Green Lantern - (June 17th, 2011): PG-13
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Opening Weekend Box-Office: #1 with $53,174,303
Domestic Box-Office Gross to-date: $53,174,303
Gross Revenue: $70,174,303
Production Budget: $200 million
Marketing Budget: Approx. $100 -125 million
Director: Martin Campbell
It’s no secret that Marvel Studios has the market cornered on superhero films due both to the sheer volume and the high quality of its comic book adaptations, but DC Comics’ films have enjoyed an increasing prominence of late thanks largely to Christopher Nolan’s Batman film series. Though you wouldn’t necessarily know it thanks to a few attempts beyond household names like Batman and Superman (last summer’s Jonah Hex was poorly conceived and disastrously executed), DC Comics has a large number of deep and thoroughly exciting characters to draw from in order to build a summer blockbuster. This time around, they chose a founding member of the legendary Justice League, who has been around since the early 1940s and has some of the coolest powers in the entire comic book universe…none other than the intergalactic peace-keeper, the Green Lantern. He may not necessarily be a household name, but Warner Bros. spared no expense to bring this character to a wider audience, not only attaching the increasingly popular Ryan Reynolds to the project, but also engaging in an expansive marketing campaign. If Iron Man 2 was the summer blockbuster to look for last year, Green Lantern easily earned that title this year, using a budget of over $100 million to create impressive promotional partnerships…besides being USA Network’s “Character to Watch,” Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern was attached to everything from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to Subway’s Turkey Bacon Avocado sandwich; the character was absolutely everywhere. The difficult extraterrestrial nature of the character’s core operations would make adapting the lesser-known superhero to the big screen a little complicated, and even though some of the early trailers looked like they would be better suited for a cartoon, the comic book geek inside me was still thrilled for Green Lantern.
I may get a little technical in the next few sentences, but I have to set up the Green Lantern character and his powers before I can even start to describe the film. Within the DC Universe, the different elements of the emotional spectrum give off a special colored energy, and millions of years ago, a group of immortals known as the Guardians of the Universe were able to harness the green essence of willpower. Using this unlimited energy, the Guardians created an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps to watch over the 3,600 known sectors of the universe, the individual members channeling the green energy through a power ring (which enables flight and the formation of objects out of light energy) as a Green Lantern. The film starts by introducing the story of one Green Lantern, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) of sector 2814 (which includes Earth), who was able to imprison the embodiment of the yellow energy of fear, a being known as Parallax (Clancy Brown); unfortunately, Parallax eventually escapes and mortally wounds the Lantern responsible for his captivity, who must now rapidly search for a worthy replacement. After crashing on Earth, Abin Sur’s ring chooses cocky test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) as the new Green Lantern of sector 2814, the first human to ever be inducted into the Corps. Despite training with veteran Lanterns Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush), Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan), and Sinestro (Mark Strong), on the Corps’ home planet of Oa, Hal begins to doubt that he has the ability to live up to his new title. However, once Parallax infects local scientist Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) and threatens to destroy Earth, Hal most not only protect his longtime love interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), but also overcome his fears to embrace his destiny as the newest Green Lantern and save humanity.
Based on the plot description above, it’s easy to see that Green Lantern’s story may have been a little difficult to sell to a wider audience beyond comic book fans and science fiction fanatics, but before I go into that shortcoming, I have to address my biggest complaint concerning the film…namely, this disappointing blockbuster’s half-assed treatment of well-established characters. For starters, with over seventy years of material to draw from, the filmmakers couldn’t have chosen two worse villains: Parallax is an incredibly complicated entity to use for an unknown superhero’s freshman film, while Hector Hammond is nowhere near threatening enough to keep audiences engaged. Beyond bad choices, these two characters fell victim to poor execution, as Parallax ended up looking like a giant octopus nowhere near as powerful as his comic book counterpart, while Peter Sarsgaard was not only a pathetic villain with zero depth, but was also just downright uncomfortable to watch after he was corrupted and mutated by Parallax…simply put, any superhero deserves better villains. Another equally disappointing element includes the other Lanterns barely-showcased in the film, as Tomar-Re, Kilowog, and Sinestro are some of the most beloved characters in the DC Universe and had strong actors perfectly casted for their respective personalities, but were still denied any appropriate screen-time…way for the writers to drop the ball on an epic scale Finally, for as popular as Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have become recently, their inability to work together was shocking; the relationship between Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris is one of the most passionate relationships in all of comic book mythos, but in Green Lantern, the chemistry between the two echoes more of a sibling rivalry than a genuine romance…I was reminder of Princess Leia kissing her brother, Luke Skywalker. While a majority of the aforementioned complaints may sound like little more than the ranting of an aggravated comic book purist, the reality remains that these poor elements not only significantly weakened the film, but they also represented a significantly squandered opportunity.
While I would love to say that poor treatment of the source material is the only problem with Green Lantern, I cannot ignore the other instances of lazy film-making and jumpy story telling that signify a big step backwards for superhero movies in general. It is sad to think that the original script for this comic book adaptation was actually rewritten and yet still fell victim to bad dialogue, decidedly derivative narrative elements, and plot holes that require so many assumptions on the part of the audience that the entire experience is exhausting. Whether it’s the precarious relationship between Hal and Carol, the haunting elements of Hal’s past, or Hector’s animosity towards his father, so many plot devices are introduced and then ignored that countless unanswered questions are generated. Beyond the poor character choice I mentioned earlier, there is almost no character development for those that made the final cut: forgetting the fact that he accepts the existence of an alien police force instantaneously with almost no reaction, Hal Jordan switches between cocky and uncertain so often, seeks out trouble without explanation and embraces the inner-hero so quickly that its almost like the writers built the character using the CliffsNotes version of a Complete Idiot’s Guide to Superheroes…you either love Ryan Reynolds or hate him, but he didn’t stand a chance at gaining any audience sympathy with this role. At the very least, you would think that the visual effects artists would go out of their way to make the power ring’s creations somewhat impressive, but the animations behind the ring were just as childish as the weapon’s actual usage; at one point, Hal uses the ring to make a race track to divert a crashing helicopter, and the sequence is so ridiculous that you would think a five-year-old was behind the creative process. Some serious modifications might have made Green Lantern a good film, but the final result that was presented to audiences only proves that the character is not yet ready to move beyond the bounds of animation.
Almost out of obligation rather than natural story progression, Green Lantern uses a post-credits scene to set up a sequel, but given how much Warner Bros. is likely to lose on this project, it looks like audiences will be spared another insulting experience. With its combined marketing and production budget, Green Lantern cost around $300 million to make, but it was only able to break just over $53 million its opening weekend; given how much promotion was used leading up to its release, a box office haul that weak is embarrassing. Foreign receipts were no help either, pushing the worldwide gross to just over $70 million…not even a quarter of what it cost to make the film. A disaster of this magnitude might be helped if there was positive critical reaction and word of mouth to drive people to the theater, but almost everyone hated Green Lantern as much as I did. Thank god DC Comics and Warner Bros. have The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel to look forward to in 2012. As a comic book fan, I am saddened by the lack of respect that was shown to a legendary character; as a movie fan, I am enraged by how low a quality of film Warner Bros. tried to sell to the public; but as a critic, I am glad that I can at least warn people against seeing this bitter disappointment.
Overall Recommendation: Very Low
