No cute power ring pun

Well I saw Green Lantern on Friday, and must say it was not as bad as you have heard. It is not great mind you, but it is not bad. Also I saw it in 2D the only way to watch movies if you are over 12. I have already railed against 3D here, so I will leave it alone for now. Here is my review, with no spoilers.



First off, Ryan Reynolds is not comic book Hal. He is Ryan Reynolds playing a character that happens to be named Hal Jordan. I didn't not like him, he just should never have tried to be Hal.



Now on to the good. I really liked what they did with Parallax, it makes sense within the movie-verse without having to go deep into the mythology. It looked okay for the most part, although sometimes it just looked like a giant blob of CGI smoke. Once I let my nerd rage over Ryan fade I enjoyed him for the most part. I really liked the stuff on Oa and the training bits were quite awesome, if a little short. I got quite a chuckle when Hal got "Captain Americaed" (that is right I just used Captain America as a verb - suck it.) I was also in nerdvana picking out all the lanterns that popped up in cameo. (Hannu and Bzzd - hells yes! Little sad I did not see Morro but what ya gonna do?) The constructs were pretty cool to see in motion. The costumes were not as bad as the pictures suggest and they only go all ribbed and weird when Hal is exerting lots of will. Mark Strong as Sinestro was fucking great and he got way too little screen time. I am sure we will see more of him in the sequel.



The bad. There is no time to really have believable arch for any character. Hal seems to just change personalities mid stride. Carol is just a skirt. Tom "Pieface" is just a basic audience proxy does not even get named until later in the film. Hector Hammond just comes off as a prick and his motivation is just him being a jackass. It was also a really strange call to have Hammond as the villain under Parallax. They waste Amanda Waller as just a generic scientist instead of the total bad ass non powered human that stands toe to toe with Superman that she is. The combination of the earthbound and space scenes can't compare to "Thor" which handled the dichotomy in an amazing way. This just feels like they took two movies and smashed them together. The post credits scene really does not fit with how the character was acting in the main movie.

All in all I enjoyed the flick. It is a popcorn summer movie that almost hit the mark, but fell just short. It is worth seeing on the big screen for the space stuff alone. Turn off the comic nerd part of the brain and enjoy it for what it is.


Reading this week: "Battle for the Abyss" by Ben Counter (Busy this week not much time to read)