Thursday, August 18, 2011

3 Short Paragraphs: Green Lantern


2011, Martin Campbell (Casino Royale - yes, Legend of Zorro - bleh) -- cinema

Let me start with the bold statement that Hal Jordan is an asshat. He's not a hero, he's not really a redeemed anti-hero. He's just a dick who gets in a jam and has to fight his way out. Let's continue pointing out how he gave his all for about 5 minutes and then ran home. Let's see how he starts out getting close to ruining his company's rep and business by pretending he is in the Top Gun remake. He beats up guys who thought they lost their job, but were also dicks for attacking him, with a super powered ring. But its all about fear he has to learn to overcome? Nah, he's just been called on being a dick for long enough.

But he is the best there is with a super powered ring, it seems. In a universe where guys with super powered rings have been beating up villains for a billion years (probably literally), Hal is able to defeat their greatest enemy (ever!) in about 12 minutes, including compressed movie time. So, is the universe full of wimpy bad guys or do the Green Lantern Corps just suck? I mean, one did just take credit for his 5 minutes training session of Hal.

If you haven't guessed, it's a bad movie. It starts with a monologue that I could have sworn was Geoffrey Rush's same character from The King's Speech giving a description of a world that I swore was going to lead into a bad 80s scifi movie, like Wing Commander. In fact, at different times I tried to turn my brain in that direction, hoping I could see it through the eyes of a 16 year old watching a great space flick. But then the plot would jump again (be a green lantern? no, run home. oops, bad guy. go back to Oa, get help? no, do it all myself) or Blake Lively would talk and I would be tossed back into my own body watching a bad bad movie.

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