I Had Issues! My Old Review of The Green Lantern Movie

Wow. In this review, I was channeling my angry old man, and I hadn't even turned forty yet. I was wrong in my predictions (read: hope) about comic book movies going nowhere, but it was fun to write. Read the review that started the template for my "By the Numbers" type of reviews (which I hope are coming back). Read all the skepticism a curmudgeon before his time could muster under a deadline. I clearly didn't care about the Marvel movies and still really don't to this day. Seven years later, comics continue to get marginalized as more movies come out and alleged fans continue to lap them up. Comics fans will take any kind of abuse. Except Thor being a woman, of course. (semi-topical! Hey-ooo!)

Originally published on July 14, 2011. Edited for spelling errors and additional clarity.

In warped reviews from twisted mind  
There's no dead horse I will not find  
Let those who've long walked from the fight
Read allmy words on Green Lantern's plight!

And now, some thoughts...

1. "AND SO IT CAME TO PASS THAT THE GREEN LANTERN MOVIE WOULD RELY ON LOUDLY TOLD EXPOSITION IN THE HOPES THAT THE AUDIENCE WOULD SWALLOW GEOFF JOHNS' PSEUDO SCIENCE FROM THE LAST FEW YEARS OF WRITING GREEN LANTERN MOVIE! AND THE AUDIENCE WOULD HOPEFULLY NOT ASK LOGICAL QUESTIONS LIKE, 'WHY IS WILLPOWER ANY COLOR, LET ALONE GREEN?' AND DC WOULD BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF."

2. I don't know how many people wrote this script (just checked, four, one less than I guessed), but I can just imagine a group of them getting the call from DC saying that Kyle Rayner would be replaced by Hal Jordan in the film. I imagine he writers looking at each other and saying something like this:

"So...Hal Jordan, huh?"

"Yeah."

"We're still gonna write him as Kyle Rayner, right?"

 "Oh, yeah. Totally."

3. Okay, I liked a good deal of the CGI. Just not the CGI that tried to incorporate Ryan Reynolds' head. At one point when he's first flying for the first time on the planet OA, I thought Jib Jab could have done a better job.

 4. The planet OA was pretty damn boring. I'm totally giving credit to Don Conley, who pointed out that for all the special effects, they could have prettied up OA a little bit. It was pretty much a dead rock with nothing for the other Green Lanterns to do but stand around and wait to shoot their rings in the air. Homeless extras could have stood around doing the same thing and saved you a hundred million.

5. Seeing Sinestro made me want to see a CGI Kyle Rayner Hal Jordan voiced by Ryan Reynolds. Sinestro voiced by Mark Strong at least made the endless exposition more bearable. Is it me, though, or was Michael Clarke Duncan as Kilowog too easy? Took me out of the movie every time I went, "Hey, Michael Clarke Duncan just said Poozer."

 6. Okay, those who say this movie was horrible have forgotten comic book movies from the late eighties and early nineties. It's 2005 Fantastic Four bad to be sure, but it's not Dolph Lundgren Punisher bad.

7. Green Lantern won't destroy comic book movies. That'll be the Avengers movie in 2012. And we'll find that the Mayans called it.

8. Green Lantern the movie does recycle every trope from the late eighties and early nineties. The love interest. The villain pining for the hero's girl. The villain finding out the hero's identity before dying. And while Victor Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond was a good choice, we knew there wasn't going to be much in the way of a fair fight against Kyle Jordan. Actress Blake Lively, BTW, I had no complaints about. When you're playing a superhero's girlfriend, you're often the equivalent of a CGI effect, but she did all right. At least they portrayed her as having a central nervous system, given that she figured out it was Kyle Rayner pretending to be Hal Jordan behind the mask.

 9. Green Lantern seems like an intended bomb. A sacrificial lamb. Why? Because it's Green Lantern! The one hero Garth Ennis never stops taking the piss out of (because we don't want him to stop). DC will possibly learn from its mistakes and perfect their non-Batman movie-making process with the next Superman flick. Otherwise, they'll proceed with Wonder Woman or something.

10. Green Lantern as a comic book character could have used a dose of retro goodness like Alan Moore gave to the Supreme comic. Sadly, with Ron Marz destroying the whole status quo in the 90's, chances like this were blown. Ironically, compared to all the blood and zombie stories in recent years, the Kyle "girlfriend in refrigerator" Rayner stories in his book almost seem like Silver Age work.

 11. I guess any Green Lantern that served as a plot device in this film didn't have to go and get killed by Parallax.

12. Geoff Johns, forget all this will/fear harnessing. Just call it MAGIC. Most of my problems with GL will fade overnight.

13. Little known, unprovable fact: Geoff Johns work on Green Lantern was influence by the grim and gritty Rainbow Bright special (listed number #1 on this Cracked.com list).

14. The dark setting and Kyle West's "training" as a Green Lantern reminded me more of Harry Potter movies. Hence my comments on magic. And damn if Parallax didn't remind me of Lord Voldemort. (Movie spoiler, Sinestro joins Slytherin after the first half of the credits.)

15. Give a movie credit where credit's due. They showed enormous restraint with Sinestro. Expect him as the villain in the next movie while also introducing The Tattooed man, The Shark, Mogo, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Black Hand, Sodam Yat, and Hal Jor--I mean, Wally Rayner.

16. Five years from now, Johns and other DC people will claim this was all a lead in to the Justice League movie. Hey, a similar excuse worked for Marvel in Iron Man 2.

17. I wonder if more and more people are getting on the comic critic bandwagon because of the movies, because God knows the mainstream comics aren't getting much better in recent years.

18. What if Hollywood finds a way to reproduce people's voices? What if technology finds a way to reproduce Robert Downey Jr.'s voice the same way Marvel artists aped Jack Kirby's penciling style (lifelessly but accurate enough) so that comic readers could have their movies with the same voices, the same look, with no more Ed Norton type of casting disasters? Would movies finally replace mainstream comics completely? Do the comics fans secretly want this? Do they want to be on that red carpet that badly even if they're being walked on?

19. This stopped being a review of Green Lantern a long time ago. Most of you realized this way before I did.

20. One last thing. It's not a great movie, but it's worth watching on the big screen, just not in 3D. Not only did I find out that 3D is pointless, I also realized that the glasses I wore would have made a better disguise than the mask they CGI'ed onto Ryan Rayner.