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So there's a corps of superbeings called the Green Lantern Corps that guards all parts of the universe. Ages ago, one of these Green Lanterns, Parallax (Clancy Brown) turned evil, and instead of feeding on courage like all the other Lanterns do, he fed on fear - and thus was imprisoned on some aeons ago. But now he breaks free and flies around the universe as a cloud, just to create fear wherever he appears and feed on it. Veteran Green Lantern Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) finds out what has happened and radios it in to Oa, the Green Lantern home planet, before crashlanding on earth. And as he dies, his all powerful power ring, searches for a new owner, courageous enough to take over as Green Lantern. Enter Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a very mavericky test pilot with some daddy issues, who's constantly on the brink of being fired by his boss Ferris (Jay O. Sanders) for his reckless maneuvres, but Ferris' daughter Carol (Blake Lively) has a soft spot for him. Now the Green Lantern ring thinks Hal's worthy to be the guardian of this sector of the universe, so Hal's flown to Oa and receives a bit of training, but then Sinestro (Mark Strong), the de facto leader of the Lanterns, deems Hal isn't worthy to be a Green Lantern because Hal wasn't able to defeat him after some meagre training and still trying to come to grips with his power. Hal's sent back to earth - with the ring though, and back on earth, with Carol and his best friend Tom (Taika Waititi), he manages to get a grip of the powers of the ring that lets him create anything he can think of out of thin air.

In side story, nerdy scientist Hector (Peter Sarsgaard) is brought in by the gouvernment to dissect the dead body of Abin Sur - mainly because his dad Hammond (Tim Robbins) is a powerful senator who got him the job. Still, dissecting an alien corpse is a once in a lifetime (if even) opportunity, so one would think Hector, who certainly has all the qualifications for the job even without his dad, would be thrilled - but he just isn't. Now during the autopsy, Hector is infected with some Parallax spores or something that grotesquely transforms him and gives him some telekinetic powers - which he uses to try and crash his father's helicopter when it takes off during a reception. Good thing then Hal Jordan is there to build a giant toy race track out of thin air and get the helicopter to the ground safely.

Meanwhile in outer space, Sinestro leads a group of Green Lanterns to stop Parallax - but they fail, so Parallax makes his way to earth and creates havoc. But Hal does some thinking, uses his ring to create a giant net to capture Parallax, and then throws him right into the sun to save the day ...

The best way to describe Green Lantern is probably a muddled mess, and the real problem here is that the story goes off into too many directions all at once and lacks stringency. For one there's much character build-up done for Hal Jordan that isn't only clichéed, it also has no meaning for the actual story or is actually discarded even though it might have made an interesting plotpoint later on. And despite all that, Hal as a character remains pretty blank, other than he's a mavericky hero by design. Also the whole narrative thread about grotesquely malformed Hector really just fizzles out eventually despite showing potential, as is the case with Sinestro's only half finished character arc (the post credit sequence suggests he's supposed to be the main villain in the never-made sequel). And above all that, despite all the build-up, the finale is rather anti-climactic, even a bit mundane. Unfortunately the less-than-good script isn't at all helped by the CGI work that's at the same time overwhelming and oddly sub-par, so much so that there are scenes that would look alright in a video game, but look oddly artificial in a movie, really destroying the illusion. That all said, the film has isolated setpieces that manage to come across as convincing, and the rather first rate cast really try to make the best of it, but a mess is a mess is a mess - something that was also mirrored in the film's box office, only barely breaking even the film's inflated $200 million production budget.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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