Green Lantern Movie Review

I recently watched the movie Green Lantern. Overall, it seemed over hyped. Now this might be because I'm a bit of a fan of the comics, and anything deviating from them is despicable in my sight. It also might because it is bland and followed the same formula as every other superhero movie ever made. And the occasional profanity certainly didn't help. Now I had big expectations, I wouldn't say they were dashed, but the movie certainly didn't fulfill them.

The Guardians of the Universe, little blue men that resemble smurfs, employ green spacecops who are devoted to making peace in the galaxy. These "Green Lanterns" wield power green rings that allow them to create anything they want, only being limited by their will power and imagination. One of these lanterns, a purple alien named Abin Sur crashed his spaceship on Earth, after being mortally wounded by the being Parallax, who uses the yellow power of fear. In his dieing moments Abin Sur gives his ring to a irresponsible and cocky fighter pilot named Hal Jordan. His ring can allow him to fly, create green forcefields and constructs, fire energy blasts, it's all good.

I won't get into the rest of the movie, to prevent spoiling it for those who have not yet watched it. It's suffice to say that it wasn't amazing. First of all, the actor who played Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) didn't fit the part, really. He looked like the comic book Hal Jordan, but he didn't have the right feel, he couldn't capture the essence of the character. A shame. As for the actual use of his ring, except for an energy blast or two he usually stuck with making green constructs while in battle. Swords, miniguns, racecar tracks, catapults, that sort of thing. It usually didn't work very well, and in my opinion didn't do his powers justice. Speaking of powers, the makers of the movie decided to leave out one little detail: the power rings are useless against the colour yellow. Now this might be because a main theme of the movie is that power of will (green) is greater than the power of fear (yellow). But still, that is essential to the capabilities of the ring. Now if they had Kyle Rayner's ring.... Oh wait, am I getting fanboyish? Sorry about that.

So to sum up, the movie isn't terrible, but it isn't great. You can find better ones.