I Am Ready to Have a Serious Conversation About Green Lantern (the Movie)
I am late to the party here, I know. The Internet chorus rendered its verdict on Green Lantern at the same time that audiences did, the former with an abundance of snark and the latter with an abundance of not-being-in-the-theater. But after 30 years as a DC fanboy, I think I have reached a breaking point, so I have some venting to do.
Plus, if we’re lucky, my brother will show up to share his thoughts, and that’s some prime entertainment value right there.
Here’s the thing about Green Lantern. They gave me just enough get-my-geek-on moments that I could imagine what an awesome Green Lantern movie would look like. And then they absolutely failed to deliver that awesome Green Lantern movie in any way. Pattie will tell you I spent two weeks before the movie came out watching and re-watching the trailers. There are about five to ten minutes where test pilot Hal Jordan is on the planet Oa, meeting aliens and making swords and shields out of green energy. DC and Warner Brothers made sure everyone say those ten minutes, because those ten minutes are pretty cool. One of the aliens is even named Tomar Re. (Tomar . . . Thomer . . . never mind.) The problem is that they forgot to save much equally-cool stuff for the actual movie. Instead, they showed an almost uncanny knack for making bad decisions at every opportunity.
Let’s start with Hal Jordan. I liked Ryan Reynolds, I thought he did well with what he had to work with, but he didn’t have much. The whole point of Green Lantern as it was introduced in the Silver Age is that in order to be picked as a Green Lantern, you have to be fearless. Everyone in the movie points this out. Green Lantern, fearless. Fearless, Green Lantern. So, at every possible opportunity, the movie depicts Hal Jordan getting scared and running away from a situation. Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail was calling him out. The script has to do damage control by having a bunch of characters tell Hal, “Yeah, sure, you’ve been running around the whole movie with your tail between your legs, but when they said fearless, they really meant a hypothetical ability to overcome fear that we presume you will demonstrate some time during the third act.†In other words, they kinda stepped all over the concept.
OK, but at least the action and effects were good, right? Turns out, it looks like the film’s multimillion dollar budget didn’t allow them to spend too much time on Oa, so they brought the story back down to Earth. In order for Hal to make a dramatic entrance, the film sets up a scenario where Hal has to come rescue the female lead and other characters from a helicopter that’s about to crash. Why, yes, Green Lantern comic writer/movie producer Geoff Johns used to work for Superman director Richard Donner, why do you ask? It’s worth making that comparison, come to think of it, because Donner was able to make a looming helicopter crash look about a thousand times more perilous in 1978 than Green Lantern director Martin Campbell could pull off. When the helicopter starts to break down, it hovers and careen around about, oh, ten or twenty feet from the ground, for what seems like forever before the hero finally gets around to saving the day. You can cut the tension with a spoon.
The movie manages to miss little opportunities, too. At the end of the film, when Hal has to have his dig-deep-and-prove-he’s-a-hero-to-himself-and-the-world moment, he makes a big deal of reciting the Green Lantern oath. (“In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight . . . “ It’s a pretty cool oath, actually.) But why should we care that Hal is finally saying the oath with feeling? It’s barely built up in the film. You’re telling me no one could come up with a spot for the other Green Lanterns to solemnly swear the oath? I mean, sure, it might have required moving some things around . . .
Oh, wait a second. There’s a scene in the movie where one Green Lantern gets all the other Green Lanterns to show their resolve and unity by chanting . . . “We are the Corps!†Seriously. The writers have a piece of dialogue with 50 years of history to sum up their concept, and they go with Penn State’s football cheer.
I’ve been a DC fan all my life, but boy, is Marvel kicking their tail right now. Now I gotta see if I can sneak out to a theater to catch Captain America before it disappears.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.