Green Lantern represents a move by DC to try and follow Marvel's lead and bring their own superhero library to the big screen, the story here concerns the Green Lantern Corps, a Jedi Knight style peacekeeping force who are faced with their darkest foe, Parrallax voiced by Clancy Brown which is powerful enough to destroy entire worlds and defeat their finest warrior, Abin Sur played by Teumeura Morrison, but Sur manages to flee and initiate the selection process which will determine who inherits his ring, meanwhile Hal Jordan played by Ryan Reynolds finds the dying alien and his whole life changes.
Now to say in advance of what I thought of the film I have to say that before its release, I was actually really looking forward to it probably more than most movies this year mainly due to the film's director Martin Campbell who unlike some can actually direct a pretty good action film, his work on the Bond series is a good example of this and the early trailers also helped to fuel my anticipation for it, but now that I have finally seen it, how did Campbell do, did he overcome the fear of it all or did he succumb to its dark power?
Well, sad to say he did not do a very good job with it all for multiple reasons, the first being that Campbell didn't do anything with the material given to him to justify his hiring as director on the film which can be absolutely crucial to how a superhero movie can either rise or fall and to use as an example of how a director can make a superhero film work is Richard Donner with Superman, a difficult character to pull off for sure but Donner and Tom Mankiewicz who was brought onto that film to rewrite the script completely nailed the essence of the character and what he stands for and I am also convinced that if they had been able to complete their version of Superman II, they would've made a much better film.
But getting back to this movie and as I said, there is nothing here that justifies the hiring of Campbell as the director as when he tries to put his stamp on the film, the script shifts gear and crashes back to Earth and so much of those scenes which also help to make up the bulk of the film feel lifted from other films such as Hot Shots, Batman Begins, Star Wars and Superman which I mentioned before.
But boy oh boy is this script as a whole a complete mess, nothing makes any sense at all, scenes that start off promising are cut off just as they get interesting and at times I was reminded of Highlander 2 in terms of both movies being completely incomprehensible.
But wait there's more, along with wasting Campbell, it also wastes a great cast I mean you have Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Tim Robbins, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Saarsgaard, Angela Bassett plus Brown and Morrison who I mentioned earlier and all of them I felt very sorry for as they have done so much better work in the past and didn't deserve this to happen to them, but as for Blake Lively well quite frankly wet lettuce would have more charisma than she does in this film.
Though if there was one waste above all that makes me saddened the most it is Strong, who plays Sinestro and it is an inspired choice to play the character if you know his story in the comics, here he doesn't really get anything to do apart from help lay the groundwork for a sequel and that is a real shame as I see in Sinestro's story the true back story of Darth Vader as told by Alec Guinness in the original Star Wars film, the pupil of theirs who turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights and who was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.
But there was, yes was some small positive moments and almost all of them are to do with the home world of the GL Corps which actually look pretty good and those scenes do try to bring the viewer in and get them interested but they are far too brief and come across as too late as by the time we get to those scenes, most audience members will have lost interest.
And so in closing, In brightest day, in blackest night, no movie this year is as disappointing as Green Lantern's light, .5 out of 5.
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