The failure of Green Lantern is as difficult to pinpoint as it is inarguable; even among the film's defenders, it'd be impossible to say that this is the best possible iteration of the origin story that $150 million could have bought. The special effects are largely unconvincing, but no more so than they were in the first Spider-man (even if there are a lot more of them). The nature of his powers are heady and metaphysical, but so were Thor's, a comparably popular superhero who featured in an immensely more successful film only a month before the release of this. Even if several central characters are miscast, that didn't seem to hurt the public's reception of the first few Batman films. It may be the rough combination of these flaws, or simply suffering by comparison to the glut of similar films in the marketplace at the time, but films this off-the-mark have been far more entertaining and successful in the past, and the American people have embraced them all the same.
To distill into its simplest form, the Green Lantern Corps is an intergalactic police force united by the green force of will power, with each sector of the universe assigned a different enforcer possessing of a lantern ring, which the chosen bearer will be able to use to manifest different weapons in the ongoing fight against fear, manifested as yellow light. Â When Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), a lantern warrior, is mortally wounded in a battle with Parallax (Clancy Brown), a master of fear, he travels to the nearest inhabited planet in his sector, Earth, to find a new bearer for his ring. The ring finds its way to Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a hot shot pilot at Ferris aircraft, currently managed by his old flame Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). Soon after, he is transported to Oa to be trained by master Lanterns Sinestro (Mark Strong), Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush), and Kilowog(Michael Clarke Duncan). Unfortunately, the body of Abin Sur is discovered, and disaffected science teacher Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) is asked to examine it. In doing so, he comes to contact with the essence of Parallax, bringing the power of fear to Jordan's home world.
There is little more lethal to a weak film than a particularly strong element; in this case, it is the performance of Sarsgaard as Hammond. Though the typically rock-solid Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro, Casino Royale) has demonstrated a near mastery of motion and physicality in his prior work, his impression of the comic book world is fumbling and awkward, painting in an inconsistent and gaudy color palette and cutting in such a way that environments such as air craft fields and alien planets seem minute and unthreatening rather than impressive. It is only Sarsgaard (and to some extent Tim Robbins as his cold, disappointed senator father, and Rush) who manages to keep up through the director's wild swings through realism and back, conveying angst and frustration with an outsized weirdness that feels at home in a film that manages to expand the multi-species conceit of the Mos Eslei cantina to an entire planet. Unfortunately, it serves to reduce Reynolds as Jordan, who, though capable of being charming, was never really much of an everyman, the cornerstone of the DC Universe. Especially as he opens the film with an act of hubris so thoughtless and potentially devastating (one of the film's clear identifiable mis-steps), Reynolds never really engages as a figure of either sympathy or likeability, leaving the rest of the film sort of hanging loose behind him.
But even more damaging than his lack of likeability here is his ordinariness; in case this wasn't clear from the description, one of the major characters is a talking fish. More than any other canon world in either the DC or Marvel catalog, the universe governed by the Green Lantern Corps is a weird, weird place, which probably accounts for the series' creative stride in the last decade (one of few major characters that can be said for). Reynolds is some one who can easily be pictured reading Maxim magazine in a barber shop, while the plot synopsis for this seems to cry out for a Buckaroo Banzai reunion, or at the very least Nathan Fillion, whose exaggerated features make him seem a natural fit when set against creatures of varying girth and biology. Though the interstellar traveler and the working stiff are two personalities that would seem to be contradictory, it has been done before (just look at another Peter Weller vehicle, Robocop, or Han Solo), and it would seem to be the hard-to-define x-factor that would have turned Green Lantern from a regrettably botched franchise to home run, even with only some mere tweaking of the screenplay and perhaps some more refined effects.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Warner Brothers has brought out another of their Maximum Movie Modes for this entry in their catalog, and, like the others, it's pretty expansive with its offering. There are pop-up commentaries and featurettes that run concurrent to the film, as well as focus points (which can be viewed during the film or separately) which cover nearly every aspect of the film's physical production process. There are also the featurettes "The Universe According To Green Lantern" (which will doubtlessly help newcomers understand the appeal of the decades-old but still largely unreknowned character) and "Ryan Reynolds Becomes Green Lantern", which will give you yet another chance to watch this man work out. To top it off, there are some deleted scenes, a Justice League #1 digital comic (to coincide with DC's massive relaunch this Fall), and a preview of the new Green Lantern animated series.
"Green Lantern: Extended Edition" is on sale October 14, 2011 and is rated PG13. Action, Adventure, Comic Book, Sci-Fi. Directed by Martin Campbell. Written by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim, Michael Goldenberg. Starring Angela Bassett, Blake Lively, Geoffrey Rush, Mark Strong, Michael Clarke Duncan, Peter Sarsgaard, Ryan Reynolds, Temuera Morrison, Tim Robbins.
