What Keith's Watching: Green Lantern (2011)

I only saw Green Lantern once, when it first came out on DVD. So glad I didn’t spend the money in theaters. It only came out in 2011, but it feels very much like an early-2000s movie. Compared to the superhero movies of the time, Green Lantern misfires on almost all cylinders. There’s a couple gems of what might have been a good movie, but otherwise it fails and I’m not sure why I watched it again.

The characters are all around underdeveloped. Hal Jordan as an adult seems to carry no weight from his father’s death. He’s a little too much of an aloof class clown. He’s a rogue that plays by nobody’s rules, not even his own. Up until the ring chooses him, we have no reason to think the ring would choose him. He seems to be a womanizer who chronically runs late, only thinks about himself and is unable to see the big picture. I wonder if they were trying too much to model Hal Jordan after Tony Stark. The problem is, Tony goes through a tramatic event and sees the big picture, but Hal just kind of realizes the ring picked him for some reason, so he should probably be a hero.

None of the other characters are fleshed out either. Sinestro is well-played by Mark Strong, but besides disagreeing with people a lot, I get no feeling that he’s a bad guy when he puts on the yellow ring. The most developed character is Hector Hammond because you at least understand why he acts how he does. He’s been bullied his whole life by people and his father, so of course when he gets a little power, he’s going to go crazy with it. But he’s not even the main villain. He’s not even a henchman. He’s basically just a beacon for the creative, I think, is the villain.

The problem of Parallax is that he’s just a monster. He – like the rest of the cast – has no character. He has no beef with Hal Jordan. He’s pissed off at Abin Sur (Hal Jordan’s predecessor), but Abin Sur isn’t what brings him to Earth. Parallax is also pissed at The Guardians of Oa, but instead of going there, he decides to pass a bunch of other planets and end up at Earth. Hal doesn’t even do much to fight Parallax, he just uses gravity and the sun. Not even sure how that works because I don’t even understand what Parallax is made of. He’s just a weird cloud of dust and rocks with a face. Terrible design.

Speaking of that, the costume has to be mentioned. Who’s bright idea was it to CGI the costume? By this point we had Superman Returns and the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy. Nobody considered taking that material and making a Green Lantern suit? It’d make sense in 2004, but 2011? Come on guys, you’re better than that. And ontop of that, a shitty CGI domino mask.

I think I mentioned something good, didn’t I? Mark Strong as Sinestro is perfect. I enjoyed Kilowag and all the other Lanterns. I also liked the idea of Sinestro wearing the Yellow ring and the allusion to the other Lantern Corps. That would have potentially made for a good sequel. I also liked the fact that Hal felt the need to bury Abin Sur. It was perhaps his only character note.

If you haven’t seen Green Lantern, don’t bother. Just wait for the reboot in 2020 or his appearance in another DC movie. Having watched this movie twice, I don’t want any more hours of anyone’s life to be lost.