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Green Lantern Review

Green Lantern has been catching a lot of flak, and I honestly can not understand why. The only thing that I can think of is that it defied critics' expectations going into it, and when those expectations weren't met, they decried the movie as "bad,""dumb," and "boring." So hopefully someone out there will read this and can adjust their expectations before seeing it. Ready? Here you go: Green Lantern is fun. Not deep, not thought-provoking, not existential, not world-changing, not genre-defining, and not awe inspiring. Just fun. If you can accept that, then you'll be able to have a great time at the movies for a couple of hours.

The recent trend in Hollywood has been to make serious comic book movies. The Dark Knight did it well, while Jonah Hex missed the mark by a staggering margin. Some where in between were movies like Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Red. But regardless of how good or bad they were, all of these films treated their subject matter seriously. Green Lantern, on the other hand, decided to go with a distinct "silver age" feel and it actually works pretty well.

The main reason why it worked is Ryan Reynolds. He has a gift for playing likeable rogues, and is perfectly suited for Hal "Highball" Jordan. He has a devil-may-care attitude that could get old really fast in the wrong hands, but Reynolds keeps enough humanity in the role to make the character cool. To a degree he's playing a grown-up version of Van Wilder, but given the character that's not a bad thing.

Similarly, the rest of the GL corps - including Mark Strong as Sinestro, Geoffrey Rush as Tomar-Re, and Michael Clarke Duncan as Kilowag - mange to keep a proper "silver age" tone while adding just enough character to make their roles interesting.

As noted in other reviews, Parallax was less of a leading villain and more of a vague threat, but as with Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins, it let us focus on the hero and get his story told properly. So no real complaints there. The set up for Sinestro in a possible sequel was done very well, and hopefully this film does well enough for us to see where it goes.

One last note: I really liked the inclusion of Amanda Waller (Angela Bassett) here. This was an early-career Waller, without the cynicism she would achieve by the time a JLU-type story comes into existence, though the beginnings of that hard exterior are already in place. As with Sinestro, I hope to see more of her in future DC movies.

Overall, Green Lantern was a great callback to an age of unambiguous heroes, when Hal Jordan could simply be an awesome test pilot/green space cop. It isn't a particularly "smart" movie, but it is by no stretch a "dumb" movie - it's a fun one. So go catch a showing and enjoy yourself.

Collector/Modeler Interest:
Hal drives an orange '71 Challenger R/T as his personal car, which is available as a promo or you could modify a '70 into a '71 with a little work or some parts from Modelhaus.


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