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The last time Warner Bros. Pictures adapted a DC Comics character for the big screen, it resulted in 2010's disastrous Jonah Hex. And now, DC Comics mainstay Green Lantern receives his own splashy summer blockbuster, and the results are just as bad as Jonah Hex. 2011's Green Lantern is an absolute disaster, a cosmic mess of style over substance for which everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Consulting the big book of superhero movie clichés, Green Lantern is a by-the-book origin tale with formulaic, trite broad strokes but different details and characters. But instead of a successful, thoughtful origin story, this turgid catastrophe comes up short in critical elements like awe, excitement, patient character arcs, humanity, and gripping drama. From top to bottom, the whole production is lifeless and dreary - it's a wasted opportunity considering the limitless nature of the Green Lantern universe with its array of colourful heroes and villains.
An aircraft test pilot, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is skilled at his profession, but the death of his father haunts him and cripples him with fear. When a planet-gobbling intergalactic entity called the Parallax (voiced by Clancy Brown) mortally wounds a member of the Green Lantern Corps, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), he crash lands on Earth, and his cosmic power ring chooses Hal as its next bearer. Much to his bewilderment, Hal is subsequently inducted into the Green Lantern Corps, which works from their home planet of Oa to protect the universe. Hal has the will and potential to be a great warrior, but his internal fear limits his abilities and causes the other members of the Corps to doubt him. Meanwhile, eccentric scientist Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) becomes infected by the Parallax's powers and begins acting as an earthbound ally for the planet-destroying entity that is determined to eliminate the human race.
The critics tore Green Lantern a new asshole upon its release, and for good reason. Identifying everything that went wrong with this production is challenging because the answer is just about everything. The biggest problem is the screenplay (credited to four writers, including future DC television mainstays Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim), which amounts to a collection of eye-rolling clichés. Rather than using the recognisable tropes to create a substantive superhero origin tale, the film simply rattles along, perfunctorily ticking off boxes on the Joseph Campbell checklist and reviving as many entries in the Big Book of Superhero Clichés as possible. And instead of mining from the rich fifty-year history of the Green Lantern character, the writers basically throw Maverick from Top Gun into the mix and call him Hal Jordan.
Green Lantern is too ambitious - it wants to cover too many bases during its two-hour runtime, resulting in a disjointed mess that hastily rushes through the material, tossing out names and places without giving them sufficient explanation or allowing things to sink in. The makers seemingly believed that brief explanations about Parallax's origins and the history of the Corps would be adequate, and that spectacle would be reasonable compensation. But it does not work, as watching the rushed, wildly incoherent narrative unfold is unengaging and boring. Those expecting ample action involving the Green Lantern Corps should prepare themselves for disappointment, too. What you see in the trailers is pretty much all you get to see of such beloved characters as Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush) and Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan). All of the marketing efforts that portrayed the film as a sprawling superhero tale about an epic army of intergalactic warriors? It was all LIES and deception! The film eventually sputters out with a rushed climax that concludes before you realise that the climax has even arrived. Hector Hammond's treatment is especially pathetic in this respect, with the character receiving an underwhelming demise.
If nothing else, we should at least expect Green Lantern to be an entertaining, glossy blockbuster...right? With competent action director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Edge of Darkness) at the helm and a budget exceeding $200 million, expecting some eye candy or exhilarating action from the film would not be unreasonable. It's too bad Green Lantern fails on that front, too - the usual grittiness and penchant for practical effects and stunts of Campbell's normal output is gone, replaced with a crazy amount of CGI. Visually, the film is drab and uninvolving. Warner Bros. paid dearly for the special effects and struggled to finish them in time for the scheduled release date (they even pumped an extra $9 million into the budget and hired more workers at the eleventh hour). Thus, instead of taking the necessary time to make the effects look good, the effects artists were working towards a preset finish date and just tried to complete the work on time, quality be damned. Big-budget movies should not look this cold and lifeless - the green-screen work is poor, it looks and feels like it was almost entirely shot on sets and soundstages, and the overused digital effects look unremarkable and embarrassingly digital. Hal's suit is wholly digital, and boy, is it obvious. (At least the dreadful suit set Reynolds up for a meta-joke in 2016's Deadpool.) Meanwhile, the original score by the ordinarily reliable James Newton Howard is forgettable and generic, and the action choreography is distinctly pedestrian. There are no redeeming qualities here.
Under normal circumstances, Reynolds is a great, highly charismatic actor, but he looks lost in the role of Hal Jordan - his vanilla performance is without so much as a shred of charm. Perhaps the star grew fatigued very quickly due to acting in front of a green screen all the time. As the trademark love interest, Blake Lively is the very definition of bland. The only cast member who looks like they actually enjoyed themselves is Peter Sarsgaard, whose performance as Hector Hammond is delightfully hammy. The supporting players make no impact, with an instantly forgettable Tim Robbins as Hector's father, while a weak, underused Angela Bassett plays government agent Amanda Waller. Mark Strong is also on hand as Hal's mentor, Sinestro, but the actor makes no effort to distinguish his performance here from everything else he has done in the past few years. The cast is also limited by the dismal way the script uses them. Characters show up momentarily before disappearing, never to be heard from again, while character relationships are poorly delineated. It's just bad writing.
In addition to being godawful, Green Lantern was an unbelievable flop - Warner Bros. pissed away so much fucking money on this piece of shit (on top of the $200+ million budget, marketing costs exceeded $100 million), and it sputtered big time at the box office. Warner Bros. intended for Green Lantern to show that they can make superhero blockbusters on the same level as Marvel, but instead, the film is a substantial creative setback. The studio also aimed to produce a Green Lantern trilogy and spearhead a Justice League of America movie, but those plans ultimately led nowhere; instead, Warner Bros. hired Zack Snyder to kickstart a new DC Extended Universe that does not encompass Green Lantern. The whole production simply reeks of disinterest and half-hearted non-effort. An extended cut was released on home video that restores 10 minutes of excised footage. I have no interest in seeing this version, even out of sheer curiosity, and therefore, I cannot comment on the new scenes' quality (or lack thereof).
1.2/10
