Green Lantern

 "In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!"

Abin Sur is the best Green Lantern the Corp has ever known. He is the protector of sector 2814 and has successfully captured the greatest threat the galaxy has ever known: Parallax. The Green Lanterns are a space police organized by the Guardians, who have harnessed the green energy of willpower (the greatest source of energy known) and forged 3600 rings, one for each sector of the universe and have chosen a bearer from each sector to be a Green Lantern, a soldier to defeat evil. Parallax has harnessed the yellow energy of fear and broken loose from his cage only to return to sector 2814 and kill Abin Sur.  Mortally wounded, Abin Sur crash lands on earth and he entrusts the green power of his ring to choose a worthy successor to take his place as the next Green Lantern before he dies.

The ring of course, chooses Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds, a laid back, often lazy and thoughtless fighter pilot without focus or the ability to be serious. Whisked away to the crash site, Jordan is given his ring and lantern, which charges the ring.  He is informed that the ring chooses who will wear it next and that it only chooses the best. He is told to speak the oath (the beginning of this review) into the lantern and accept the responsibility that it holds.  Whisked away once more, to the home planet of the Green Lanterns, Hal must learn to harness the power of the ring and save humanity. To add insult to impending death, the ring has never chosen a human before and the leader of the Corps, Sinestro, sees Hal as an embarrassment to the Lanterns and claims he isn't worthy to wear the ring of such a hero as Abin Sur.

Enter Hector Hammond, played excellently by Peter Sarsgaard (Boys don't cry, Jarhead, Garden State), a scientist with the job of inspecting the body of dead alien Abin Sur. While digging through the cavity in the chest of the alien, Hector is infected with the yellow energy left from Parallax's attack. Now blessed with a sense of telepathic power that the former stepped on scientist has never known, the evil begins to morph him into a rather formidable foe.  But we can't forget Parallax, who has realized that Hal Jordan is the new owner of the Green Lantern Ring that once entombed him on a lost planet and will stop at nothing to kill the new lantern and consume planet earth to gain enough energy to destroy the home planet of the Guardians and kill every Green Lantern.

The overall theme of the story is that a mere mortal human who lives as if he has no fear, is secretly hiding an immense amount of it and in order to harness the full potential of the ring and defeat Hector and Parallax, he must overcome this fear.  It is a simple, easy to understand theme set to a backdrop of alien invasions and super hero powers.

With every superhero movie, several problems arise. How can it be made in a way that hardcore fans of the universe won't be upset with it but still in a way that newcomers will understand and enjoy it as well. I say work on story and back it up with special effects and action scenes. The Green Lantern did just that. The story and set up were explained thoroughly and most of the characters were explored deeply enough to warrant sequel status. Why then are the critics saying that "X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine are better than Green Lantern" (Jim Vejvoda of IGN)? I kind of liked The Last Stand, but Green Lantern stands several levels above the train wreck of Wolverine.

There is a lot of story involved with a universe as large as The Green Lantern. Obviously you can't explain everything in great detail if you want to appeal to a large crowd. It happens rather quickly that Hal is thrust into the role of the Green Lantern and once on the home planet of Oa, is trained by Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan) and Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) in what feels like one day. Obviously training wouldn't take a day and you have to just assume that it took far more time, time that you can't devote to training in a feature film.

One of the few things I noticed that bring it down any, is the lack of superhero action. It is almost as if there is too much story and they forget to fully realize the power that the ring can produce. I also noticed the introduction of a few characters towards the beginning of the film that add to Hal's personality, such as his nephew, who are unexplainably absent after their initial introduction. And last but not least, it suffers from what I call quick ending. There are several chances for Hal Jordan to use superpowers towards the end and the problems are solved by thought instead of action. Here you see Hal giving the ring away to out-wit an adversary instead of just using it to destroy him.  An excellent plot choice, but not what you need out of a blockbuster summer super hero movie.





I give Green Lantern 6 power rings out of 10 for lack of action and not having a long enough final battle.


"To infinity and beyond? By the power of greyskull?"