Fawning Fanboy’s Spoiler-Filled Green Lantern Review

June 17, 2011 at 6:30 pm | Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies, Reviews, Sci-Fi | 4 Comments
Tags: fanboy review, Green Lantern

I was in my glory last night. I went to the first midnight show I’ve ever been to in my life because after being introduced to the Green Lantern mythos almost 40 years ago, I finally got to see it become a movie. I freely admit I’m a huge fan. I remember in kindergarten having my father yell at me and threaten to take away my comic books because as he put it, “You know the Green Lantern oath but your teacher says you can’t remember the pledge of allegiance!” To be fair, my older brother had me convinced that if you said the pledge of allegiance wrong the Army came and got you and sent you to Vietnam so I was a little leery about trying it.

Beware My Spoilers!

What you are about to read is the most biased review written since Orville Redenbacher was asked if he liked popcorn. There will be spoilers. If you read past this point it will probably ruin the movie for you. All in all, you’re probably better off skipping to one of those attack review sites that hates everything equally and never has a good thing to say. I’ll just be gushing for the next few paragraphs anyway. If you insist on continuing down this slippery slope of spoilers, you can do so after the break.

Still here? Oh well, here we go.

"Bad boys bad boys, whatcha gonna doooooo....."

This movie was really done extremely well and I couldn’t have been more satisfied. I know a lot of fellow fanboys are put off because every single detail of the back story wasn’t done strictly according to the comic book mythos. They really did a good job with the solid light constructs CGI, and showed respect for the corps as a whole.

The scenes on the corps homeworld of OA were breath-taking.

My tastes have always run strictly hetero but seeing Ryan Reynolds in that skin tight spandex suit made me want to wear his letterman’s sweater. Dude is in some kind of shape. I could do a thousand sit ups a day and not have the abs he was rockin’ in this movie. I fully expect if he gets nothing else out of having done this movie, he will be able to sell his ab workout routine on late night infomercials for a tidy profit.

"Just send $29.95 and I'll send you a DVD explaining why you will never look like me."

There are enough close ups during action scenes to prove that Reynolds did at least some of his own stunts. From this long time fan’s highly qualified perspective he sold the character of Hal Jordan, fighter pilot/straight-laced playboy with responsibility and daddy issues, as well as any actor could ever hope. To my mind it was one of those rare cases of perfect casting in the actor and perfect timing in catching Reynolds in his absolute prime.

The same people put off by this movie were the Smallville bashers who just can’t have the slightest detail altered. In the comics, Carol Ferris, played in the movie by the stunning Blake Lively, was akin to Lois Lane in that she spent years not being able to figure out that a man she grew up with and spent most of every day with was really the Green Lantern. Even after making out with both of them more than a few times. (In the comic book she was actually kind of a floozy in that she often had a physical relationship going with what she thought were two different men at the same time and actively hid her involvement with Hal from GL, and GL from Hal. Strangely enough Hal never seemed to mind.)

Yeah, those'll be ugly babies.

In the movie, the first time she meets GL while conscious, she squints her eyes and says, “Hal?”

When he asks how she knew it was him she says, “We grew up together. I’ve seen you naked. Did you think I wouldn’t know it was you because I couldn’t see your cheekbones?!?” So the fanboys rail against it even though having her NOT recognize him would have been ridiculous.

Yup. That'll work.

Blake Lively is scrumptious as Carol Ferris. The perfect mix of bombshell looks and believable business acumen, as the character of Carol Ferris would demand. Early in the movie they even put her up in a fighter jet as the wing man to Hal Jordan during a testing exercise. She goes by the call sign “Sapphire” in a nod to the current Green Lantern mythos in which Carol Ferris went on to become the sometimes hero/sometimes villain known as Star Sapphire.

I sure hope the sequel looks a lot like this!

Reynolds and Lively have a whole case of “it”. The chemistry between them is sizzling. Even in the couple of instances where she winds up unconscious, you can still feel the vibe between them.

Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond. Who is this guy? Where did he come from? How did he give the best performance as a super villain since Heath Ledger played the Joker in The Dark Knight? He went from someone I’ve never heard of to someone whose IMDB page I intend to scrutinize closely for his other works. He was scary, creepy, unsettling and oh man what a believable job he did as the insane genius Hector Hammond. In the final showdown between the Green Lantern and Hector Hammond, he sells the action and dialogue completely. He is all that is creepy and evil and when he gets put down you don’t just cheer for the hero but actually feel relieved. I dare say that had this movie not been so visually stunning with all the first rate special effects and pretty people walking around, he could easily have stolen the whole movie. All that and he wasn’t even the scariest villain in this movie.

"Anybody got like...an Advil or something. My head feels funny."

Clancy Brown, veteran character and voice over actor, plays Parallax and actually is the scariest villain in the movie. While the role didn’t call for a real depth of acting ability, Brown’s bass lent it enormous credibility as Parallax is the embodiment of fear. There were few lines but what was said was delivered with chill-up-your-spine, look under the bed before going to sleep intensity. The CGI character of Parallax should be the new industry standard for scary bad guys. It’s a sort of shadowy, smoky, outer space octopus that means to rip your soul out of your body through your face and chest. He usually gets a nice chunk of spine to go with it. Watching Parallax feed for the first time was the standout image of the movie.

Green Lantern Sinestro on the planet OA performing the sacred Lantern Corps duty of setting up the sequel.

That about covers the portion of the movie that took place on or near Earth. They dedicated a portion of the movie to seeing Hal transported to the Green Lantern Corp homeworld of OA to undergo his training. There he finds that the wee humans of Earth are not only not alone in the universe, but that the universe is quite crowded indeed. There are 3600 Green Lanterns in the corps and each has a sector of the universe for which he/she/it is responsible that spans thousands of galaxies.

Hal Jordan and Tomar Re get acquainted. If you want to see more of OA, see the movie.

I’ve already said that OA was breath taking but it bears repeating. Seeing the Citadel of The Guardians, the Central Power Battery and so many of the other important landmarks of OA on the wide screen was almost as close to pure delight as a long time, hard core fan could hope for. I know I spoiled a lot of the story in this review so I think I want to leave the comings and goings of the corps and the planet OA a little vague. I will only add that meeting such Green Lantern Corps stalwarts as Tomar Re, Sinestro, Salaak and Kilowog… hearing them speak and seeing their mannerisms acted out, was again a pure delight. OA and the corps is depicted exactly as I’d always envisioned it and better. Michael Clark Duncan as the voice of Kilowog is genius.

Even the Muppet sector is protected!

I may go back tonight. Overall I give it an A+++. I’ll give it 6 brass bikinis on the Roqoo Depot scale. I recommend seeing Green Lantern early and often. Now I can only hope that in the sequel they do a “The Brave and The Bold” episode with The Flash. It’s the only “Up” to go to.

by Revmacd For Roqoo Depot

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