Green Lantern (2011) – AMK Hub. Of the whole bunch of super heroes from DC Comics’ repertoire, I’ve always felt that the Green Lanterns would had been the hardest to translate into a live motion picture adaptation. Unlike the Batman or even Superman characters, the Green Lanterns’ backdrop is of the galaxy, and their powers manifested as conjurations limited only by each individual corp members’ imagination and willpower. Computer generated wizardry thus needed to get up to the point where it can render those conjurations and aerial and space battles realistically, let alone finding some way to translate a very epic-scaled story that involves space, aliens, and magical constructs to the screen.
This film adaptation stars Ryan Reynolds as hell-raising test pilot Hal Jordan – the first of the Green Lanterns introduced in the comic book series – is bestowed the power ring by Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones), a Green Lantern officer who is near death after a fight with a powerful but evil essence-like being called Parallax. The film starts up briskly with characters set up for Jordan and potential love-interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), then he gets the ring, and is zoomed to the planet Oa to begin his training under the almost hostile mentor he’s assigned, Sinestro (Mark Strong).
The film at least gets several things right. Mark Strong turns in a strong performance as Sinestro. His portrayal of Jordan’s one-time mentor establishes the kind of personality he really is, and lays the ground work for a potential sequel in which, hopefully, we’ll get to see him turn into the Corps’ most bitter and deadliest and enemy. I was glad to see one of the comics’ most loved and iconic characters – Kilowog – show up too as one of Jordan’s physical instructors. The representation of Parallax is passable, though in the books, he’s really even more scary than this. The conjurations are pretty well done too – I’m certainly glad that they were appropriately mechanical in nature, as opposed to the oft mocked green gigantic fists and flyswatters in the early years of the comics.
But the film has an even larger number of duds. The film has a color palette and a sort of CG sheen that you’re reminded in every scene that it’s all computer generated. There’s very little chemistry between Ferris and Jordan. And the first film’s key human villain – Hector Hammond – is so unpleasantly grotesque to look that watching him on screen gave me a sort of unnerving creepy feeling that I didn’t enjoy, even for this sort of film.
And while the corps at large is introduced and shown onscreen at several junctures, little is ever done with them in the film. The comic books have received critical acclaim for its recent Darkest Night sagas which saw all-out very epic galactic wars between the corps and their foes. It was a lost opportunity to see a good part of the first film rooted back on Earth. Not quite as expansive as it could had been.
In all; mixed feelings then. Given the relatively average-only box office performance, I wonder if this film will see a sequel. It looks maybe unlikely now.
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