinema as to how I really feel about it.
Green Lantern is a decent enough superhero romp but the reason I and a lot of my fellow nerds are so frustrated is that it could have been so much more than that! While the film doesn't necessarily miss any beats it skips over a great many far too quickly.
Nonetheless there's a good deal to like about the film. Ryan Reynolds is typically handsome, witty and charming and it's impossible not to like his portrayal of Hal Jordan even if he isn't given a great script to work with. Blake Lively manages to hold her own in the acting department despite being required to do very little except look pretty and make a few cutting remarks. Mark Strong's Sinestro single handedly saves the film from descending into mediocrity and the visual effects and consistently impressive and the 'ring slinging' stuff looks all kinds of awesome (though the CGI environments look a bit too sterile and computery to convince me that I'm being taken to an alien world).
If you've seen the film by all means leave a comment because to be completely honest I haven't the faintest idea whether I liked it or not!
It's easy to see why the Hal Jordan / Green Lantern character has a strong fan base. The idea of an intergalactic peace keeper (sort of a cross between the Men in Black and the Jedi knights) who fights interplanetary crime with the aid of a ring powered by willpower that can bring to life anything his imagination can conceive, (not to mention being a fighter pilot in his spare time) is a power fantasy wet dream for any twelve year old boy who never grew up. Despite vanishing into relative obscurity in the 90s the character underwent a revival in 2005 when Geoff Johns' seminal graphic novel Green Lantern : Rebirth literally brought Hal Jordan back from the dead and brought the Green Lantern Corps, the extended cast and the mythology to a multitude of new readers bringing him from niche obscurity to a (at least in the tiny world of comics) mainstream recognition.
While I only recently discovered Green Lantern on the page I was nonetheless as excited as any diehard fanboy when it was announced that the character would get his own film.
In fact a lot of people were invested in this film in many ways. Warner Bros had pinned their hopes on Green Lantern as a new money spinning franchise in light of the conclusion of both the Harry Potter series this year and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy next year. Hardcore fans were delighted that their favourite character would not only get his own big screen treatment but in a way that would break the mould of what people expect from a superhero film. Science fiction buffs were hoping the film would plug the popcorn friendly gap left by Star Wars.
It seems that pretty much everyone was disappointed!
While GL isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it is a film that has bitten off far more than it can chew! And with a relatively short run time (1 hour 40 mins) it has given itself faaaaar too little time to do it. The result is a series of disparate elements that are very likeable on their own but fail to come together cohesively as a film.
It's cardinal sin is not being able to make up it's mind as to what sort of film it wants to be. Is it a superhero film? A sprawling, epic space saga? A character study of Hal Jordan? An exploration of the theme of fear? Yes, the Green Lantern books manage to be all of those things, but then they've had fifty odd years of continuous publication to be able to do that! In trying to cram several key texts' worth of Green Lantern lore into a fairly short time frame the film falls short on a number of levels.
Firstly the film tries to stuff several books' worth of plot points into its narrative and as a result the whole thing feel incredibly rushed. We get a whistle stop tour of Hal Jordan's life, his train wreck of a relationship with his ex Carol Ferris (played by Blake Lively), a very very brief introduction to his brothers and nephew and an absurdly undersold flashback of his father's untimely death, unfortunately none of this is given enough time to sink in before we zoom off into space to start spending the special effects budget.
This is a shame because in the books these are quite compelling relationships. After witnessing his father's accidental death as a child Hal believes himself fearless "when your worst fear happens right in front of you- I thought there was nothing to be afraid of" and we see that this is responsible for his brash and cavalier attitude. The film also fails to show us that he has suppressed rather than overcome his fears which would have made it all the more plausible when he bottles out of the Corps half way through not to mention giving us a reason to want to cheer him up when he finally rises to the challenge.
In trying to bedazzle us with special effects wizardry the filmmakers have seen fit to short change the characters and their relationship and this hurts the film. Sinestro (played by Mark Strong) is the coolest character in the books and stands out as the best thing about the film but even he, the Darth Vader of Green Lantern is criminally underused and his tense relationship with Hal is underdeveloped.
After (and I'm not even fucking joking) ten minutes of training with the Green Lantern Corps' porcine drill sergeant Kilowog, Hal is flying around fighting GCI baddies while anyone in the audience not Green Lantern literate sits there wondering what the buggernuts is going on.
There are two villains. To cut a long story short they are Hector Hammond (a telepathic nutcase with a giant fod) and Parallax (the big bad nasty of the GL world who is... wait for it... a giant cloud with a face!). Peter Sarsgaard does a fine job as the awkward and pervy turned evil and loopy Hammond but Parallax (a creature that is supposed to be the living embodiment of fear) looks too flimsy and ephemeral to carry any sense of threat.
The film's climactic battle is pretty cool but since we haven't really gotten to know the main character throughout the film we have little reason to root for him outside of the fact that he's the goody.
It's been over two weeks since I saw the film and to be honest I'm as clueless as I was when I left the cinema as to how I really feel about it.
Green Lantern is a decent enough superhero romp but the reason I and a lot of my fellow nerds are so frustrated is that it could have been so much more than that! While the film doesn't necessarily miss any beats it skips over a great many far too quickly.
Nonetheless there's a good deal to like about the film. Ryan Reynolds is typically handsome, witty and charming and it's impossible not to like his portrayal of Hal Jordan even if he isn't given a great script to work with. Blake Lively manages to hold her own in the acting department despite being required to do very little except look pretty and make a few cutting remarks. Mark Strong's Sinestro single handedly saves the film from descending into mediocrity and the visual effects and consistently impressive and the 'ring slinging' stuff looks all kinds of awesome (though the CGI environments look a bit too sterile and computery to convince me that I'm being taken to an alien world).
If you've seen the film by all means leave a comment because to be completely honest I haven't the faintest idea whether I liked it or not!
1 comments:
sounds okay
thanks for the hug
:D
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