Review: The Green Lantern

#93 - The Green Lantern

The Green Lantern follows the journey of Hal Jordan, a conceited, lazy, privileged pilot. He comes across an alien species that has crash landed on Earth. Hal is told by the alien, Abin Sur, that he has been chosen to be a Green Lantern. He is whisked away to the sector of the galaxy where all of the Green Lanterns are trained and begins to realize that he is more than just an irresponsible nothing. Hal uses his powers to save Earth from the evil Parallax - an alien that preys on fear.

I think this is one of DC's best movies. I'm someone who definitely loves my Marvel more than anything in the superhero world - but Green Lantern is a pretty bad-ass hero. Harnessing the power of your imagination to save people? That's an awesome superpower. Sure, all of his power lies within the ring, but at least he has powers. Batman does not. Green Lantern can literally manifest any weapon known to man just by thinking of it. To have an unlimited resource of weapons makes Green Lantern truly one of the best heroes.

Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern was perfect casting. He adds the much needed humor to the film, but he is excellent at turning off that humor and becoming a serious character. I love the character development of Hal Jordan. He starts out as having everything handed to him and, as one character says, he is used to getting everything handed to him. He's cocky, full of himself, and refuses to make an emotional attachment to anything or anyone - until he finally becomes the Green Lantern and realizes he's much more than even he thought he could be. In the end, he saves the world and gives himself more credit than he did before.

I also love the character of Carol Ferris. The scene where Carol immediately recognizes the Green Lantern as Hal...that is an amazing scene. It calls out every superhero and every superhero's girl ever created as being stupid. I mean seriously, they put a mask on and you don't recognize them? The screenwriters for this film are geniuses.

I love that there are two villains in the film, yet they don't overshadow one another. Hector Hammond gets his character arc while Parallax is trucking his way toward Earth, and then Parallax strikes after Hector is defeated. It's done quite well. Neither villain is shorted on their screen time. Unlike the most recent Amazing Spider-Man film - I mean, I loved that film, but there were too many villains going on all over the place in that thing. This has the right amount of villainous plot moments.

Overall, I just really like this film. I know most audiences hated it, but I don't care what they think.


I give The Green Lantern 4.5 out of 5 stars.