The Green Lantern: A Truly Awful Film

It’s rare that I come away from a film feeling cheated out of my hard earned cash, to the point I feel like I’ve been mugged. But this was one of those rare occasions; I came out of the cinema feeling cold and vulnerable, as if the multi-national cinema-monster had reached into my pocket, stolen £5 off me and left me a steaming turd in its place. In fact, scratch that, it’s an insult to turds.

The Plot:

Average superhero movie, average man is chosen to become superhero, finds inner strength, world needs saving, saves world. Mindless fun, right? WRONG.

The Review:

I went into the cinema screen with no expectations whatsoever, I had heard that the film was bad, but no warnings could have prevented my shock at just how awful Green Lantern was.

Having seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Kick-Ass and feeling them to be fair reflections on how great the comics are, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was more of the same, but, no, this is to the comics, what Premier Inn is to Hilton Hotels.

The dialogue and script are truly awful, all we ever hear is “fear” and “willpower” repeated again and again, the lines are written badly and Ryan Reynolds’ blocky acting doesn’t soften the blow in any way. The villains too are awful, we never feel that they are the villains, merely victims of the Green Lantern, most of the film is narrative, trying to tell the story without compromising the quality of the film, however it doesn’t do this well at all, with huge gaps in the story filled by a black screen, with the words “six months later”, you wouldn’t see that in a book “six months later” followed by hundreds of empty pages.

Now let’s get this straight, Green Lantern is apparently classified as superhero/action film, but it’s not much of either. In the whole film there’s about six minutes of action, I’ve seen more action in a romcom, the superhero part doesn’t come into play much either, with only a handful of scenes where we see the superhero.

At points the CGI is terrible, there is a scene where one of the Guardians is speaking and yet his mouth is moving in completely different patterns, I have seen better on cutscenes in games.

Most superhero films, if nothing else, have wit and humour all the way through, but not Green Lantern, never, it’s all serious business in Green Lantern and it can’t even do that right.

I have passed kidney stones that have given me more pleasure than watching Green Lantern, I would not wish this movie on anyone. But if you’re in a bit of a good mood and need to bring yourself down, go ahead and watch the Green Lantern, it will depress you to hell. Honestly, if this is the way superhero films are heading then someone please ban them.

My Rating: 1/10 – a real insult to superhero films and humans everywhere.