Film Diary 2011: Green Lantern

Then, over the past week, as poor reviews started trickling out I must say that my interest only increased, hoping that the negative criticism was perhaps a reaction to a film that was trying something unique and - like many cult classics - was being unfairly maligned. I was optimistic that, for once, a studio had given over a huge sum of money to a relatively obscure property and given the film-maker's license to let their imaginations run wild.

For the first twenty or so minutes of the film itself things were going ok, after a wobbly opening narration spelling out the history of the Green Lanterns there was a fine introduction to the nemesis of the piece; Parallax, a manifestation of the yellow power of fear, the direct opposite to the Lantern's green power of will. There's a stirring, if stunted, action sequence in which Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) is pursued and mortally wounded by Parallax, escaping to the nearest planet so his ring of power can choose its next owner.

This is where we meet Hal, and things are still going reasonably well for the film, and there's another decent and brief set-piece in which he - and fellow test-pilot Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) - runs a combat simulation with some new automated fighter planes. However, it is during this sequence that one of the film's biggest flaws rears its head, and it's down to an editorial decision to intercut Hal's plane descending, out of control towards Earth with flashbacks to young Hal and the death of his father. Rather than lend weight to these memories the intercutting strips both sequences of any tension and emotion respectively, and keeps the audience at a distance.

Shortly thereafter Hal is whisked away by the ring to Abin Sur's crash site where he inherits both the emerald piece of jewellry and its 'battery' and instructed to recite the oath. Once this alien being has been discovered by a mysterious organisation they employ the services of scientist Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) to conduct the autopsy. Bizarrely they again choose to intercut between Hal trying to figure out the oath and Hector investigating the corpse, and ultimately being consumed by remnants of Parallax's DNA, and, once again, it makes each sequence redundant, awkward and muddled. Each sequence would be fine on its own, given room to breath and develop a mounting sense of superheroism and villainy respectively, but mashed together they kind of cancel one another out.

So, we get to the planet Oa, where Hal meets all the other Lanterns and starts his training under the guidance of Sinestro (Mark Strong), Kilowog (Michael Clarke Duncan) and Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush), and whilst the CG animation on the latter two creatures is fine, and there's some nice alien design glimpsed with some of the other Lanterns, this whole segment of the film flies by at such a clip that it literally only feels like Hal is on the planet for five minutes before he decides he's not up to the challenge and heads back to Earth.

Fortunately, as Hammond mutates - in some pleasingly dark sequences - Hal can't hold back on his natural instinct to help people, but the battles between the two are equally short-lived and though you may think they're pre-ambles to a final confrontation, well, you'll be disappointed. Instead the film descends into a lacklustre finale with a predictable outcome and a distinct lack of emotion and energy that made, say, the finale of the first Spiderman such a giddy treat or the climax of Richard Donner's Superman an epic and powerful conclusion, heck, it doesn't even have the campy charms of Flash Gordon's assault on Ming the Merciless.

Alongside these stumbles even as popcorn-munching spectacle the thing is laced with too much self-deprecating humour to help the audience really buy into the world, the film seems all to willing to wink at the camera and say "Pretty silly, huh?" or acknowledge that it's just a film. Which is perhaps why the scenes with Hammond work so well, because Sarsgaard, despite camping it up, is at least having fun in a way that encourages the audience to invest in his demented and gleefully evil character. Reynolds meanwhile does what he always does, but here he even lacks the wisecracks that made him the saving grace of Blade 3.

Whilst there are a few moments here and there that stop the film from being a total disaster the film is a mess of bad scripting, terrible editing and uncertain direction and leaves you scratching your head as to how something that seems so mundane and Earthbound could have cost so much.

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