Unidentifiable Flying Hero

Green Lantern (dir. Campbell, 2011)

“Green Lantern” is the worst kind of superhero movie — the kind that values the superpower over the person granted with it. Ryan Reynolds’ Hal Jordan is a concept instead of a character. A cocky, dashing fighter pilot emotionally handicapped by childhood trauma, Jordan spends his days bedding women he has no interest in and flying recklessly with a general middle-finger attitude toward his superiors. He fluctuates between smart-ass and doe-eyed, and apparently does all of his sit-ups offscreen so viewers have ample time to notice the shift. But they won’t buy it for a second.

It’s as if director Martin Campbell and his four screenwriters know Jordan is an amalgam of other, more interesting heroes, so they focus more on the mythology of the Green Lantern Corps. These guys at least have flair. They live on a distant planet, encompass many alien races and protect the galaxy with magic rings. Geoffrey Rush voices Tomar-Re, a fish-like creature that helps Jordan train to become one of the Lanterns. We know slightly less about Tomar-Re than about Hal, but at least we haven’t seen superhero fish a thousand times before. Unfortunately, the prominence of the alien world — appropriately stirring in its art design — doesn’t make up for the vapidity of the characters. Back on Earth, Blake Lively is a blank-slate love interest from Jordan’s childhood, and Tim Robbins is barely notable as a scheming U.S. Senator bent on investigating alien life forms. Only Peter Saarsgard seems to be having any fun, playing a subvillain scientist infected by a malevolent force. The film suggests a history between him and Jordan but doesn’t elaborate, presumably because it would rob from the color-coded theatrics.

“Green Lantern” spends most of its time explaining the magic rings and the mythology of their wearers. Green represents the power of will, they say, which they have harnessed in the rings. Conversely, yellow represents the power of fear. A villain called Paralax has escaped from exile and moves through space using yellow energy as fuel, manifesting his face through miles of lumpy plasma and looking like a Mt. Rushmore of curdled milk. If it sounds bad, it plays worse. Of course, Jordan eventually must face Paralax, in what likely will prove the most anticlimactic battle of the summer. It doesn’t help that the hero has a ring capable of creating anything he imagines and he uses it only to generate the most perfunctory objects, like shields and machine guns. A kid with a Green Lantern toy could envision better, and many will.

A shoddy script further impedes the story, as do stagnant themes. Jordan at one point gives a speech to the alien leaders about the value of humanity. It’s offensively didactic, but mostly it feels unearned because we don’t meet a real person the entire movie.

Grade: D