Ryan Reynolds - Hal Jordan / Green Lantern
Blake Lively - Carol Ferris
Peter Sarsgaard - Hector Hammond
Mark Strong - Sinestro
Temuera Morrison - Abin Sur
Jon Tenney - Martin Jordan
Mike Doyle - Jack Jordan
Nick Jandl - Jim Jordan
Dylan James - Jason Jordan
Leanne Cochran - Janice Jordan
I decided over the course of the next week I would celebrate the debut of the Green Lantern movie by doing a 3 part review series. The first one will be for the movie itself, one for Emerald Knights, and one for one of the TPB's from Green Lantern. So without wasting much more time here is my interview for Green Lantern…..
This is going to be one of the most difficult reviews I will make and I knew this as soon as it was decided that I would do reviews on this site. Now that has no bearing on my thoughts on the movie but more on how the thoughts on the movie would be viewed. If I give a good review there will be people who consider me biased because I am a big fan of the character and the Green Lantern mythos. If I give an overly critical review then I am called a nitpicking fanboy who can’t realize that not everything can be exactly like it is in the comics.
It took me all day to think of if I could do a review without bias…..then I realized that every movie review has some form of bias in them some of which are more technical or personable and less about the source material. Now enough about me what did I think of this movie?
I personally liked it but I thought it could have been better.
Now time to explain that. First let me go into the bad of this movie. The writing is the biggest culprit. You could tell that there were problems with the fact that 4 people made the script. Now it wasn’t that 4 people wrote bits and pieces but more the way that one guy made a script, then they realized it was so bad that it took 3 people in different stages of development to make it not as bad. I will blame Greg Berlanti for the majority of it because he originally wrote the screenplay for it. I mean there was one scene that was so bad that I had douche chills when I was reading what it was. We have a lot of repetition of adjectives, no transition, and really it put more pressure on the actors.
The editing crew also didn’t do the movie any favors which can be a pace killer too. If not for the fact that the writing wasn’t the best this would have been more glaring.
Now with the cast I will say this Ryan Reynolds surprised me. I had my questions about if he could pull off playing Hal Jordan but while he didn’t hit a home run with the role he convinced me that he had the chops to play the character. While it feels like him being himself early on by the end of the movie he ends up being the closest to an exact duplicate of Hal Jordan you would hope to get. I went from hoping for a reboot to get a new guy in there to hoping for a sequel with a better script.
Blake Lively was kinda in the middle for me because I don’t know for sure if her acting was iffy or if it was her doing her best with what she had. There were moments where she was really good and moments where she was dull. I will just have to hope when Green Lantern 2 rolls around that we get a better script to answer this question.
Peter Sarsgaard, who is a good actor, started off with a really good embodiment of Hector Hammond. He had that creepy essence to him which felt just like the character as written by Geoff Johns in his run on Green Lantern. But then as the movie progressed he overacted and ended up getting a failing grade in my book. He was over the top and goofy. And his scream is probably the most annoying scream you will ever hear in a man.
As for the rest of the cast just as I expected Mark Strong nailed it as Sinestro. The character had a regal quality in the comics that is hard to translate to film but Strong did it and I couldn’t be happier with how he was. There was solid voice work from Michael Clarke Duncan as Kilowog and Geoffrey Rush as Tomar Re. Temuera Morrison, you might remember him as Jengo Fett in Star Wars episode 2, was also solid as Abin Sur the alien who died so Hal Jordan could get his Green Lantern ring.
As for the effects first you could tell there were people who worked on Lord of the Rings involved. There were aspects of the Green Lantern Corps’ planet Oa that made you think of LOTR. The character effects were good for some and just ok for others. The suit was well generated except for some certain spots but the constructs were amazingly done. The main villain Parallax was basically a cloudy monster but looked really cool.
With everything factored in it was a fun movie and is your typical summer popcorn flick. And while I liked it the one frustrating aspect is that the writing held it back from being DC’s Iron Man which I think this movie had potential to become. If not for the fact that there was a ton of promise in this movie the writing and editing would have been enough for me to blast this movie but there was just enough right to warrant another viewing and definitely a blu-ray buy. I just hope that Michael Goldenberg (who did minor re-writes for this movie as a favor to director Martin Campbell) gets to be the only writer and makes a script similar to that of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix(which he wrote the script for).
All in all I give it a 3 out of 5. Just enough to enjoy it but still acknowledging that there were factors holding it back from being great.
Written By: Mike Falcone
Twitter: @BrainstuFalcone
