I went in watching this movie with absolutely zero expectations and came out of it deciding that it was a decent first start despite the over-exaggerated flaws that most other reviewers bash to death in greater detail. I’ve got some spoilers in here but I believe most of us have already seen the film, so it’s a moot point.
People have to remember that in spite of all the GL Corps cameos in the film is that this is primarily a Hal Jordan origin story – so the main focus is almost always on him. Ryan’s portrayal of a rookie GL is pretty much believable for the most part. He had his own fears from his past haunting him and was thrust into a role and responsibility that he was somehow unconsciously trying to stay away from. On one hand, we see Hal Jordan is basically a good guy underneath who sometimes both knowingly and unknowingly sabotages himself because of his own insecurities and low self worth – on the other hand, we see someone with the untapped potential to overcome his problems if given enough “kick in the rear” to make him realize that he can do better.
Blake Lively was so-so as Carol Ferris, but there were times that she didn’t come off bland. She, to me, was seen as some sort of Jiminy Cricket – helping Hal in some ways to understand the kind of responsibility he took in and act as a bit of a moral center.
Peter Sarsgaard’s Hector Hammond and his decline into madness was typical as any possessed madman – but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him in the end as he wasn’t really such a bad guy to begin with.
Mark Strong’s Sinestro is one of the best characters there, his act as a bitter GL veteran making his future decline into villainy for the wrong reasons plausible. A guy obsessed with power and “might makes right” philosophy to bring justice is pretty much his motivation for donning the yellow ring.
Everyone else was more or less window dressing… anyway, here is what I think: Green Lantern – the short and long of it….
Oa: Every Oa scene (and just EVERY alien, non-Earth scene) was adequately done. Not everything is supposed to conform to what a regular human standard should expect. It’s not supposed to be really pretty/clean/structured/uniform. Bottom line; it’s supposed to be ALIEN – and they did it well. Other than the HR Giger-esque portrayals of otherworldly beings, the way they did it here is a bit refreshing. Assigning a human reference to every imagined alien vista/species is stupid – real life and nature doesn’t work the way WE want to, and doing something like that to every film only shows our own beliefs/views on how it would look like according to “us”. They tried to veer off of that here and for the most part, it worked (a little).
One sticking point for most reviewers here during the phase of Hal’s introductory training was that it was too short of a so-called montage. The way I see it, he was just starting his training and really didn’t get in-depth in the process since he actually quit BEFORE any real training was supposed to happen. I thought of that part as just like an overview of what his training will be, but not the actual training itself. When he left back to Earth, he never finished anything at all. He said it himself in the movie: he quit and ran home. Literally everything was happening too fast for him to catch a break and I am sure anyone (human, that is) in that situation would have reacted that way. The way I read it in the comics, it took several months or a couple of years for such a training to be completed depending on who was being trained. It was obvious in the movie that only days passed during the time he left for space and the time he got back. From the way the movie ended, it felt (to me) that he would be staying to complete the training he himself aborted.
The way Parallax was defeated wasn’t too anti-climactic. Hal’s been fighting part of Parallax ever since Hector got possessed when the guy completely lost it, and the grand “finale” was him fighting the rest of Parallax as he defeated the manifestation of fear via a cheap shot victory by allowing the Sun’s gravity to pull the thing in. So who’s to say Parallax is really dead if it’s only the “physical body” that burned?
Earth: Nothing much to be said from the Earth side of the movie. The constant jarring transitions between the Hal and Hector scenes took a while to get used to but it dawned on me that some idiot editor was trying to copy how some comic panels would change scenes in the comic books. It doesn’t work well on film, somebody should have told him/her that Ang Lee tried something similar with his Hulk movie and it sucked. This was a little more bearable than Lee’s but still jarring all the same.
The Effects: It wasn’t super good, but it wasn’t super bad either. It was just adequate to tell a story. Despite everyone’s misgivings of a completely CGI suit, the idea is a sound one – the uniforms ARE a byproduct of the ring that conforms to the bearer’s cultural leanings – and therefore are also classified as constructs. Even the animated movies make this fact true as most of the suit transformations almost ALWAYS start from the rings themselves.
The aliens are “as good as they can get” translations from comic book page to screen. Some could have been done better than the others, but since they’re only mostly cameos, it’s forgivable since the main focus is Hal Jordan and not the Corps.
The Story: This is where everyone has a gripe. For the most part, it was OK – but try cramming everything down into a two-hour or so movie and there will always be hits and misses in there. No matter how good you try, there will be parts that will suffer. It was, however, not really supposed to be dark. Some of us have already been spoilt by the direction TDK, Kick Ass, and Watchmen have gone. Not every movie work well with those scenarios… in doing so, it only becomes an obvious clone of what went on before. It’s like the TV series Flash in the early 90’s that tried to copy Burton’s Batman in atmosphere; it did not work well as a whole. Just about everything, despite the “bad editing” was as close to the source material as possible. Hopefully, Campbell will do a Director’s Cut DVD release with the entire movie re-edited. The story itself had potential, but was rushed at the end to meet a deadline – had they delayed the release and spent more time working on it, it would have been better.
Overall, it wasn’t really as bad as some people say it is as I’ve done a side by side comparison of those reviews against the movie by seeing it twice – once, to get my feel of it without them – and second, because of them. If one overlooks the flaws and simply wants a little entertainment to pass two hours by, then it should be enough. There are a lot of points of interest in the movie to warrant a sequel to flesh the story out more but only time will tell. Just be sure not to let anything cloud your judgment of it the moment you get in and start watching it. Having preconceived notions before watching it will always mean you’re not going like it in the end as it will shore up every negative expectation you have for it, and then some.
A part of me usually doesn’t read reviews until after I’ve seen it so as not to have tainted ideas, but since a lot of people have gone on ahead and posted them, I decided to make it a two-step process and take my tablet with me inside and read their reviews after my first screening to compare them on the second screening of the movie. While some have valid points, the others are more or less rants that barely give anything constructive.
Anyway, these are my personal thoughts on the matter. I am not trying to make you like the movie or hate it – nor am I trying to make you agree with me on what I’ve experienced as I’ve tried the best I could on making an unbiased review. Thank you for the time reading it, have a nice day.