Green Lantern was always going to be a hard sell. I'm sure it works fine as a comic book, but when your superhero's powers come from a ring that has to be charged by an unwieldy lantern that's bestowed upon him by a dying alien whose head looks like
Red Dwarf's Kryten's bell end, you're going to need a pretty impressive script to carry it off.
But guess what?
Green Lantern's script isn't pretty impressive, it's catastrophically dreadful. Earth is under threat from a giant octopus-turd-cloud-creature in space. Why? Not sure. The Green Lantern Corps, a 3,600-strong team of intergalactic rozzers, entrust the safety of Earth to cocky slacker Hal Jordan, the first human ever to be made a Green Lantern. Why? Not sure. The octopus-turd-cloud-creature uses a scientist with a big forehead to help him take over Earth. Why? Not sure. Hal asks the other Green Lanterns for help, what with there being 3,600 of them sitting on their arses watching Jeremy Kyle, but they refuse. Why? Not sure.
Fortunately Hal's ring of power enables him to conjure up any item he can think of to help him. Anything at all. His mind is the limit. Literally ANYTHING. So, instead of a giant wall around the Earth, or an even bigger octopus-turd-cloud-creature with a better attitude toward humans, Hal creates planes, guns and catapults. Why? Not sure.
It will come as a tiny spoiler but no real surprise to anyone who's seen the trailer that Hal eventually defeats the octopus-turd-cloud-creature at the end of the film by saying a nonsensical rhyme he learned 90 minutes ago. Why didn't he do that straight away? Not sure. But yes, evil is defeated via the medium of poetry recital.
Even the once-mighty Ryan Rodney Reynolds looks ashamed to be involved. His confusion at spending months in front of a green screen wearing a unitard only to come out the other end looking like a twat in a mask is palpable, and it's had terrible repercussions for him, as this updated barometer of Ryanosity demonstrates:
Combine all that bollocks with some embarrassingly clunky exposition about Hal's dead Dad, a few unintentionally ridiculous-looking aliens (one poor bastard even looks a bit like The Actor Mark Strong), a baffling cameo appearance by the stargate from
Stargate in the scientist villain's HQ (which is helpfully labelled "SCIENCE BUILDING") and countless other examples of inexcusable cabbage, and it soon becomes clear that
Green Lantern is probably the worst film of 2011 so far.
If you're still not convinced, here's what the Daily Star's Alan Frank thinks:
Oh, Alan. Don't ever change.
Jings, that's harsh. Can't be worse than Something Borrowed, or even Mother's Day. Still, I've been wrong before (walks face-first into seeing GL this afternoon)
ReplyDeleteAfter the horrible trailers I'm not surprised the film is just as shitty. Love your final argument!
ReplyDeleteOK, so I don't think it was the worst of the year by a long stretch, but neither was it very good. I watched out for "SCIENCE BUILDING" and rofl'ed. I did a lot of rofl'ing, what with all of Peter Saarsgard's funny screaming.
ReplyDelete"inexcusable cabbage" does it for me. As to your question about Green Lanterns sitting on their arses, why did you not contact Green Lantern 35 in Edgware, London? www.greenlantern35.co.uk "More Money - Less Hassle. A solution for freelancers by freelancers." A testimonial says "They are always at the other end of the line when I need help and they call me back almost immediately if I leave a message. To me, Green Lantern 35 has been a life saver." There you are, a life saver just waiting to help.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this was terrible and it was the script and the horrible casting. Reynolds and Lively had absolutely ZERO chemistry together. Personally I was more excited for the prospects of what could happen next than the movie itself....
ReplyDeleteThe mythology is nonsensical and the plot takes forever to get going. But once it does, the movie takes advantage of a strong cast and a director who knows what he’s doing. Good Review! Check out mine when you can!
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