Green Lantern Film - Box Office Flops (Director Leaves; Reviews=Bad; WB puts Embargo)

Warner Bros' 3D Green Lantern ($21.6M Friday, dropping -21% for $17.1M Saturday, and only a $53M weekend) underperforms, unable to meet even the studio's lowered expectation for North America despite the higher 3D ticket prices.

Green Lantern had well-known actor Ryan Reynolds playing the superhero, yet won't come near that other non-sequel Thor's recent $65.7M opening weekend for Marvel yet starring a complete unknown. Even though for weeks now, Green Lantern had been tracking better than Thor, which also was tasked with introducing a superhero to moviegoers. Warner Bros and DC Entertainment began freaking out Friday about the continuing negative buzz around Green Lantern especially the bad reviews.

The movie went $50 million over budget, and cost Warner Bros over $200 million to produce with an overall $300 million total after marketing.

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WB trying to place an Embargo on Green Lantern movie reviews until June 16

I bet you've been wondering why we haven't seen a lot of reviews for Warner Bros. and Martin Campbell's upcoming comic book adaptation Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong and Blake Lively.

That's because all reviews are embargoed until June 16. Yes, no reviews until only one day before the film is released.

In many cases this is definitely not a good sign and who knows what are the reasons for doing that. This could change, but it won't matter that much since the film is coming out this week.

Click to expand...

DC's latest superhero is a Cosmic Fail

Last summer gave us the DC bomb that was Jonah Hex and this summer offers the colossal disappointment that is Green Lantern. The epitome of spectacle over substance, Green Lantern is a cosmic mess and a huge letdown given the source material it had to draw from. Indeed, X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine are better than Green Lantern. This was DC and Warner Bros.' best bet yet at establishing a deeper bullpen of big screen superheroes beyond Batman and Superman, but the film is bad enough to possibly kill any hope for ever seeing The Flash or Justice League.

All the film's problems are on paper. Even though it borrows liberally from the fine Geoff Johns comic "Secret Origin" (Johns was a co-producer on the movie and its key creative consultant), Green Lantern has none of the smarts or the soul of that story. The script's a mess. Things just happen arbitrarily, with lots of set-up and very little in the way of satisfactory payoff. This is especially true in the Oa segment -- the film's most visually dynamic element and one its marketing is hyping -- which is just 15 minutes of intergalactic travelogue with CG eye candy in an otherwise earthbound movie. Were you expecting to see all those cool Green Lantern Corps members in battle? How's about Parallax attacking Oa? Nope, you get none of that.

...I can't stress enough what a setback the creative failure of Green Lantern is for DC and Warners' plans for a broader DC cinematic universe akin to Marvel's. Even if the movie makes money (I'm sure it will open strongly and probably do well overseas), it's not a film that DC or Warners can honestly say they're happy with. If DC and Warners had hoped this would be their Star Wars (a comparison the filmmakers have been all too happy to make for months now) then Green Lantern only offers fans the wonder of the creature-filled cantina scene, but none of the thrill of the Death Star run or the emotional resonance of any of its iconic characters. No, this isn't DC's Star Wars. It's not even their Last Starfighter; it's their Flash Gordon, but without the cool tunes or self-aware cheesiness. It's a frustrating, deeply flawed film rife with missed story opportunities and squandered potential. Green Lantern deserved better.

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Green Lantern Does Not Light Up the Screen

It’s 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that builds toward a quaint, if explosive, argument in favor of the nebulous quality of “humanity.”

Via a heavily CGI'd prologue, we learn that The Universe is patrolled by a group of fearless, multi-species warriors called The Green Lantern Corps––and, yes, each member is issued an actual old-school camping lantern, which they use to recharge the clunky rings that allow them to harness “the emerald energy of willpower” to “create what you see in your mind.” A new threat known as the Parallax—illustrated as a constantly morphing mass of something like flesh blended with rock, almost an Anselm Kiefer construction anthropomorphized—has managed to kill four members of the Corps, including an arrogant purple humanoid alien who crashes on Earth and uses his last breaths to command that his ring seek out his replacement.

The ring ropes in Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a bad-boy but regular-old-human pilot given to a specific brand of cockiness that manifests itself via conspicuous self-deprecation. “I may be a total screw-up in every other part of life, but the one thing I do know how to do is fly,” he says, after nearly dying in a test-flight exercise when he’s suddenly distracted by an attack of convenient exposition––er, that is, an uncontrollable flashback to the plane-crash death of his own dad. Hal doesn’t give himself enough credit: He also knows how to flirt, often via terrible double entendre, with Carol (Blake Lively), a former girlfriend now in line to run her father’s aircraft company.

Shortly after the ring finds him, Hal is transported via a green energy bubble into space, where he meets Lantern leader Sinestro (Mark Strong), an alien who is skeptical that a human could have the skill and intelligence to make it in the Corps. Hal, ever the self-saboteur, is also sure there must have been some kind of mistake, and he takes the first opportunity to escape this new assignment. But then the Parallax gets its hooks into Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), a scientist creepily obsessed with Carol, and from there somehow it becomes apparent that the future of the Earth is in danger, so, you know. . . .

I could easily fill pages running down the plot obstacles that Lantern director Martin Campbell soullessly cycles through; identifying all the characters introduced by the film's four screenwriters, only to be easily disposed of; and "explaining" the complete hodgepodge of psychological cause-and-effects, from the pervasive daddy issues and complete absence of mothers, to the arbitrary, less-than-convincing confidence issues that Hal is able to surmount as soon as it becomes clear that Carol really wants to kiss him. But the movie never bothers to suggest that any of that really matters: Campbell’s ADD style privileges spectacle over story—so much so that the film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on.

So you give up, and instead try to grab on to the small pleasures, which momentarily distract from the fact that the narrative is nonsensical, the characters so boilerplate that their every action seem preordained from the earliest frames, even as the action on-screen is often incoherent. Sarsgaard, with a major latex assist, gives a grand camp performance only rivaled in the last 12 months by Michael Sheen in Tron: Legacy. While hardly even registering as a villain, the Parallax is a breathtaking visual idea––roasting its victims alive while simultaneously slurping up their flesh, the entire maneuver rendered as a lacy spray of golden fire and charcoal ash.

This is pure cinematic magic, but the motives of the menace are muddled if not completely opaque. And while Reynolds isn’t a sharp enough actor to really find the crackle in his standard-issue superhero wisecracks, his body is a marvel of precision sculpting. As he breathes in and out in the skin-tight, digitally enhanced Lantern suit, each abdominal muscle seems to pulse independently. It's transfixing––and the closest Green Lantern gets to character detail.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan is a pale imitation of Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark

After protecting the cosmos for over 70 years, you’d think that someone might have given the Green Lantern brigade some on-screen credit before now.

Amazingly, while the movie universe is littered with lesser comic book heroes, this is the first outing for one of the genre’s most enduring creations.

Perhaps, as the film’s miss-it-and-you’re-stuffed prologue explains, it’s because there isn’t just one Green Lantern, but thousands of them. So choosing one over the others would be unfair.

After all, each is responsible for maintaining order in their own vast sector of the universe, which was divided up gazillions of years ago by immortal ‘Guardians’ who now just sit around on the planet Oa looking grumpy when things go wrong.

And things couldn’t currently go much wronger. See, the rogue guardian called Parallax has just re-appeared as an evil, nebulous mass that feeds on fear. Parallax has already killed three Lanterns and, having mortally wounded the legendary Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), is about to make it four.

But not before the stricken warrior has flown to the nearest inhabited planet where his willpower-channelling ring might seek out a worthy successor. No green trinkets and Spandex leotards for guessing where and who that might be.

Thus fearless aviator Hal Jordan (Reynolds) finds himself the first human to reach Green Lanternhood.

Naturally, before Hal can go thwarting mad geniuses, getting the girl, and saving the fearful souls of everyone on Earth, he must learn how to be Lantern.

So it’s off to Oa for stern lessons in willpower and responsibility from a fishy alien bearing an uncanny resemblance to the one from Hellboy (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), a combat coach with a cosmically un-PC name (Michael Clarke Duncan), and the Lanterns’ devilish-looking leader, Sinestro (Strong).

Good and evil. Green and yellow. Signed, sealed and delivered. No doubt about it, as director of the best two Bond films of the last 20 years - GoldenEye and Casino Royale - Martin Campbell knows how to get on with it.

Unfortunately he’s underserved by some ordinary visuals (emphasised in 3D, most noticeably in a particularly shonky helicopter stunt) and a po-faced script that takes itself way too seriously and delivers no surprises.

Led by the ever-watchable Reynolds, the performances are fine. But as written, Hal is a pale imitation of Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, while we've seen the Sarsgaard, Robbins and Lively characters a dozen times before.

Three parts Superman to one part Iron Man and a dash of Top Gun: it’s a comic-book cocktail for happy hour, a shot of quick-release gratification designed to give you a buzz from a top shelf of generic brands.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds won't light up your life

2 out of 5 stars

“Are you ready to have your mind blown?” asks Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern.

It’s a leading question that lays down the gauntlet for Martin Campbell’s belated intro to one of DC Comics’ second-tier crime-fighters. Put a line like that in your script and it practically requires you to be mind-blowing. Unfortunately, Lantern isn’t.

It’s instructional to compare and contrast with Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, the last attempt to alchemise a lesser-known property into box-office gold. That movie, you’ll remember, started off on Planet Earth, putting down roots before flashing back to fantastical Asgard.

Thor, you’ll recall, was also a swaggering upstart brought low by hubris. Over the course of Branagh’s film, however, he learned enough maturity to re-acquire his powers.

Jordan, alas, is a bit of a tool who – bar an unlikely third-act conversion to noble warrior – stays a bit of a tool. He is, in short, a hard guy to root for, even when having his clock cleaned back on Oa by a rhino-like alien with the unfortunate name of Kilowog.

Oa, incidentally, is a deeply unimpressive realm: a vast CG screensaver that feels as false and phoney as Reynolds’ CG super-suit.

Parallax, too, fails to cut the mustard, even when made flesh in the form of a bulbous-headed Peter Sarsgaard.

The result is a film that’s all set-up and no pay-off: an origin story for a hero we don’t much care for with an elaborate lore we have zero interest in, toplined by a star who’s little more than a torso and a smirk.

Verdict:

In a summer stuffed with superheroes, this underwhelming offering will likely leave you jaded. How it could have used some of Thor’s charm and The Green Hornet’s chutzpah.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds comes off as Van Wilder on Steroids

The film opens and spends quite a considerable amount of time on establishing Hal Jordan as an irresponsible, wild and undisciplined hot-shot haunted by the death of his pilot-father who died in a jet crash. Blake Lively, looking lovely as a brunette, stars as Carol Ferris who is running her father's company “Ferris Aerospace” - the employer of our soon-to-be superhero. Even though she is Hal's boss, it's not difficult to detect that these two have previously had a romantic relationship that's causing a lot of difficulty in their employer/employee relationship. Hal being the hot-shot that he is, gets himself in trouble by breaking the rules of a test combat situation and is on the verge of losing his job and alienating his family when redemption comes in the form of a dying alien who is on the search for replacement bearer of his super-power ring. The universe as it turns out is protected by an army of Green Lanterns, made up of species in all shapes and forms, who are protect their own sectors of the universe against evil. The rings which give them power uses the “will” of all living things to form a powerful force of energy that takes the shape of whatever its bearer desires.

The villain in this movie is an ancient being that is empowered by the fear in all living beings. This being known as the Parallox, is on the loose after being imprisoned and quickly starts to kill off the Green Lanterns and destroy entire civilizations of planets. Early on you can see that this is going to be a courage vs. fear contest with a message that you can conquer your fears by not being afraid. And of course the ring chooses a very flawed and unlikely individual to be the succeeding Green Lantern because movie heroes have to be of the redeemed type.

The problem is that Reynolds comes off as Van Wilder on steroids who fails to reach his potential until he has that Neo-in-the-Matrix type transformation where he realizes self confidence. The saving grace of the movie is the special effects. In this case it's good that a Green Lantern movie has lagged behind all of the Superman, Batman and countless other hero movies. Without today's technology and special effects, a Green Lantern movie would be a complete dud. Imagine if this came out in the early 80's or 90's? Something else that really puzzled me was that with all of the effects the movie failed to dazzle in 3-D. There isn't anything that shoots or charges out to you, which to me is a complete waste of 3-D because all it does is just make some of the objects and people stand out. Unless you really love all things 3-D, you are better off watching this in 2-D.

As for action, you aren't going to get much until the end. The majority of the movie is spent telling the story of Hal Jordan feeling unworthy of new responsibility, the love tension between him and Carol Ferris and the creepy evil transformation of Dr. Hector Hammond who is infected by the Parallox. Even the action pay-off at the end isn't enough to satisfy. If an action hero movie is going to commit so heavily to story-telling, it has to have the kind of acting that can carry the movie on its shoulders such as The Dark Knight. Even with experienced veterans like Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett, The Green Lantern doesn't have that Dark Knight acting which is why it should've delivered a lot more action and the pay-off at the end should've been more satisfying. Like all things in Hollywood, expect a few more Green Lantern movies. Maybe with the origin out of the way, the next one can concentrate on more action.

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Green Lantern Review

2 out of 5 stars

Enter square-jawed daredevil Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), he of the Ken doll physique and perfunctorily addressed daddy issues. The guy needs a calling, dammit! And boy, does he get one after being summoned to the side of a fallen Lantern, who gifts him his laser-lightshow ring and cosmos-protecting powers. Time to kick it into high gear, right? Uh, sure, just after we attend to Hal’s nonstarter romance with plastic girl Carol Ferris (Blake Lively, who isn’t). Oh, and there’s this other supervillain we gotta deal with – Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard, made up with a hilarious John Carpenter-esque bald pate).

Hal eventually travels to the mystical corps-HQ planet of Oa for some sequel-ready one-upmanship with baddie-in-training Sinestro (Mark Strong), and the film’s very talented director, Martin Campbell (‘Casino Royale’), handles these otherworld scenes, as well as the finale’s tentacle-tastic Parallax fight, with expected aplomb. But whenever this Lantern returns to terra firma (too often), its imaginative flights are ground beneath the DC overlords’ demographic-pandering heels.

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Gab & Max's review (just a YouTube mom and her kid): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZWLZV83zPI&feature=share

Mom didn't like movie, says it's for younger kids, says she actually liked THOR a lot more.

But the kid loves it though.

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Enter square-jawed daredevil Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), he of the Ken doll physique and perfunctorily addressed daddy issues. The guy needs a calling, dammit! And boy, does he get one after being summoned to the side of a fallen Lantern, who gifts him his laser-lightshow ring and cosmos-protecting powers. Time to kick it into high gear, right? Uh, sure, just after we attend to Hal’s nonstarter romance with plastic girl Carol Ferris (Blake Lively, who isn’t). Oh, and there’s this other supervillain we gotta deal with – Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard, made up with a hilarious John Carpenter-esque bald pate).

Hal eventually travels to the mystical corps-HQ planet of Oa for some sequel-ready one-upmanship with baddie-in-training Sinestro (Mark Strong), and the film’s very talented director, Martin Campbell (‘Casino Royale’), handles these otherworld scenes, as well as the finale’s tentacle-tastic Parallax fight, with expected aplomb. But whenever this Lantern returns to terra firma (too often), its imaginative flights are ground beneath the DC overlords’ demographic-pandering heels.

Click to expand...

The majority of the movie is spent telling the story of Hal Jordan feeling unworthy of new responsibility, the love tension between him and Carol Ferris and the creepy evil transformation of Dr. Hector Hammond who is infected by the Parallox. Even the action pay-off at the end isn't enough to satisfy. If an action hero movie is going to commit so heavily to story-telling, it has to have the kind of acting that can carry the movie on its shoulders such as The Dark Knight. Even with experienced veterans like Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett, The Green Lantern doesn't have that Dark Knight acting which is why it should've delivered a lot more action and the pay-off at the end should've been more satisfying. Like all things in Hollywood, expect a few more Green Lantern movies. Maybe with the origin out of the way, the next one can concentrate on more action.

Click to expand...

WB trying to place an Embargo on Green Lantern movie reviews until June 16

I bet you've been wondering why we haven't seen a lot of reviews for Warner Bros. and Martin Campbell's upcoming comic book adaptation Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong and Blake Lively.

That's because all reviews are embargoed until June 16. Yes, no reviews until only one day before the film is released.

In many cases this is definitely not a good sign and who knows what are the reasons for doing that. This could change, but it won't matter that much since the film is coming out this week.

Click to expand...

Enter square-jawed daredevil Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), he of the Ken doll physique and perfunctorily addressed daddy issues. The guy needs a calling, dammit! And boy, does he get one after being summoned to the side of a fallen Lantern, who gifts him his laser-lightshow ring and cosmos-protecting powers. Time to kick it into high gear, right? Uh, sure, just after we attend to Hal’s nonstarter romance with plastic girl Carol Ferris (Blake Lively, who isn’t). Oh, and there’s this other supervillain we gotta deal with – Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard, made up with a hilarious John Carpenter-esque bald pate).

Hal eventually travels to the mystical corps-HQ planet of Oa for some sequel-ready one-upmanship with baddie-in-training Sinestro (Mark Strong), and the film’s very talented director, Martin Campbell (‘Casino Royale’), handles these otherworld scenes, as well as the finale’s tentacle-tastic Parallax fight, with expected aplomb. But whenever this Lantern returns to terra firma (too often), its imaginative flights are ground beneath the DC overlords’ demographic-pandering heels.

Click to expand...

The majority of the movie is spent telling the story of Hal Jordan feeling unworthy of new responsibility, the love tension between him and Carol Ferris and the creepy evil transformation of Dr. Hector Hammond who is infected by the Parallox. Even the action pay-off at the end isn't enough to satisfy. If an action hero movie is going to commit so heavily to story-telling, it has to have the kind of acting that can carry the movie on its shoulders such as The Dark Knight. Even with experienced veterans like Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett, The Green Lantern doesn't have that Dark Knight acting which is why it should've delivered a lot more action and the pay-off at the end should've been more satisfying. Like all things in Hollywood, expect a few more Green Lantern movies. Maybe with the origin out of the way, the next one can concentrate on more action.

Click to expand...

Green Lantern Does Not Light Up the Screen

It’s 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that builds toward a quaint, if explosive, argument in favor of the nebulous quality of “humanity.”

Via a heavily CGI'd prologue, we learn that The Universe is patrolled by a group of fearless, multi-species warriors called The Green Lantern Corps––and, yes, each member is issued an actual old-school camping lantern, which they use to recharge the clunky rings that allow them to harness “the emerald energy of willpower” to “create what you see in your mind.” A new threat known as the Parallax—illustrated as a constantly morphing mass of something like flesh blended with rock, almost an Anselm Kiefer construction anthropomorphized—has managed to kill four members of the Corps, including an arrogant purple humanoid alien who crashes on Earth and uses his last breaths to command that his ring seek out his replacement.

The ring ropes in Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a bad-boy but regular-old-human pilot given to a specific brand of cockiness that manifests itself via conspicuous self-deprecation. “I may be a total screw-up in every other part of life, but the one thing I do know how to do is fly,” he says, after nearly dying in a test-flight exercise when he’s suddenly distracted by an attack of convenient exposition––er, that is, an uncontrollable flashback to the plane-crash death of his own dad. Hal doesn’t give himself enough credit: He also knows how to flirt, often via terrible double entendre, with Carol (Blake Lively), a former girlfriend now in line to run her father’s aircraft company.

Shortly after the ring finds him, Hal is transported via a green energy bubble into space, where he meets Lantern leader Sinestro (Mark Strong), an alien who is skeptical that a human could have the skill and intelligence to make it in the Corps. Hal, ever the self-saboteur, is also sure there must have been some kind of mistake, and he takes the first opportunity to escape this new assignment. But then the Parallax gets its hooks into Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), a scientist creepily obsessed with Carol, and from there somehow it becomes apparent that the future of the Earth is in danger, so, you know. . . .

I could easily fill pages running down the plot obstacles that Lantern director Martin Campbell soullessly cycles through; identifying all the characters introduced by the film's four screenwriters, only to be easily disposed of; and "explaining" the complete hodgepodge of psychological cause-and-effects, from the pervasive daddy issues and complete absence of mothers, to the arbitrary, less-than-convincing confidence issues that Hal is able to surmount as soon as it becomes clear that Carol really wants to kiss him. But the movie never bothers to suggest that any of that really matters: Campbell’s ADD style privileges spectacle over story—so much so that the film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on.

So you give up, and instead try to grab on to the small pleasures, which momentarily distract from the fact that the narrative is nonsensical, the characters so boilerplate that their every action seem preordained from the earliest frames, even as the action on-screen is often incoherent. Sarsgaard, with a major latex assist, gives a grand camp performance only rivaled in the last 12 months by Michael Sheen in Tron: Legacy. While hardly even registering as a villain, the Parallax is a breathtaking visual idea––roasting its victims alive while simultaneously slurping up their flesh, the entire maneuver rendered as a lacy spray of golden fire and charcoal ash.

This is pure cinematic magic, but the motives of the menace are muddled if not completely opaque. And while Reynolds isn’t a sharp enough actor to really find the crackle in his standard-issue superhero wisecracks, his body is a marvel of precision sculpting. As he breathes in and out in the skin-tight, digitally enhanced Lantern suit, each abdominal muscle seems to pulse independently. It's transfixing––and the closest Green Lantern gets to character detail.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds won't light up your life

2 out of 5 stars

“Are you ready to have your mind blown?” asks Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern.

It’s a leading question that lays down the gauntlet for Martin Campbell’s belated intro to one of DC Comics’ second-tier crime-fighters. Put a line like that in your script and it practically requires you to be mind-blowing. Unfortunately, Lantern isn’t.

It’s instructional to compare and contrast with Kenneth Branagh’s Thor, the last attempt to alchemise a lesser-known property into box-office gold. That movie, you’ll remember, started off on Planet Earth, putting down roots before flashing back to fantastical Asgard.

Thor, you’ll recall, was also a swaggering upstart brought low by hubris. Over the course of Branagh’s film, however, he learned enough maturity to re-acquire his powers.

Jordan, alas, is a bit of a tool who – bar an unlikely third-act conversion to noble warrior – stays a bit of a tool. He is, in short, a hard guy to root for, even when having his clock cleaned back on Oa by a rhino-like alien with the unfortunate name of Kilowog.

Oa, incidentally, is a deeply unimpressive realm: a vast CG screensaver that feels as false and phoney as Reynolds’ CG super-suit.

Parallax, too, fails to cut the mustard, even when made flesh in the form of a bulbous-headed Peter Sarsgaard.

The result is a film that’s all set-up and no pay-off: an origin story for a hero we don’t much care for with an elaborate lore we have zero interest in, toplined by a star who’s little more than a torso and a smirk.

Verdict:

In a summer stuffed with superheroes, this underwhelming offering will likely leave you jaded. How it could have used some of Thor’s charm and The Green Hornet’s chutzpah.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan is a pale imitation of Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark

After protecting the cosmos for over 70 years, you’d think that someone might have given the Green Lantern brigade some on-screen credit before now.

Amazingly, while the movie universe is littered with lesser comic book heroes, this is the first outing for one of the genre’s most enduring creations.

Perhaps, as the film’s miss-it-and-you’re-stuffed prologue explains, it’s because there isn’t just one Green Lantern, but thousands of them. So choosing one over the others would be unfair.

After all, each is responsible for maintaining order in their own vast sector of the universe, which was divided up gazillions of years ago by immortal ‘Guardians’ who now just sit around on the planet Oa looking grumpy when things go wrong.

And things couldn’t currently go much wronger. See, the rogue guardian called Parallax has just re-appeared as an evil, nebulous mass that feeds on fear. Parallax has already killed three Lanterns and, having mortally wounded the legendary Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), is about to make it four.

But not before the stricken warrior has flown to the nearest inhabited planet where his willpower-channelling ring might seek out a worthy successor. No green trinkets and Spandex leotards for guessing where and who that might be.

Thus fearless aviator Hal Jordan (Reynolds) finds himself the first human to reach Green Lanternhood.

Naturally, before Hal can go thwarting mad geniuses, getting the girl, and saving the fearful souls of everyone on Earth, he must learn how to be Lantern.

So it’s off to Oa for stern lessons in willpower and responsibility from a fishy alien bearing an uncanny resemblance to the one from Hellboy (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), a combat coach with a cosmically un-PC name (Michael Clarke Duncan), and the Lanterns’ devilish-looking leader, Sinestro (Strong).

Good and evil. Green and yellow. Signed, sealed and delivered. No doubt about it, as director of the best two Bond films of the last 20 years - GoldenEye and Casino Royale - Martin Campbell knows how to get on with it.

Unfortunately he’s underserved by some ordinary visuals (emphasised in 3D, most noticeably in a particularly shonky helicopter stunt) and a po-faced script that takes itself way too seriously and delivers no surprises.

Led by the ever-watchable Reynolds, the performances are fine. But as written, Hal is a pale imitation of Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark, while we've seen the Sarsgaard, Robbins and Lively characters a dozen times before.

Three parts Superman to one part Iron Man and a dash of Top Gun: it’s a comic-book cocktail for happy hour, a shot of quick-release gratification designed to give you a buzz from a top shelf of generic brands.

Click to expand...

Ryan Reynolds comes off as Van Wilder on Steroids

The film opens and spends quite a considerable amount of time on establishing Hal Jordan as an irresponsible, wild and undisciplined hot-shot haunted by the death of his pilot-father who died in a jet crash. Blake Lively, looking lovely as a brunette, stars as Carol Ferris who is running her father's company “Ferris Aerospace” - the employer of our soon-to-be superhero. Even though she is Hal's boss, it's not difficult to detect that these two have previously had a romantic relationship that's causing a lot of difficulty in their employer/employee relationship. Hal being the hot-shot that he is, gets himself in trouble by breaking the rules of a test combat situation and is on the verge of losing his job and alienating his family when redemption comes in the form of a dying alien who is on the search for replacement bearer of his super-power ring. The universe as it turns out is protected by an army of Green Lanterns, made up of species in all shapes and forms, who are protect their own sectors of the universe against evil. The rings which give them power uses the “will” of all living things to form a powerful force of energy that takes the shape of whatever its bearer desires.

The villain in this movie is an ancient being that is empowered by the fear in all living beings. This being known as the Parallox, is on the loose after being imprisoned and quickly starts to kill off the Green Lanterns and destroy entire civilizations of planets. Early on you can see that this is going to be a courage vs. fear contest with a message that you can conquer your fears by not being afraid. And of course the ring chooses a very flawed and unlikely individual to be the succeeding Green Lantern because movie heroes have to be of the redeemed type.

The problem is that Reynolds comes off as Van Wilder on steroids who fails to reach his potential until he has that Neo-in-the-Matrix type transformation where he realizes self confidence. The saving grace of the movie is the special effects. In this case it's good that a Green Lantern movie has lagged behind all of the Superman, Batman and countless other hero movies. Without today's technology and special effects, a Green Lantern movie would be a complete dud. Imagine if this came out in the early 80's or 90's? Something else that really puzzled me was that with all of the effects the movie failed to dazzle in 3-D. There isn't anything that shoots or charges out to you, which to me is a complete waste of 3-D because all it does is just make some of the objects and people stand out. Unless you really love all things 3-D, you are better off watching this in 2-D.

As for action, you aren't going to get much until the end. The majority of the movie is spent telling the story of Hal Jordan feeling unworthy of new responsibility, the love tension between him and Carol Ferris and the creepy evil transformation of Dr. Hector Hammond who is infected by the Parallox. Even the action pay-off at the end isn't enough to satisfy. If an action hero movie is going to commit so heavily to story-telling, it has to have the kind of acting that can carry the movie on its shoulders such as The Dark Knight. Even with experienced veterans like Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett, The Green Lantern doesn't have that Dark Knight acting which is why it should've delivered a lot more action and the pay-off at the end should've been more satisfying. Like all things in Hollywood, expect a few more Green Lantern movies. Maybe with the origin out of the way, the next one can concentrate on more action.

Click to expand...

Green Lantern Review

2 out of 5 stars

Enter square-jawed daredevil Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), he of the Ken doll physique and perfunctorily addressed daddy issues. The guy needs a calling, dammit! And boy, does he get one after being summoned to the side of a fallen Lantern, who gifts him his laser-lightshow ring and cosmos-protecting powers. Time to kick it into high gear, right? Uh, sure, just after we attend to Hal’s nonstarter romance with plastic girl Carol Ferris (Blake Lively, who isn’t). Oh, and there’s this other supervillain we gotta deal with – Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard, made up with a hilarious John Carpenter-esque bald pate).

Hal eventually travels to the mystical corps-HQ planet of Oa for some sequel-ready one-upmanship with baddie-in-training Sinestro (Mark Strong), and the film’s very talented director, Martin Campbell (‘Casino Royale’), handles these otherworld scenes, as well as the finale’s tentacle-tastic Parallax fight, with expected aplomb. But whenever this Lantern returns to terra firma (too often), its imaginative flights are ground beneath the DC overlords’ demographic-pandering heels.

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DC's latest superhero is a Cosmic Fail

Last summer gave us the DC bomb that was Jonah Hex and this summer offers the colossal disappointment that is Green Lantern. The epitome of spectacle over substance, Green Lantern is a cosmic mess and a huge letdown given the source material it had to draw from. Indeed, X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine are better than Green Lantern. This was DC and Warner Bros.' best bet yet at establishing a deeper bullpen of big screen superheroes beyond Batman and Superman, but the film is bad enough to possibly kill any hope for ever seeing The Flash or Justice League.

All the film's problems are on paper. Even though it borrows liberally from the fine Geoff Johns comic "Secret Origin" (Johns was a co-producer on the movie and its key creative consultant), Green Lantern has none of the smarts or the soul of that story. The script's a mess. Things just happen arbitrarily, with lots of set-up and very little in the way of satisfactory payoff. This is especially true in the Oa segment -- the film's most visually dynamic element and one its marketing is hyping -- which is just 15 minutes of intergalactic travelogue with CG eye candy in an otherwise earthbound movie. Were you expecting to see all those cool Green Lantern Corps members in battle? How's about Parallax attacking Oa? Nope, you get none of that.

What you do get is the Corps listening to Sinestro give solemn, momentous addresses about threats they will never face. Mark Strong is cool in the role, but he's all Saint Crispin's Day speech and no Agincourt. Similarly underutilized are Kilowog and Tomar-Re, whose training of Hal is even briefer than Luke's Jedi boot camp on Dagobah.. Remember, these scenes on Oa and with the Corps are the film's coolest and most entertaining ones. We're not even talking about the crap yet.

The movie starts off promising enough, but quickly nosedives once Hector Hammond enters the mix. The character is ludicrous and ultimately pointless, and he detracts from the movie much as he did in "Secret Origin." His backstory of growing up with Hal and Carol is barely hinted at here, leaving one with the sense that they hardly know him. Sarsgaard's campy performance is borderline Razzie-worthy, veering from Malkovich-esque creepy quirkiness to leering malevolence. He's an evil, talking gonad.

There's just no point to Hector being in the film if they weren't going to make it about a conflict between two lifelong friends. Otherwise, he's simply a homing beacon for Parallax (a gimmick that could have been accomplished in another way). You don't care about his relationship with his jerk career politician dad (poor Tim Robbins is now two-for-two in the bad comic book movies department, his first being Howard The Duck). Another wasted character is Amanda Waller, whose tragic backstory is needlessly revealed via flashback at one point...

...I can't stress enough what a setback the creative failure of Green Lantern is for DC and Warners' plans for a broader DC cinematic universe akin to Marvel's. Even if the movie makes money (I'm sure it will open strongly and probably do well overseas), it's not a film that DC or Warners can honestly say they're happy with. If DC and Warners had hoped this would be their Star Wars (a comparison the filmmakers have been all too happy to make for months now) then Green Lantern only offers fans the wonder of the creature-filled cantina scene, but none of the thrill of the Death Star run or the emotional resonance of any of its iconic characters. No, this isn't DC's Star Wars. It's not even their Last Starfighter; it's their Flash Gordon, but without the cool tunes or self-aware cheesiness. It's a frustrating, deeply flawed film rife with missed story opportunities and squandered potential. Green Lantern deserved better.

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