Green Lantern doesn't suck!

The Ronin here,

This is a spoiler free half assed look at the 'Green Lantern'.

Going to go over a few quick things, I went into the theater ready to be disappointed friday, but I walked out of the theater with a smile on my face.

'Green Lantern' is the sole DC property up this year, and DC has not had the same kind of success Marvel has had outside of the Nolan films. (which won't be in the same continuity as Green Lantern or any later Justice League movies) 'Green Lantern' is probably also DC's most difficult super hero to pull off well. He flies through space with aliens acting as a cop, he gets his powers from a goofy ring given to him by blue dwarves, he uses his ring to make goofy constructs to fight villains etc. In some ways it is DC's 'Thor', in that it would be the hardest to sell to a mainstream audience.


The first trailer came out and it did not seem very epic, and I was very cautious about it... I began to get excited again when I saw the new stuff, the final renderings of the Lantern uniforms and such. Like many people I thought they looked off originally. But not anymore they came off wonderful, does it look like cloth? no, but it shouldn't! it looks like it is being projected onto him by the ring, which is fucking awesome!

The mask even shimmers a little bit. Nice touch.

Then the reviews came out... 'top critics' on rotten tomatoes listed it at 18 percent, that is terrible. So I walked into 'Green Lantern' Friday ready to be disappointed. We get a pretty wordy intro to the basic idea of the Lantern Corps etc, then after that almost right from the beginning of the movie it is exciting aliens fighting monsters, terrestrial dog fights and others.

I thought Ryan Reynolds would be a terrible Hal Jordan, but he pulls it off pretty good, then he transforms for the first time and the suite looks great! the mask looks great! Like I said, it does not look like cloth, it looks like a construct, it looks other worldly. A complaint, it is so skin tight that anyone should be able to tell it is Hal. I reminded my self that Clark Kent gets away with less, and decided to roll with it. And there is a very amusing scene later on (genuine laughs here) where they point it out.

Once Hal gets to OA he meets up with a few fan favorite lanterns. I don't want to give anything away you poozers but the aliens look great, they stand out against one another and have wonderfully different personalities, the actors are wonderful, unfortunately the writer does not give them enough to do.

I sat through the whole movie waiting for it to fall apart, for it to turn into one of these disasters of a movie that would make Wolverine look good by comparison, it never came. Then the movie ended, and left me with a big smile on my face. This movie was enjoyable!

It might not be as good as 'First Class' or 'Thor', but its not far behind, and it certainly does not deserve a 20ish rating on rotten tomatoes. There is a post credit scene, but thankfully DC put it at the end of the primary credits only like 3 minutes in. The acting is great, the CGI looks good, Hal uses many creative constructs, not just shields and blasts and big fists (he uses those too though)

I can only imagine not liking this movie if you either just hate the concept of the Green Lantern, or if you are so hardcore that you won't like the changes they made to Parallax (who is not really a cloud like it has been said, hes more of an Eldritch Abomination, very impressive) Or maybe if you are a critic who is afraid that if he gives a third superhero flick a pass in a row he will loose his critic license.