Last night we went to see the premire of the new Green Lantern Movie, my son and I, at the midnight showing at the Sheepshead bay UA in 3d on July 16th/17th. I decided to review the movie since we are long time Green Lantern Fans and I felt a need to not let naysayers completely bury this film.
For starters, you should know that I expected this film, when it was anounced and later when we saw some of the trailers, to be a total bomb. I'm happy to say that the film wasn't a bomb, and was enjoyable, even with some problems that I'll explain. I'd like to say that the problems in the movie does not impede it from being an exciting and fun film to watch (see the history of the reviews of the original Star War's movie.)
The film has some significant things going for it that helped make it work. First, it had the writing of a brilliant Comic Book author, Mark Guggenheim. I know that outside of the Comic Book fandom, few people know about Guggenhiem, but he is a brilliant writer. It also helped that Geoff Johns was a co-producer, although I'm not certain of the extent of his involvement with the production. The film is largely based on the Green Lantern Legacy as created by Geoff Johns, which isn't terrible, but might not have been my choice.
Now I'll tell you the overall problem with the movie. It was great, but it could have been much better if the Warner Bros and Hollywood idiots would have gotten out of the way. This reminds me of the problem with most of the Star Trek TNG films, JJ Abrams Star Trek (and this was better than that film), and the first Spiderman movie. Hollywood insists on making everything the biggest baddest extravaganza that they can possibly product, right out of the shoot. They have no patience and no faith in story telling. Everything has to be bang bang bang, short of character development, bigger than the stage, with the biggest villians, and as many as you can squeeze in, with little villian development...just Plop, like a Roshak test. Sometimes I can't believe these guys make so much money writing storylines that would pass even the editors of Comic Books in the mid-50's.
These idiots miss the point of the movie all the time. Fortunately Green Lanterns writers and the strength of the character largely overcome this problem, and it ends up being enjoyable. But someone should remind these idiots that the success of "Batman: The Dark Night" was the briliant devlopment of both The Batman and the Joker, giving the movie depth. The Joker character was compelling and kept eyeballs on the screen. Frankly, Hector Hammond was every bit as compeling of a villian, and it was pulled off perfectly within the storyline that was devoted to him. They should have dedicated the entire storyline to him and stopped there. The need to bring in Paralax was a bit over the top and stretched the credibity of the story line, even within the context of a Superhero plotline. It took the original Green Lantern 50 years to build up the stength to defeat Paralax. In this story, Jordan does it all as an inexperienced, untrained welp. This is a typical mistake of hollywood pushing the issue.
What I always love about Green lantern and Hal Jordan, is that he is a tremendously upbeat character. With enough effort, will and faith, Green Lantern overcomes all. In the comics, for many years, this was lost in some self-destructive writing exercise of personal neuroses of Hal Jordan. Geoff Jones largely exercised that from the comicbook is Green lantern Rebirth. The film also succeeds to largely exercising the inapropraite meladramma, although they did play with it for a minute. But at the end, Jordan triumphs as a force of will, and faith. You leave the theater with a smile. And for a first movie, considering everything that hollywood tends to do to these kinds of movies, that is a huge success.
The film is definitely worth the few dollars spent to see it on the big
screen. Enjoy it.
Ruben