So, as most of my friends know, Green Lantern has always been my favorite DC Comics character. When I was a kid, I even tried creating a GL ring myself. It was made from an old watch that I took apart so I could use the glowing green light to make it look authentic. But I digress. Here’s what I thought of the movie in short:
Story/Script: The overall pacing could have been better (it was a bit drawn out) but, the story was thankfully, pretty decent. They introduced the characters, settings, concept and overall tone pretty quickly so, there was no real question about what was going on or, “who is that guy?” (though, they probably could have cut out the character of “Hector Hammond” completely and still had a decent story). The main villain was Parallax which was pretty cool. Seems that they could have done more with Parallax though and his confrontation with Green Lantern was somewhat anti-climactic. Still, pretty good.
Casting/Characters: Of course like most fans of the comics, I still disagree with the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. He’s not really a good actor in the sense that he is the same character in any movie he is in. Like Jack Black, Penelope Cruz, and Tom Cruise, Reynolds is very one dimensional and is always: “Ryan Reynolds as – insert character name” instead of: “Awesome character – portrayed expertly by Ryan Reynolds”. Johnny Depp is one of the few actors that make you forget that he is acting. Others should take note. The character Hal Jordan himself was alright but written a little too cocky, instead of confident like his comic book counterpart. Aside from that, Blake Lively did a good job as Carol Ferris, which is surprising because I have seen her terrible acting on “Gossip Girl” (don’t ask). Michael Clark Duncan was a natural choice for Kilowog. My favorite character in this film however was Sinestro. I was wondering why the guy portraying him was such a good actor, then my brother told me that it was Mark Strong. If you haven’t seen him play “Archie” in the Guy Ritchie movie “Rocknrolla”, I highly recommend it. Great choice for Sinestro.
Mark Strong as Archie in Rocknrolla (left) and Sinestro in Green Lantern (right)
The special effects were really good. The designs were faithful to the comics and the 3D was really good too. However, even though computer animation has come along way in the past decade or so, don’t expect realism. It was still really obvious which characters were computer generated and which sets were just the actors against green screen. This was not distracting though. The computer generated scenes were well done and still quite enjoyable.
Conclusion: Though the computer generated characters were not realistic, and Ryan Reynolds was his usual self, the special effects were really cool (especially the ring constructs), the 3D was top notch, the story was decent, and the majority of the characters were likeable which made for an enjoyable comic book movie adaption overall. I would see it again. But like I said before, Green Lantern has always been my favorite DC Comics character. Maybe it’s just fanboy loyalty but if you haven’t seen it yet, I would recommend it. If nothing else it’s a fun summer action flick.
—David Rivera
