Before I review the Green Lantern film, I should point out my history with the Character. I personally think this is an important fact that should be supplied before people review comic inspired movies. Since Your prior experience will affect your personal views on the film. So for fairness, I shall start off with the following statement:
I never read any of the comic’s, Graphic Novels, or anything like that. My whole understanding of the character is from the two animated films “Green Lantern: First Flight” and “Green Lantern: Emerald Knights“. So I started the film with just the basic understanding of the origin of the Green Lantern.
The film starts with an ancient evil escaping from his prison, and heading out for revenge (As ancient evil’s tend to do). Which invariably leads to the death of some Green Lanterns, the destruction of several planets, and a short fight with the “Apparently” Greatest living Lantern, injuring him beyond repair and forcing him to crash on earth to find a successor to the ring. Enter “Hal Jordan” a cocky, young, risk taking, unreliable test pilot. As you can guess, the ring picks Hal since it can sense something in him that he doesn not realise is there.
I shall stop here and say that Ryan Reynolds plays the part well, But then does he ever fail at a role?
So Hal gets given a ring and the instructions that he should hold it to the lantern and say the oath. You know the oath “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!” Only the alien dies before he can tell Hal the actual oath, which leads to several attempts like the “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America“, “To infinity and beyond?“, “By the power of Grayskull!” Eventually I think the ring gets bored and plants the correct oath into his mind.
So our Hero ends up being transported through space to the home of the Lanterns, where he finds out what’s going on, starts his training which he fails miserably, is told he is a waste, and an insult to the memory of his rings previous owner. Disheartened but believing he is not worthy, Hal returns to earth. Unfortunately a scientist who examined the body of the x-lantern has become infected with the ancient evil, and things start to go wrong on earth. “how wrong?” oh, the ancient evil decided he would eat earth to gain more power before going to get his revenge.
“Don’t worry right? The Green Lantern Core, the Universes defenders will help us?” No. sorry, they are gathering their forces to defend their base and have one last fight, it’s not all bad they said they would be upset at the loss of earth, but its not like its a decent planet or anything. If only earth had a defender!
Yes, you guessed it, Hal man’s up. He finally realises that even hero’s know fear and its OK. so he single-handedly takes on the ancient evil. WOO HOO.
So all in all this is your typical movie, Guy is a unreliable person whose going nowhere in his life, something happens, he learns an important life lesson and saves the day. Only all that with super powers, aliens, and space 🙂
There is a nice setup to a second film in the series, with a end clip of a lantern switching from Green to Yellow. Yes I know if you are a comic book fan you spotted a lot of “other” possibilities like the Sapphire core logo, sapphire herself, and other things, I did not since I have never read the series, although in looking things up after watching this movie, I am tempted.
So I enjoyed this film, it had action, excitement, good effects, and an actual plot. The acting was good, it had Ryan Reynolds, just the right underline of comedy and slight throwaway geeky references. I know you can enjoy this film if you are not already a fan of the franchise, and I would think if you were a fan it sticks close enough to the cannon that you will not be disappointed. Hey you can also go see it with a newbie (Such as myself) and help point out the Easter eggs.
Let me end by saying this movie has inspired me to consider reading a few of the graphic novels.
