NeXus' movie review: Green Lantern (spoilers!)

[Power NeXus]

As entertaining as it was, this movie definitely did not live up to my expectations. The bar for superhero movies is steadily being set higher and higher (especially now that Marvel Studios is in business), and while I did not expect Green Lantern to be one of the greatest movies ever made, it just didn't feel like Warner Bros really tried that hard to meet the bar.

Acting
As I have stated in previous reviews, I am hardly an authority on what is good acting and what is not. If you disagree with this part of the review, I honestly won't be very surprised.
There was both good and bad acting that I saw in this movie. Thankfully, all instances of below-average acting that I saw came from minor characters who were only on screen for a few seconds. Most everyone else was generally average acting-wise. The one actor I would like to point out is Peter Sarsgaard, with his role of Hector Hammond. He was just freakin amazing. Despite being a villian of the story, his character drew me in emotionally more than any other character in the movie. Just as I said that Loki did just as much as Thor did to make their movie great, I think that Hector Hammond did just as much as Hal Jordan for this movie.

Visuals
The one area in which this movie excelled. It's amazing how far CGI has progressed. Even the most out-of-this-world parts of the animation (the solid light constructs) really looked believable. The only problem I had with the visuals was Parallax. He looked... well a little bit stupid sometimes. They really could have come up with a better, and more fear-inspiring, character design.

Plot
The polar opposite of the visuals, this is the factor that really sunk the movie. The plot of Green Lantern can be sumed up in a single word: cliche. It was nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before. Guy is having problems with his life. Guy is unexpectedly thrown into a situation far bigger than himself. Guy thinks it's really cool for a while, but starts to back out of it when he doubts his own abilities. Evil grows stronger. Guy finally reaches inside himself (with the assistance of his love interest) and finally brings up the courage to fight again. Evil is defeated by a trick/idea introduced earlier in the movie.
Warner Bros is a rich company, right? Well with all the amazing script-writers they can pay to have working for them, it seems like one of them could have come up with a slightly more original plot.

Pacing
The pace of this movie just felt extremely off in a lot of the wrong places. It became slow, almost to the point of being boring, in some parts when it felt like there should have been a bit more action going on. Then it would run through scenes at full speed when it felt like it should slow down and do some more explanation.
Just like with the acting, I'm not an experienced enough film critic to really say much about how a movie was paced. I just felt like it was kind of... off.

Action scenes
In a word: niiiiice. Going hand-in-hand with the 'Visuals' point, the movie was pretty good in this aspect. Fighter jets, flying, earth battles, space battles, explosions, creative energy constructs... all the stuff you would want to see in Green Lantern fight scenes. My only problem with the movie in this aspect was that I don't think there were enough action scenes. I feel that a bit too much of the movie was spent around Hal Jordan as a normal guy, instead of an awesome action hero.

Other thoughts
I was slightly surprised that no mention was ever made of Green Lantern constructs being unable to directly effect any yellow object. But I suppose that has something to do with differences in Parallax's character between the movie and the comics.
There did seem to be some major deviations from comic canon. Granted, I'm not a DC reader (and when I do read DC, it's mainly street levelers) but I'm pretty sure that the comic version of Parallax was not a rogue Guardian who had become consumed by the power of fear.


SUMMARY

The Good: Cool visuals and fight scenes, good enough acting from the characters that mattered.

The Bad: Extremely stale plot, bad pacing, too few action scenes.

6/10
Ok, but could have been a lot better

[Admin]

I'll hold back on reading until I see it.

[Admin]

Now that I've seen it, my few thoughts:
-I agree with the score. 6-6.5 seems perfectly fair to me.
-Hammond's role should have ended after the autopsy. Introduce him to fans, reveal what will cause his 'mutation,' save for a later film. The constant diving back and forth between Hal and Hammond hindered the plot, imho, and I just didn't see his aspect as being required. I would have MUCH rather had the additional time for more scenes with Oa and other Corps members.
-Like I said above, needed MORE Oa, Sinestro, and other Lanterns, damn it!
-That said, a fun movie. Not good, but certainly not bad. Let's hope the follow-up kicks major ass.

[Power NeXus]

Jun 17, 2011 23:20:04 GMT -5 Admin said:

-That said, a fun movie. Not good, but certainly not bad. Let's hope the follow-up kicks major ass.

Let's hope so. I don't think they can go wrong with a good ol' 'Sinestro starts the Yellow Lantern Corps' movie now they they've gotten the origin story out of the way.

[Gender]

Jun 18, 2011 0:25:59 GMT -5 Power NeXus said:

Jun 17, 2011 23:20:04 GMT -5 Admin said:

-That said, a fun movie. Not good, but certainly not bad. Let's hope the follow-up kicks major ass.

Let's hope so. I don't think they can go wrong with a good ol' 'Sinestro starts the Yellow Lantern Corps' movie now they they've gotten the origin story out of the way.

Never doubt someone's ability to !@#$ things up.

[NorCalCO]

*Spoilers*

I've never read a Green Lantern comic, but I enjoyed the movie for what it was, a fun summer movie. I thought the action and CGI were extremely well done, although I thought the Hot Wheels track was silly. I don't know much about Hal Jordan, but I thought Ryan Reynolds did a good job in the role. I would have liked to see more interaction with Sinestro and the other lanterns as well. Would definitely have preferred that to the Hammond subplot. Also, I think a lot of the dialogue lines that were intended to be comedic fell really flat. There were a lot of people in the theater when I saw it over the weekend and nobody was laughing at the jokes. I think around a 6 is a good rating out of 10. Pretty good comic book flick, but nothing compared to the movies that Marvel Studios has been putting out or Nolan's 2 Batman films. The bar has been set really high these last few years,

[Painkiller]

I'd give it a 2\10.

[Pirateking69]

It was alright I would give it a lesser score but that's my opinion and my wife said she would have rather see Thor again the watch GL again lol

[spoilsport]

I just got back from seeing this. I'd personally score it something like a 7. I had a good time with it, but I generally have a high tolerance for dumb cheesy superhero nonsense (IE: I had a good time with Spider-Man 3 sosueme)

Stuff I didn't dig:

-Some of the CGI felt a little spotty at points.
-Pretty much everything on Oa, cept for Tomar Re (I think that was him, right? The fish-dude?) was a little too goofy for me. The Guardians just looked silly, which is weird, because I didn't have this problem with Thor and that shit had fucking Frost Giants in it.
-Pacing was kinda wack.
-Way too many voiceover exposition scenes. Starting a movie with one of these always makes me roll my eyes. Show, don't tell. Goddamn.

Stuff I dug:

-The cast. I don't have a particularly large connection with Green Lantern, and that's probably a factor, but I liked Ryan Reynolds as Hal. Sinestro had an appropriate amount of gravitas, and Hammond was pretty delightfully loony. Blake Lively was a pleasure to watch as well.
-The "death of Hal's dad" flashback. Much better than just having somebody yap about it first or something. I really don't like exposition voiceovers and junk.
-Action was pretty good! There weren't a lot of them but when they happened they were fun.
-The constructs. There was a pretty great variety of them. I dug it.
-Ryan Reynolds reciting the oath. Dude really sold that for me. I'm gonna be quoting it for days.

Liked it a lot more than I expected, but it wasn't up to standard for recent superhero movies, I think. I hope that they do make a sequel - I think that with the origin story already told and a smaller villain that has already been established, the pacing issues could be fixed pretty handily.

[Killshot Caine]

Nice Review but I would have given it a slightly lower school.

[Power NeXus]

Most people probably would have given it a lower rating. I just don't have very high standards when it comes to check-your-brain-at-the-door entertainment.

[Admin]

Fret not, I agree with 6/10.

[jakefury]

finally saw this, 6/10-6.5/10 seems about right.

[Phantom Stargrave]

Jun 17, 2011 3:38:28 GMT -5 Power NeXus said:

The one actor I would like to point out is Peter Sarsgaard, with his role of Hector Hammond. He was just freakin amazing. Despite being a villian of the story, his character drew me in emotionally more than any other character in the movie. Just as I said that Loki did just as much as Thor did to make their movie great, I think that Hector Hammond did just as much as Hal Jordan for this movie.

Jun 22, 2011 1:45:12 GMT -5 NorCalCO said:

Would definitely have preferred that to the Hammond subplot.

Jul 20, 2011 19:34:24 GMT -5 spoilsport said:

Hammond was pretty delightfully loony.

I really strongly disagree with this. I found Hammond an absolute pain to sit through. For me he was probably one of the lowest points in the movie. This is probably not the fault of the actor since he really does good with the material given to him, but the character himself is such a stereotypical looser who just wants to get back at everyone for no other reason than being a looser. That's it, that's the entire point of his character. He wasn't interesting, he wasn't entertaining, he was that fat kid in school everyone liked to pick on and the movie doesn't miss a single chance to remind us of that. I mean hell, maybe he would have been a great villain in a psychological drama or something, but here, I want my characters to be awesome first. Hopefully Sinestro will supply that in the sequel.


Other than that, 6/10 sounds about right.

[Silver]

Honestly, I would give GL lower than a 6/10. That movie was just bad.