Green Lantern

When my instinct told me during the epic trailers that Green Lantern would be awesome, I decided to give it a chance and not be discouraged by the mocking initial reactions. I admit that the leader of the extraterrestrial protectors of order in the form of a red sage consulting with gray heads may not appeal to everyone, but at the same time, I am amazed at how well this apparently disparate mosaic fits together. Guardians, Lanterns, a traumatic past, personal doubts, and a love story with the beautiful Blake Lively. Being this charmingly conflicted and yet comic book complex is no joke, and thanks to the script handling it with ease, it almost hints at the highest rating. Maybe it would have deserved a sequel, but realistically, it never had a chance. 85% for unexpectedly strong competition to the already excellently made Marvel. (09/24/2011)

I definitely like DC better and would rather see a Justice League than an Avengers movie. So far, however, this equation is still very much askew. So far, we have the DC cartoons and this bold Green Lantern. It doesn't matter too much that it didn't particularly succeed, as the competition's desire for Marvel-esque success is stronger than one incremental step toward it. Personally, I'm not that interested in Green Lantern as a standalone character, but he's fine as part of the Justice League. So if he manages to confuse audiences lost in comic book adaptations enough that they will one day make a Justice League movie, Hal Jordan has done his part. As such, I treat it as a standalone film. It's been loaded with a lot of stuff, but it's still just a feature-length story derived from Aladdin's magic lamp and the need to fight evil in the age of rising Nazism. Today, Green Lantern has a 72-year history and this is his first feature film. On the basis of the classic Superman scheme, he introduced us to what happens on the brightest day and the blackest night. It’s like, "The bigger you are, the faster you burn." It's a shame about Blake Lively, but maybe in the sequel, she'll come out of the shadow of her Super Gossip Girl role a lot more. (06/03/2012)

At first glance, everything is as it should be. Ryan is a likable guy, Blake is every straight man's wet dream who isn't blind, the special effects team has been paid generously for their overtime, and proven hitmaker Martin Campbell manages it all. Yet only half of it works. No, more like a third because that's about how much the "civilian" world takes off the whole. The section in which the lanterns glow green tries to cloak the boundless naivety in a cheap pomposity that probably comes from the comic books, but it struck me as a cheap carnival ride that (hand on heart) looks pretty stupid. It's not boring and it keeps on flashing, and someone is always jabbering (quite often humorously), but it lacks that drop of soulfulness. This was the worst comic book film six months before Thor. (10/12/2011)

Unfortunately, it's the same thing again. Saving the world, an indestructible villain, some kind of magical energy, the right values. Not even the proven hitmaker Martin Campbell, otherwise known as a great innovator of established brands (Zorro, James Bond), can save this from boredom and mediocrity. Not that Reynolds isn't great, it's just that the insanely overblown space worlds set pieces are just a hair worse than the whole questionable mythology. So hats off to the visual effects artists, yes, but I wanted a better project, or better execution. The big advantage goes to Blake Lively, who could have easily just stood somewhere in an evening gown and everything would have been fine. But that's not enough for a cinematic experience, especially in a comic book adaptation, where the overkill is insane and destroying planets in the umpteenth way would already put off even a die-hard fan of the color green. (05/14/2016)

Several billion years ago, a race of immortals armed themselves with the most powerful force in existence: the emerald energy of willpower. Just as hallucinatory and incomprehensible as Flash Gordon in its day. Whether this is good or bad, I am not sure; in any case, guilty pleasure par excellence. (11/07/2011)