Green Lantern (2011)
Directed by Martin Campbell
For centuries, a small but powerful force of warriors called the Green Lantern Corps has sworn to keep intergalactic order. Each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of the first human ever recruited.
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31 films that influenced Green Lantern
What critics say influenced Green Lantern
Most of what Green Lantern borrows from is the original Superman film starring Christopher Reeve.
Director Martin Campbell is not shy about making reference back to Donner’s Superman, with a bit of Lester in there.
Spectacular and pompous, grim and glib, and disconcertingly choppy, it grabs bits from Star Wars, The Mask, Top Gun and Superman, in a sort of superhero chop suey.
Parts of this will remind you of Star Wars.
The story seems determined to hit every cliché in the universe, the dialogue is consistently trite and therefore instantly forgettable, and every film reference (tons of Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Superman) only reinforces the realization that this movie can’t even gain any upgrade in class with its thievery of superior movies.
Only a committee that's constructing the next "Star Wars" would start a fantasy flick with a backstory that begins "millions of years ago," when faceless forces of good (aka "will," aka the color green) confront the faceless forces of evil (aka "fear," aka the color yellow).
A long, tedious narration kicks things off, reminiscent of Star Wars ' mind-numbing exposition.
It’s a bit reminiscent of Ang Lee’s Hulk: a mix of larger-than-life monsters and a hefty dose of the id.
This isn't a respectable failure, like, say, Ang Lee's Hulk, which was a movie that took chances that never paid off.
Sure, there probably have been worse introductions to superheroes on screen–Ang Lee’s “Hulk” is one and the first Tim Story “Fantastic Four” is another–but Campbell is a better filmmaker than the latter and working from far better source material than the former, so one wonders how this could have faltered so badly.
The "Hulk" movies don't work, though they've tried and tried again.
Based on this movie, they may need to reboot it immediately, Hulk-style.
No, they're not all The Dark Knight , but by my reckoning we have to back all the way to the first Iron Man in 2008 to find a comic book movie with such a low sense of its own importance.
Reynolds' interpretation of the Green Lantern's journey is similar to what Chris Pine gave us with James T. Kirk in 2009's Star Trek , although it's a cut below how Robert Downey Jr. traversed Tony Stark's parallel character arc in Iron Man .
In practice, though, Hal is rather limited by the overly familiar concepts advanced by the movie’s four writers, who effectively turn “Green Lantern” into a sort of poor man’s “Iron Man” with corny special effects (presented in the usual eyeball straining 3-D).
He was able to summon some of the creative energy that Chris Nolan brought to "The Dark Night," or Jon Favreau (in a comic way) to "Iron Man."
Unfortunately, the idea that Geoff Johns’ “Secret Origins” would be used as a template are dashed fairly early in favor of a blueprint that comes from previous comic book hits “Iron Man” and “Spider-Man.”
But since the surprise double-whammy of Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008, we've had better-than-to-be-expected luck with the inherently limited genre: an overwrought but intermittently compelling Iron Man 2 , a mildly diverting Thor , a classy X-Men: First Class .
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So anyway, Hal is the recipient of Green Power, and on the Yellow Power spot we have Hector, a weedy balding professor and "loser" (according to the thoughts of his senator father, played by a Tim Robbins who's made up to look kinda like Jeff Morrow in " This Island Earth ," in one of the film's neater "knowing" touches) who's infected with the fear material when conducting a semi-autopsy on a dead alien Lantern league guy.
Reynolds' interpretation of the Green Lantern's journey is similar to what Chris Pine gave us with James T. Kirk in 2009's Star Trek , although it's a cut below how Robert Downey Jr. traversed Tony Stark's parallel character arc in Iron Man .
As with every other off-planet actor in the movie, Strong's bulb-headed alien makeup forcefully recalls the cornball days of early Star Trek cranial prosthetics.
Sector 2814 is an uninspired vision of alien life, computer wallpaper masquerading as a planet, whose bulbous-headed immortals, like Angela Bassett’s unfortunate ‘do, feel like dreary vestiges from the Star Trek and Star Wars universes.
Green Lantern opening voice-over informs us, in a massive data dump of exposition, that the Guardians, ancient keepers of the universal order who resemble the large-skulled aliens from the pilot episode of Star Trek , have created a "galactic community of peacekeepers."
To compare this big-budget effort to such truly abysmal efforts as Catwoman and Batman & Robin would merely be an exercise in misguided grandstanding; at the same time, the middling results suggest that, the excellence of X-Men: First Class notwithstanding, Hollywood might consider cooling it on the super-sagas for a while (fat chance) and seek inspiration from other types of comic characters.
And now comes "The Green Lantern," a mind-numbing, misguided pandemonium that ranks as the biggest comic book misfire since "Batman & Robin" battled Poison Ivy.
No, they're not all The Dark Knight , but by my reckoning we have to back all the way to the first Iron Man in 2008 to find a comic book movie with such a low sense of its own importance.
Although the idea of a Green Lantern movie has been floating around for about 15 years, it wasn't until after the phenomenal success of The Dark Knight that it was (pun intended) green lit.
But since the surprise double-whammy of Iron Man and The Dark Knight in 2008, we've had better-than-to-be-expected luck with the inherently limited genre: an overwrought but intermittently compelling Iron Man 2 , a mildly diverting Thor , a classy X-Men: First Class .
Movies like “The Dark Knight” and “X-Men: First Class” fall into this category.
Green Lantern is a bland experience that doesn’t attempt to reach the heights that recent comic book adaptations have achieved lately, such as the stylish fashion of X-Men: First Class or the brooding intensity of The Dark Knight.
Fans of the comic aren’t going to be as impressed with this film as they were with the likes of The Dark Knight or the Avengers films.
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Even the weakest of the X-Men films seemed to genuinely care about the intersection between humanity and the souped-up world of the scorned, angry mutants.
Inappropriately resembling Rocky Dennis from 1985's "Mask," Peter Sarsgaard (2009's " Orphan ") is delicious early on as an offbeat recluse and then goes bat-shit insane as he gets sucked to the dark side.