Umpteenth comic book to be made into a splashy summer popcorn extravaganza this one hailing from DC Comics, "Green Lantern" returns audiences yet again to Origin Story Central, where the fine details might be different but the plot trajectory is very much the same. One has to wonder if all these superhero tales were created by way of "Mad Libs." Nevertheless, as tiresome as the genre is fast becoming the key to any formula-driven genre is in how well it's pulled off. In concept, "Green Lantern" must have shown promise. Director Martin Campbell (2010's "Edge of Darkness") is no slouch, proving well-equipped to shoot action as he regenerated the dying 007 franchise with 2006's "Casino Royale," Alas, he has done away here with that picture's sultry grittiness and propensity for practical stunts and effects, going the overblown, undercooked, CGI-crazy route instead. When your live-action film is so processed that it starts to look entirely animated half the time—not even simple dialogue scenes in supposed real-world settings look authentic, the actors plastered in front of green screen—it should be a wake-up call to reel things in. As is, the results are supremely off-putting, a bunch of phoney-looking technological razzmatazz relied upon to shield what a wreck the human story.
Yet Hal doesn't seem the hero type, exactly. A self-described "total screw-up," he's personally unreliable and emotionally unavailable, even to longtime love/hate interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). A fellow test pilot, Carol is an executive at her father's aeronautics company. (All the movie's major characters have daddy issues.) She's the kind of desk jockey who routinely wears sexy cocktail dresses to the office.
Half of "Green Lantern" transpires in CGI-created outer space, and yet this is the type of movie where all the central players are close at hand. Not only is Hal's true love an office mate; so is his potential adversary, Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard), an eccentric "xenobiologist" who labors at the Ferris complex. (To add a dash of political discontent, Hector's father is a smarmy U.S. senator, played by a condescendingly grinning Tim Robbins.)
Hal and Hector are thrown together -- and into opposing camps -- when a spaceship crashes on the edge of town. Inside is a dying Lantern whose ring selects Hal to be its new owner and thus the champion of this sector of the galaxy. But the wounded alien is infected with the evil of the Green Lantern Corps's greatest enemy, Parallax. This blobby ever-changing monster is fueled by "the yellow power of fear," which is almost as frightful as the movie's other nemesis: the gray power of boredom. A bit of the icky yellow infects Hector, who becomes disfigured with fury and resentment and suffused with campy theatricality.
Hector also loves Carol, of course, although he knew he could never compete with Hal, who's buffed to perfection and always impeccably unshaven. Even in street clothes, Reynolds's physique seems otherworldly. Imagine what it looks like in a skin-tight super-suit that shimmers and pulsates like a lava lamp.
Director Martin Campbell is perhaps best known for "Casino Royale," which brought some realism to the violence of James Bond's livelihood. Realism is not on the agenda for "Green Lantern," whose mayhem is loud and sweeping but impersonal. Campbell's big challenge is knitting together the story's two strands, the earthly and the extraterrestrial.
He does what he can, but the transitions between the two are choppy, and the spacey creatures -- including Mark Strong as a Lantern who thinks that Hal isn't bright enough -- owe more to CGI than characterization.
As in most superhero flicks, the protagonist is more interesting when he's not in costume or at least has willed away his magic mask. The four credited screenwriters would never have cut it in '40s Hollywood, but their bantering, flirtatious dialogue is livelier than the action sequences.
No matter how many times he's been reimagined, Green Lantern retains a crucial flaw: He's a DC Comics character, without the weaknesses and neuroses that make Marvel Comics heroes interesting (sometimes even on screen). What superpower does the ring give the Lantern? He can use green energy to create whatever he sees in his mind. Given that kind of dramatic blank check, the movie's battles are sure to be anticlimactic. The Lantern is less engaging when embroiled in deep-space combat with Parallax than when doo-wopping to the Fleetwoods' "Come Softly to Me."
Is that 1959 hit before your time? Then so is the sensibility of "Green Lantern.
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