I was waiting to give a review of Green Lantern the Movie till I saw it again with a friend to brainstorm the good and the bad points of the movie. After the mixed reviews I wanted not to rush to a hurried conclusion. Below is some of the reviews of critics of the movie.
6 out of 36 critics gave a fresh rating to the movie on Rotten Tomatoes, 30 gave a rotten rating. Resulting in an overall 17 rating: Noisy, overproduced, and thinly written, Green Lantern squanders an impressive budget and decades of comics mythology.
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic: “Green Lantern” is both off the wall and out of this world — literally. More science-fiction space opera than superhero epic, it works in fits and starts as its disparate parts go in and out of effectiveness, but the professionalism of the production make it watchable in a comic book kind of way.
Marshall Fine, author and film critic, hollywoodandfine.com: In the case of Green Lantern, you get an hour and 45 minutes of foreplay and then 15 minutes of action. Sure, there are a couple of moments that threaten premature pleasure – but Martin Campbell’s movie (from a script by four writers including Dawson Creek‘s Greg Berlanti) never threatens to pop its cork for real.
Brian Tucker, Star News Online: The film is in no way “Battlefield Earth,” bland like “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” hampered by the campiness of “Flash Gordon” or like the overly cartoonish “The Phantom.” I’ll likely get spit on for saying it, but even with all its otherworldly characters, it does mirror “The Dark Knight” and “Superman” in that it develops characters and story and isn’t just about special effects. “Green Lantern” is a tough sell to the non-comic book and adventure crowd but an entertaining film nonetheless.
Peter Suderman, The Washington Times: Formula superhero origin story is a Hallish bore. For a movie about the power to create anything with one’s mind, “Green Lantern” is depressingly unimaginative — a big-budget blah of a film that appears to be driven less by superpowered will than by old-fashioned formula and fear.
As you can see the critics are not enthralled about the movie. fans reaction to the movie was overall very positive even if it has not shown in box office tickets. Most fans coming right out of the movie enjoyed the movie very much. They had to be convinced later the movie was not very good by the bad reviews. Well I think Mark “RorMachine” Cassidy of Comicbookmovies.com said it best: “Fanboys are a very vocal minority but represent a very small percentage of the moviegoing population. It’s very hard when you’re creating a film that’s intended for mass audiences. It’s very hard to keep fans happy. Fans will always have issues with what’s being done to the source material. But there’s a much bigger purpose for this property. It’s a good primer for the future and lays the groundwork for the future of the franchise.”
That is what we have here a beginning of the release of DC characters other than Batman and Superman, and in that way it was a big success. It was a decent movie that set the ground work for more of the great DC line up of characters. I think the only glaring problem with the movie they tried to condense the Green Lantern history and origin in less than 2 hours and we do not know how much film was cut from the original filming or screen play. I would love to see a directors cut version of the movie and as far as the total amount of proceeds from the movie it has not left the theaters yet and will bring more revenue in DVD and Blu Ray sales. I would love to have it in my video library. The cast was very good. Ryan Reynolds was a great Hal Jordan, and Mark Strong was an outstanding Sinestro. Peter Sarsgaard played a very compelling Hector Hammond a real tormented soul.
All in all it is worth the price of the ticket to see even if it will not win any Academy Awards. I think you should check this one out before it leaves the theaters and buy the DVD/Blu Ray when it come out. A very entertaining film for all ages, don’t miss out on this. Stay tuned comic faithful for more. 🙂 Walt
Green Lantern is one of the icons of the DC Universe. It was great to see a decent attempt to put him on the big screen. Hope there is enough interest for a second movie soon.