Green Lantern: Movie Review

And for a third time this summer, a comic book movie has hit theaters. This time shedding a little green light on the screen.

Green Lantern is the first major DC Comic character movie released since Batman: The Dark Knight in 2008, while Marvel Comics has been churning out superhero movies every time you turn around lately.  There have been a few DC Comics owned property that has been released such as “The Watchmen”, “Jonah Hex”, “Red”, and “The Losers.” However, none of those have had the pull that a major DC Comics character such as Batman has, aside from The Watchmen.

Upon first hearing the news of a Green Lantern movie, I knew it would have to be of epic scale to fully capture the true story and background of the Green Lantern character. The best way to create an epic scaled film is to first hire a director with a strong vision, such as Kenneth Branagh who directed Thor. The director must have a vision in his head of what can be created for the audience to enjoy and be engulfed into the director’s vision. With Martin Campbell’s direction, it just didn’t feel like he was able to capture the vision truly necessary for this type of movie.

However, it wasn’t a visual vision that didn’t seem to be captured but more of a character vision. The truly main weakest character belonged to Carol Ferris, played woodenly by Blake Lively. Her interaction with pretty much everyone in the film seemed distant and unrealistic, particularly the romance tension between her and the title character. As for the other characters, most did a good job. Even though I never found Ryan Reynolds as a good choice for the role of the Green Lantern/Hal Jordan. Reynolds is better with a role that has a sarcastic sense of humor but still enormously chivalrous. While he pulled off the sarcasm very well, and sometimes nailed the chivalry, something still seemed very off about the casting choice. To me, he always seemed to be a better choice as a Wally West “Flash” role or what most have known him as, Deadpool.

Though, what really threw the film off is perhaps the pacing. A movie should not be able to feel rushed and slow at the same time. Yet, somehow, this movie managed to pull that annoyance off. The length of the movie was only 1 hour 45 minutes long. That amount of time seemed to drag on forever, but the scenes seemed rushed and poorly put together.

Truly, the only amazing thing about the movie is the special effects. A lot of time and money was spent on creating a visually stunning movie. The scenes that took place on the Planet Oa were breathtakingly beautiful. The detailed thought put into those scenes certainly had me prefer watching scenes about the Lantern Corp over the events on Earth. Thought not only was put into the scenery but also into the characters and their interaction with each other. Their scenes didn’t seem as rushed and thrown in as filler.

One other positive aspect of this movie, it is better than the most recent release of the direct to DVD Green Lantern: The Emerald Knights animated movie.  Finally, one last negative aspect of the movie is that the 3d version is far from worth it. In fact, it was a completely wasted effort as it could have had a really good chance to take full advantage of the 3d technology.

Overall, the live action Green Lantern movie falls short of the potential it could have had with making some poor choices. If you enjoy more flash than substance, then you’ll enjoy this movie. If you look for some substance, you may feel a bit ripped off from seeing this movie.