No, it's OK, no one have a heart attack. Green Lantern is not on the Top 1000 list, so we all don't need to weep for the future of filmmaking. The boyfriend had me watch it this weekend and I thought What the hell, why not post my thoughts? So without further ado:
First there's a shit ton of exposition about aliens that I don't really care about because it doesn't involve Ryan Reynolds. Long story short, there are intergalactic peacekeepers called The Green Lantern Corps, and there's a bad guy who is harnessing the power of fear who has just escaped from his prison. Uh-ohs.
One of the Green Lantern is dying from fighting the bad guy, and he goes to Earth to finish dying and to find someone to become the new Green Lantern. He finds Hal Jordan. So this guy is a badass fighter pilot, looks like Ryan Reynolds, and gets to be a superhero? That just doesn't seem fair. He's all pumped about his new powers, until he goes to the Green Lantern planet and learns that he actually has to use them and, you know, take responsibility, then he's all Mr Sad Face.
After a brief identity crisis, he bucks up like a good little soldier and manages to defeat the ridiculously insecure and deformed scientist who has inevitably been infected by the Bad Guy, and then for an encore goes on to punch Fear Itself into the sun. Wow. When this guy says he's going to defeat you, he's not dicking around.
Random Musings:
- I do not like Blake Lively in this film. I don't buy her as a hard ass in the beginning, I definitely don't buy her as a pilot, and the rest of the film she spends being a bland love interest for Hal who doesn't really do much of anything. Plus there's just something about her face that makes me want to punch it.
- "Great honor...responsibility." Isn't that...a little too close to Spiderman for comfort?
- What's the point in having him swear an oath if the stupid lantern's just going to force him to say it anyway?
- I officially do not care for the smug, floating, blue bastards. I don't care if they're Guardians. No like.
- I swear that in one of the shots that showed all the Green Lanterns...I saw the Rock Biter.
If it wasn't him, it was a dude who looked exactly like him.
- Why is the giant pig gorilla drill sergeant Green Lantern black?
All he does is spend like five minutes spewing catchphrases.
- Is it bad that I automatically assume that Mark Strong is a bad guy just because of my complete inability to accept him as a good guy? I mean, it's like when Alan Rickman shows up, you don't expect him to be a good guy, right? Or Sean Bean, you don't automatically assume that he's going to make it all the way through the film without dying? It's just the way the world works.
- So Hal can use that ring to imagine anything, and he turns the crashing helicopter into a giant Hot Wheel and a floating green ramp? Yeah that needs some work.
- "You think I wouldn't recognize you just because I can't see your cheekbones?" Thank you, Blake Lively, for saying what I've always want to say to every superhero since ever.
- It's actually kind of refreshing to have a superhero without all the angst and the hiding his true identity from the ones he loves and all that nonsense. Yeah, he has a brief crisis of faith, but for the most the movie cuts through the bullshit and sticks to the important stuff, like punching people into the sun.
- Poor poor Peter Sarsgaard. That's all I have to say.
So that's Green Lantern. Is it any better or worse than I expected? Not really. It's not the best superhero movie I've ever seen, but it's certainly not the worst. Ryan Reynolds proves to the world again that he is a charismatic, competent leading man (with an amazing body sorry couldn't help it only human) and he keeps the film from being a waste of space. The movie has its share of cheesy moments, and there wasn't that much to make the audience connect with the material on anything more than a superficial level. But hey, there are some superhero movies that are actively terrible, and this definitely isn't one of those. I'm sort of glad that Ryan Reynolds is moving on from the superhero genre soon (although bring on Deadpool!) because he's definitely way better served in other movies, where his sense of humor doesn't have to take a backseat to the action.
1 comments:
Nice! Have to agree with you about Blake Lively's face! Can't stand it, can't stand her - in fact, she is the ONLY thing I don't like about Gossip Girl! Yuck! Enjoyed your recap, as always!
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