Green Lantern

When my instinct told me during the epic trailers that Green Lantern would be awesome, I decided to give it a chance and not be discouraged by the mocking initial reactions. I admit that the leader of the extraterrestrial protectors of order in the form of a red sage consulting with gray heads may not appeal to everyone, but at the same time, I am amazed at how well this apparently disparate mosaic fits together. Guardians, Lanterns, a traumatic past, personal doubts, and a love story with the beautiful Blake Lively. Being this charmingly conflicted and yet comic book complex is no joke, and thanks to the script handling it with ease, it almost hints at the highest rating. Maybe it would have deserved a sequel, but realistically, it never had a chance. 85% for unexpectedly strong competition to the already excellently made Marvel. (24/09/2011)

Nice effects are everywhere these days. And so we get an accumulation of bland films that are nice to look at but evoke almost no emotion. Apart from a bunch of gimmicks, there was nothing to get me into the plot. Blake Lively is beautiful and Ryan Reynolds is quite likable. Except that I knew that before I saw it. Where are the days when I was rooting for the main character and couldn't tear myself away from the screen? Now I'm just watching him phone it in to see what he looks like doing it. A weak 2.5 stars. (08/12/2011)

This is a pretty underrated comic book movie. Yet Green Lantern has everything it should have: Fantastic visuals and top-notch special effects (on a level more bombastic than Thor, Iron Man and others), an excellent, likable and above all funny main character, action scenes, of which there are not many, but when it comes to them (major training with rocks, swords, a motorbike, rotary machine gun...), one tends to stare, Newton Howard's precisely paced soundtrack... etc. In addition to this, however, Green Lantern is also very unlucky. In competition with the more popular Marvel films, it feels like their stepbrother that no one really wants to play with (Forman's Valmont went through a battle like this with Dangerous Liaisons back in the day, and yet it's not a bad film either). And that's a great pity. The only criticism I can make of it is the slightly overstuffed plot, which shows how much the filmmakers were counting on a sequel, in which the supporting characters (and perhaps the hundreds of amazing alien Lanterns) would now get the proper space they need, and in which a proper villain would appear (hold on until halfway through the credits). I'd take the second film now. Four pure stars.__P.S. Hearing a "fish alien" speak in Geoffrey Rush's voice is a treat.__P.P.S. For the first time since Avatar, I didn't find 3D unnecessary in a feature film (Parallax’s attack!) .__P.P.P.S. I wonder how many sage, disgruntled smarties saw Green Lantern in the movie theatre, and how many at home on a 15x20 cm screen. (22/08/2011)

A monumental mess that is only watchable thanks to the really effective special effects. The screenplay is the sort of utter atrocity that makes many people look down on the world of comic books. And it seemed to me that Campbell wasn’t even trying. The completely disgusting (God, that forehead!) villain, played by Peter Sarsgaard, is a superfluous character for the “story" and Reynold’s portrayal of Jordan is also lackluster. I really liked both the concept of a ring that can materialize the imagination and also an intergalactic police force, because although they are wacky, these ideas offered material for first class entertainment, not for this rehash. I don’t even know why I gave it three stars. Perhaps because of Blake Lively, maybe. (23/09/2011)

I definitely like DC better and would rather see a Justice League than an Avengers movie. So far, however, this equation is still very much askew. So far, we have the DC cartoons and this bold Green Lantern. It doesn't matter too much that it didn't particularly succeed, as the competition's desire for Marvel-esque success is stronger than one incremental step toward it. Personally, I'm not that interested in Green Lantern as a standalone character, but he's fine as part of the Justice League. So if he manages to confuse audiences lost in comic book adaptations enough that they will one day make a Justice League movie, Hal Jordan has done his part. As such, I treat it as a standalone film. It's been loaded with a lot of stuff, but it's still just a feature-length story derived from Aladdin's magic lamp and the need to fight evil in the age of rising Nazism. Today, Green Lantern has a 72-year history and this is his first feature film. On the basis of the classic Superman scheme, he introduced us to what happens on the brightest day and the blackest night. It’s like, "The bigger you are, the faster you burn." It's a shame about Blake Lively, but maybe in the sequel, she'll come out of the shadow of her Super Gossip Girl role a lot more. (03/06/2012)