Thanks to Transformers being sold out this weekend I finally got to watch Green Lantern. Critics have panned it, some fan boys have thrown dirt in its eye but I personally think it was not a bad attempt.
I hope the global takings at the box office will warrant a sequel 'cause the issues with GL can be tweeked and fixed quite easily in the sequel. Other than that, the first movie sets up Hal Jordan character quite well, it does a great job of setting up the lore behind the Green Lantern Corps ie; Green = free Will, Yellow = fear and all the psycho babble that goes with it.
The only problem I had with it was the focus. Martin Campbell - he who directed Golden Eye and Casino Royale - focuses too much on Hal’s love relationship and Hal’s time on earth.
He should rather have given focus to the wonderful world of Oa (the guardians' home planet), the green lantern corp and more importantly Hal Jordans' relationship with Sinestro.
The humour and zaniness of the comic book is there. Ryan Reynolds brings his "A" game to the role, the visual effects aren’t bad, the Guardian are well created. Yet the film turns the Guardian and the Green Lantern corp into a backdrop for Hal to romanticize Miss Ferris - his one and only true love *puke- puke-puke.*
The film missed out on building a relationship with Sinestro and Hal that could be exploited in the sequel when Sinestro “turns to the dark side”. It's a pity 'cause Mark Strong is a fantastic actor and is perfect for Sinsestro.
For those who know little about the comics, the green lantern are like cops of the universe with each Green Lantern “policing: their own sector”.
Although in the movie it's claimed Hal Jordan is the first human to be a Lantern, in the comic books there were two others and a black dude has also been a Green Lantern before Hal.
The thing with the Green Lantern, or what makes them great, is the idea that with their rings they can create anything their mind can imagine. This makes them quite powerful. One of the greats of the Lantern is Sinestro, who has a Lucifer type of arch which sees him becoming the baddie.
So it's a pity that we didn't see enough of the actual corp but the story that we get to see is still somewhat engaging. Not as bad as the critics make it nor the fan boys.
We have Peter Sarsgaard playing Hal Jordan’s antithesis in almost everywhere, we have Parrallax: a being that consumes planets heading for earth and we have the boy-to-man story that Hal goes through, which is not a bad arch to watch.
It’s just that GL needs to be epic and the first movie was not epic at all - just barely decent, so here’s hoping for a more epic and grand sequel. This hero deserves a sequel.