Unfortunately, it is "Green Lantern" star Ryan Reynolds' humanity that winds up being a weakness for the movie.
"Green Lantern" will almost certainly go down in history as a "bad movie," but that's harsh and really the product of its grossing only about $100 million against a staggering $200-million production budget as opposed to its measure of success in bringing the comic-book character to life on the big screen. I liked "Green Lantern" well enough when I saw it last summer and was surprised to have enjoyed it considerably more in its HBO premiere this past weekend. It's got all the candy-colored fun a summer-superhero movie not of "The Dark Knight"'s ilk should have, with exciting trailer moments and appropriately cool visual effects.
As a movie star I like Reynolds a whole lot. And if I'd been casting "Green Lantern" I'm actually confident I'd have chosen him for the role of Hal Jordan. Moreover, if charged with that task even now, on paper I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better choice. He certainly looks the part of the test-pilot-turned-galactic-do-gooder, and he's hunky for the ladies with a beguiling eat-you-know-what-and-die edge to every line he delivers in every movie, which should've been a perfect match for comic-book Jordan's similar cocksure attitude.
Though it's unlikely Reynolds was to blame for the superhero spectacle's spectacular failure (it stumbled out of the gate financially, despite favorable, if unenthusiastic, audience reaction), my biggest problem with it was him. Not him per se — as I've said, I couldn't have cast it smarter myself — but Ryan Reynolds the persona as opposed to Ryan Reynolds the actor, who has yet to really, truly play a "character," at least in any of his high-profile roles.
As a result, when I'm watching "Green Lantern," I just can't shake the notion that I'm watching the guy from "Van Wilder" and "Waiting ..." suddenly bequeathed with superhuman space mojo via the bling on his f@#k-you finger.
See, in the comic, Green Lantern is a badass. Yes, he's also a smartass. But when it's time to be badass, homeboy is Bad. Ass. In these scenes, when I watch Reynolds try and muster up his gangsta to rise to the occasion, I'm just waiting... for my man to deflect the weight of the moment by saying something sharply witty and self-aware. Lacking that gravitas, Reynolds' turn in the movie winds up having a mitigated visceral "superhero-movie" impact as compared with a Christian Bale, or even a Robert Downey, Jr. in "Iron Man" to make an apples-to-apples, big-bright-colored-fun comparison.
But any failure to hook a massive audience isn't all Reynolds' fault. "Green Lantern" as a comic and as a movie are pretty ... well, geeky. Even in the most serious of scenes, the hero's green Hamburglar mask unintentionally looks like a sight gag unto itself. That's in addition to the fact that the film is packed with dense mythology that might have frustrated an audience that was green to the whole Green Lantern thing from the get-go, not to mention opaque, nerd-fabulous lines like:
• "Hal Jordan, I am Abin Sur, protector of Sector 2814 ... ."
• "Of all the threats the Corps ever faced, the gravest was an entity of fear known as Parallax. Only the legendary Green Lantern Abin Sur was capable of capturing and imprisoning this beast, which he did on the lost planet of Ryut."
• "Fear is the enemy of will. Will is what makes you take action; fear is what stops you, and makes you weak ... makes your constructs feeble."
Well, what do you mean my constructs are feeble "more often than you're used to"? Exactly how many constructs have you assessed?
Don't you think you should've told me this before we got serious? Because at least then I would've known what kind of morals you really had!
SINESTRO??? You assessed that two-faced, purple-skinned motherf@#ker's constructs?
