Watching Green Lantern was such a strange experience. It was as if I was watching two or three different movies on one. One movie was really awesome and I would watch again and again, the other movie was kind of okay and I would probably catch it every now and again in cable, the third movie I hated and wished it would die.
The awesome movie was pretty much everything that had to do with the Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps. I sat watching the mythology being built there, the ideas behind the Corps, the aliens, the way the ring was used and loved every minute of it. Watching those parts had me thinking that I haven't seen a good, pure Space Opera movie in a while and made me miss those kinds of movies. The kinds were ships and people would just fly through the great expanse of space fighting with everything they got. I loved stuff and I wished they had spent more time in space building on the history of the Corps. Which brings me to the second movie, or, everything else that happened on Earth.
Pretty much everything on Earth had me wishing we'd go back to space. Not that it was all bad, the dogfight between Hal and the drones was very nicely done and very fun to watch. The creepiness of the badguy, Hector and watching him become something really weird was a lot of fun. Actually, I sort of felt bad for Hector and could understand why he turned to evil. Seeing Green Lantern learn his powers and show off for his girlfriend was kind of fun too. (Although I do wonder, how many superheroes learn of their powers by beating up Rednecks? It's happened to often I'm wondering if it's a cliché by now.)
But, then we have the actual bad movie, the third one, which was pretty much everything that had to do with Hal and his girlfriend Carol Ferris. Except for one scene (which, I'll admit, was a pretty funny scene) I just didn't believe these two would be together. There just wasn't much chemistry between Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively. They went through all the motions, all the clichés that make comic book movies boring and makes me want to wait for the next scene without them. Everything about it felt shoehorned, as if the writers were like, "well, he needs someone to save and someone who will save him late in the movie."
I'll give you an example about what I mean. Hal has just returned from training on another planet, he goes home, sleeps, then goes out with Carol to talk about their relationship. I'm in the theater thinking to myself, "dude, you were just on another planet and this is what you want to do!? The first words out of my mouth would be, 'Hey! You'll never believe what just happened to me!'" The last thing I'd want is to spend time with my girlfriend, heck, I could make my own girlfriend! (I know, that's gross and she'd be green but really, who hasn't thought about that before?)
Anyway, the Green Lantern was good movie, I look forward to watching it again and I would recommend it, as long as you can overlook the boring parts cause the good parts are really, really good.
