Day 14 - Green Lantern (2011)

Continuing with the theme of comic book heroes, today I bring you Green Lantern. This guy's been around in various forms since 1940, starting out as Alan Scott, a tough New York crimefighter. He was then cancelled due to a waning interest in superheroes, only to be resurrected in 1959 when sci-fi started to become a thing again. Scott, however, was never to return, replaced instead by test pilot Hal Jordan, who had been selected to become an interstellar cop as part of the Green Lantern corps when the previous incumbent for that region died.

The world of the Green Lantern is one with two opposing forces at play. The green energy of will gifts those who wield it tremendous power; the ability to fly, and to create hard-light holograms that can function as anything the wielder desires. The yellow energy of fear, on the other hand, can... okay, okay, I don't know, alright? I haven't read the comics, you can't make me read the comics, it's just really bad stuff, understood?

Just so we're all absolutely clear before we start, I don't much like DC comics. I think their heroes are overly simplistic and their treatment of the female gender is shocking - Harley Quinn, in particular, is an abomination who ought never to have existed in her present form. I know that the other big comics publishing houses are hardly any better, but at least Marvel have occasionally come up with female characters I wouldn't mind having a drink with.

I'm an optimist, though, and I was hoping Green Lantern might change my mind.

The good

This one scene where the love interest (Carol Ferris, played by Blake Lively, which is a far more interesting name) sees the Lantern (Ryan Reynolds, acceptably affable) in his mask and suit and recognises him instantly. He's bemused by this, but she points out that they've known one another since they were kids, of course she's going to recognise him. It's the first time I've seen this done in a mainstream superhero movie, and it did raise a quick grin.

The bad

Pretty much everything else about the whole damned movie. I'm not kidding. 

I was going to write huge screeds about how fear is a survival reflex and not, as the movie would suggest, the enemy, but then I realised this would be giving the film far more attention than it deserves. Besides, I suffer from anxiety, and honestly? Fear's a bastard, and representing it as this giant leering cloud of tentacles that infects your mind and turns you into a raging asshole is actually pretty bloody perceptive.   

On the other hand, fearlessness in the face of a giant leering cloud of tentacles is just stupid. 

Unfortunately, Green Lantern seems to actively embrace stupidity - it has this really worrying streak of anti-intellectualism that goes right back to the old-school brave barbarian versus evil conniving wizard trope. Take scientist Hector Hammond, the film's primary human antagonist - we first see him as a chubby kid, being told off for always having his head buried in a book. Later on, he grows up to be a homely sort, balding, with scraggly facial hair. Still later, he becomes a drooling, wheelchair-bound monster. This is the kind of thing that Starship Troopers skewered with a grace that almost makes me forgive Paul Verhoeven for Showgirls.

What I don't understand is why the ring selected Hal Jordan to be the Lantern and not, say, Derek Zoolander. 

It's interesting, sort of, that a film which uses physical beauty as a measure of character should itself be so ugly. It was designed for 3D, of course, which doesn't help, but even in 2D the colours are queasily muddy, all definition lost amidst great swathes of ill-defined CGI. The sound design is ugly, too, to the point where my brain shut down during some of the noisier action scenes and simply sent me to sleep. I did consider going back to watch the bits I'd missed, but then I came to the conclusion that falling asleep during a movie is a valid form of critique in and of itself, a nifty piece of self-justification that I'm sure will serve me well in days to come.

The verdict

Green Lantern is big but it sure ain't clever, but then, by its own standards that's possibly a plus-point. I know this is a blog about films that don't suck, but unfortunately I called it wrong this time.