Movie Night: Green Lantern

So I had heard terrible things about Green Lantern. But I'm a sucker for the superhero movies for some reason, so I rented this on the way out from work the other night. One of the perks in working in a building with 4,000 other people is a Redbox in the lobby! LOL I have to say, I don't get the bad reviews. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but I would not have called it bad at all. 

I'm not one of those guys who was into comics as a child, or even an adult. I had a few fantastic four and some assorted others, but never got into that kind of stuff. So I can't say how much justice they did to the original story, but the idea for the movie wasn't too bad.

"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."

In a nutshell, here's the story of the Green Lantern. There are these ugly immortal dudes who took it upon themselves to be the protectors of the universe. They harnessed the power of will (that happens to be green) and feed it into lanterns all over the universe, that in turn feeds it into the rings of the Green Lantern Corps. The guardians themselves are not Green Lanterns, just the creators of it. There are 3600 sectors in the universe, and each has a Green Lantern to protect it. The Green Lantern Corps is over 3 billion years old. Some stories say there are TWO Green Lanterns per sector, but the movie only shows one, and talks about there being around 3600 Green Lanterns total. So it seems they don't follow that convention for the movie.

"Tomar-Re: Actually, I'm a Xudarian. Our DNA does some what resemble your own ichthyological species. I am Tomar-Re, protector of Secter 2613 and home to...
Hal Jordan: 80,012 galaxies, 2.34 million sentient species. How do I know that?"

The sectors are BIG, that's a lot of ground for a single person, even a Green Lantern to cover, my guess is they only involve themselves in big, huge events. The action is pretty good, but character development is lacking. The movie moves pretty fast, but in do so skims over the heart of the story itself, it come off feeling like a light snack rather then a meal. But it was entertaining and I enjoyed the experience. There were several parts where the wife was a bit confused, so it didn't explain itself all that well, but even she enjoyed it. She blogged about it here.

One part I like is where the female lead, Carol played by Blake Lively, makes fun of the mask after she figures out it's really Hal Jordon in just a few moments after seeing him clearly as The Green Lantern.

"Carol Ferris: I've seen you naked! Of course I know who you are! A simple mask is not gonna hide anything!"

Ryan Reynolds, surprisingly, did a very good job. I wasn't hoping for much, but it turned out much better then I had hoped. Of all the characters, his was the most fully developed, but he was the star so that's not surprising. However I felt his back-story was somewhat awkward, as was the whole love interest thing with Blake Lively. They have her being a bit of every-woman. Hot, smart, geeky, business wise, daredevil pilot, unsure of herself, love sick and coy...kinda all at once. It's comes off ok, but she seems like an awkwardly developed character.

The other strange thing they did was the duel "bad guy" roles in the movie. There is one BIG bad guy, and a small bad guy. The role of the small bad guy is almost a total waste of script. The only reason I think the character existed in the movie was to menace the hotty, so Hal could be the knight in shining armor. This would have made much more sense if he hadn't already made up his mind to save the world before he even knew she was in danger from the little bad guy. They could have left him out and the movie would have been fine.

All in all, I enjoyed the movie and would watch it again.