Internet gossip being what it is, we all ‘know’ that Green Lantern is terrible. Would-be blockbusters come trailing clouds of buzz, from bloggers and preview screenings, even before they hit their primary market (the US, mostly), and by the time they reach the secondary markets (us) a consensus has formed. Consensus asserts that, in a year full of superhero movies – Thor, Captain America, the similarly-named Green Hornet – Lantern is the dunce, the dud, the one even dyed-in-the-wool comic-book fans view with disdain. I’m not saying the consensus is wrong, because the film doesn’t work; it’s all over the place, and seems almost embarrassed to be a superhero movie. If you were to leave after half an hour, though, you’d wonder why everyone was being so nasty to such an enjoyable trifle.
Admittedly you’d also wonder where the film was going, and why it was taking so long to get there. We open in outer space, where a portentous voice-over speaks of “a ring, powered by the energy of Will” and “an entity of fear known as Parallax” – an ‘entity of fear’? Seriously? – that threatens the natural order. Suddenly, however, it turns to comedy, shifting to present-day Earth where Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up with a strange woman in his bed and the panicked expression of a man who forgot to set his alarm clock. “Make yourself at home. There’s water in the tap,” he tells the girl hospitably, rushing out the door and straight to an airfield where we find out he’s a test pilot. His bosses – one of whom is also his ex-girlfriend – want him to fly the company’s new prototype in a dogfight against a couple of drones. What follows is a Top Gun-style aerial battle in which Hal takes crazy risks – and almost dies – but manages to shoot down the mechanised robot-planes. It’s the best scene in the movie, and has absolutely nothing to do with superheroes.
Well OK, it has something to do with them – because the rather laboured Message is that Hal’s secret weapon is his humanity (hence that dogfight, pitting man against machine), which is why he gets the ring that transforms him into the Green Lantern. That comes later, when Albin Sur (one of the Guardians) picks our hero as his replacement, Albin’s foe being the aforementioned Parallax. Green Lantern keeps cross-cutting between our world and theirs, just like Thor a couple of months ago – and Thor did it better but this looks more eye-popping, decked out in gorgeous primary colours. There are lush blues and purples (the Guardians have purple faces), and of course lots of green. “What’s with all the green?” quips our hero.
Green, you see, is the colour of Will, and yellow the colour of Fear – but that line points to the real problem with Green Lantern, viz. its muddled tone, veering from po-faced fantasy to flippant irony. It’s as though the film would prefer to avoid all that superhero nonsense, or at least play it for comedy (maybe it’s a green thing: Green Hornet also played for laughs back in February). “He gave me this,” says Hal to his friend, showing the magical ring handed down by Albin Sur. “He proposed?” comes the reply. Later, when Hal reveals himself to Carol (the ex-girlfriend, played by Blake Lively), she’s not exactly overawed to discover that her ex is the Green Lantern. “Why is your skin green?” she asks, somewhat bathetically. “Why are you glowing? What the hell is with that mask?” “It came with the outfit,” he mumbles, trying to remember if Lois Lane was equally blasé when Clark Kent revealed he was Superman.
Connective tissue seems to be missing. Hal is suddenly on Planet Oa in Green Lantern costume, being addressed by a talking fish and trained by a drill instructor (“You wanna be a Lantern? You gotta commit to the Corps!”) – then he’s back on Earth, having apparently failed, and the other Lanterns attack without him (over there) as a villain called Hector wreaks havoc (over here). “I quit,” explains our hero (when did he quit? did I miss something?) – but then he doesn’t, and is back in outer space fighting Parallax. That’s the film’s climax, Hal face-to-face with Fear Itself – but then, just when the battle’s over, dozens of Green Lanterns suddenly appear to applaud him. Were they there all along? If so, couldn’t they have helped out, seeing as Parallax is a threat to the known universe and whatnot?
Like all bad films, Green Lantern takes its eye off the ball: it’s sloppy, and after a while you just lose interest (at least I did). The comic-book action doesn’t jibe with the spoofy comedy, and the whole thing is slackly plotted anyway. But it does look fabulous, and the tone is pleasingly light, closer to Fantastic Four than The Dark Knight. Five years from now, when the Internet gossip has died down, you might stumble on it on TV in some late-night slot, watch a few minutes and wonder why something so enjoyable was treated so harshly. Then of course you’ll watch the whole thing and know why – but it still has minor pleasures. That opening dogfight. Peter Sarsgaard (a man who never gave a bad performance) looking rumpled as Hector. Reynolds himself, a goggle-eyed hunk with a gift for self-deprecation. Even Lively gets a moment, when she asks why he’s late and he tries to explain that he slept in. “I used to sleep in,” she snaps. “Then I turned 11.” I don’t care if you’re a superhero, that’s gotta hurt.
DIRECTED BY Martin Campbell
STARRING Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard
US 2011 114 mins.
