This movie shouldn’t have been made. There were a lot of things that bugged me about this film, pacing, story, transitions. I think casting was off too in the end, but in truth it could’ve just been the delivery of the story itself. It suffered from the same problems I found with Thor, to which Thor is definitely the better film but that’s not saying much at all. The Green Lantern is serviceable, but when you’re sitting at the theatre with your hand on your face seeing how in many different ways this film could’ve been better or just not enjoying it. It just makes me feel I could’ve done much more with my $10 admission. Like maybe gotten a decent meal somewhere.
The problem in both Green Lantern and Thor is there is no commitment to either world of Oa and Earth and likewise with Thor with Earth and Asgard. The introduction for Green Lantern made me immediately feel like I was watching a cutscene in Halo. The alien designs, color spectrum used it and even the half-baked quick introduction for a villain was too easy. The movie was simple in a sense to it’s credit it’s easily digestible but it doesn’t make it good. It’s like with Inception if you can get your mind around the idea that that film is based on the simple thought of an idea, the movie spawns and creates itself. Green Lantern instead takes all the beautiful elements of it’s universe and just over simplifies it in a manner to condense it so the audience can get on board. It’s very comic book in a manner that if you had a 50 page issue needed to be cut down to 32 pages for editorial reasons, that’s what you saw on screen. I understand the need to establish the universe but it’s here in this film where I’d rather spend more time in a world I know less about then the one I live on. So when you have the worlds colliding, it just doesn’t feel believable. Maybe Nolan has spoiled me in the ‘realistic’ sense of a comic book movie, but I don’t think that’s the case. Thor, Green Lantern and even Sucker Punch all fail to fully transport us into a realm of ‘fantastical reality’.
There were small things that could’ve been done better with how the sectors of the universe were introduced. You need to set a hierarchy and frankly there is only one way it works in the Green Lantern universe and it’s that Earth is just another planet. The movie spends time showing us ‘Sector 718, Sector 820, etc’ but when Earth is introduced it isn’t classified. It’s just Earth because we the audience understand it as such. The movie really fails to provide us with this alternate setting other than seeing the world of Oa. It’s not enough, I don’t care what anyone says. I know that’s a rude statement but it literally is not enough to just simply suggest that it should work because yes we are all on Earth watching this film, thus our own association is automatic. Comparatively to Avatar, it shows how Cameron works and takes care to establish what else is out there allowing things to breath more.
Reynolds as Hal Jordan was hit/miss, Blake Lively while nice to look at it was a soft performance. Then you had a slew of familiar faces which was surprising with Angela Basset, Tim Robbins, and Clarke Duncan and Geoffrey Rush providing voices. Sarsgaard was under utilized but not as poorly as Mark Strong. I felt Sinestro’s character really was wasted in this film. So much could’ve been done but never was. Everything about the film is convenient and situational. It just happens in moments you’d get a scene where Hal is on Oa, gets sad and flies home to Earth and then next thing you see is Hal walking into his apartment. It such an odd transition. The CG in this film is also hit/miss as well. The suit worked but even then there were inconsistencies with how it operated. I don’t even want to get into it because it literally is the little things to me that stand out in this film that are severely missed. It goes for any film if you want to make it believable and consistent. There was a moment with Abin Sur, I honestly had not seen CG that bad since Neo in The Matrix Reloaded. It’s this uncanny valley, with a film so heavily reliant on CG, if you’re going to spend this much on it and still not have it work that well. Just don’t make the film. It’s also clear as to why most of the time was spent on Earth, it’s creatively limited.
To which brings me to the Green Lantern power itself, the power of will, to imagine and create whatever you see in your mind and materialize it. I could not help but thing the objects that were manifested are a perfect example of how creatively bankrupt this film was. For a world that is so imaginative, everything about what was created with the ring’s power was unimaginative. There is a scene where Hal creates a sword and Sinestro creates 2 swords, but they both create the exact same swords. Then the exact same brick wall, it’s just completely unbelievable to think that Sinestro would create objects that are exactly the same in design to a human’s thoughts. Thus it shows whomever is making the film isn’t giving the subject matter a sincere thought process. For a movie like Green Lantern to work you really need to establish a genuine hierarchy of how you want the universe to work. The part of the problem is that this movie is focused on the trilogy mindset and as such ruins itself. With the box office numbers as it, I would not doubt if a sequel is never made. Let alone the utterly ridiculous after credits setup for a second film which made no sense to character development whatsoever.
Green Lantern is all just missed opportunity and potential. It’s not the worst film, but it just doesn’t work.