GREEN LANTERN

Bland but capable Ryan Reynolds is Hal Jordan, a pilot who is the best of the best at destroying other planes when he isn't supposed to, destroying his own plane when he isn't supposed to, and making his company lose a contract and lay off its workforce.  That sounds pretty damn interesting, but that's not actually what the movie is about.

As Geoffrey Rush, our humble fish-man narrator tells us in the prologue, The Green Lantern Corps uses the color green/will power/jewelry to fight fear across the universe.  They also divided the universe into different precincts, so each Green Lantern is like a beat cop for his corner of the universe. Ryan Reynolds is selected because he is the 'man without fear' although he has a fear induced panic attack that almost kills him on that same day so maybe they just said that to bolster his ego so he would stop almost dying from fear.

Reynolds is whisked to the Lantern planet of Oa, but afterwards he makes trips to and fro with simple cuts back to his Earth apartment.  It feels much less intergalactic than it could/should when apparently the journey through space is too boring to even show us a glimpse more than once.  Damn space.  Why does it have to be so boring?  I'll concede that point: Oa is kinda boring.  We get to see all the Lanterns for a few brief moments, and its a bloody shame because it looks like creature design run amuck in the best possible way. Although we spend time with Fish Rush and Pig Monster Michael Clarke Duncan and also Master Glowerer Mark Strong the Corps feels pretty damn small.  They even refuse to help in the finale.  I don't remember them giving a reason.  Then they show up when its over to help.  The council of old blue aliens that makes this decision seems to be a parody of every ineffectual council of elders from every fantasy or sci-fi film from the last ever.  Are old people that sit in a circle ever right about anything?

And what threat are they wrong about?  Parallax!  Great name for the embodiment of Fear.  He's a big yellow-brownish cloud of tentacles and faces that sort of looks like, no insult, a big evil living pile of poo that keeps growing and trying to eat your soul.  He sounds like Clancy Brown in the beginning when he talks but later he just sounds like Clancy Brown grunting and screaming in anger about how small his part in the movie is.  I like that Reynolds doesn't defeat him with a big, generic burst of green energy as I was expecting.  His solution has that old school creativity of a cartoon character.  He tricks him into chasing him into the Sun spoiler.  Sun kills everybody, right?  It is yellow, and they make a big deal out of colors in this movie, but the Sun is pretty hot so I guess it kills fear.

All the aliens give Reynolds crap about being human.  Did they even know about humans before this?  Why do they care?  Why are humans so special?  There are some more humans in this movie.  A pretty young woman I think is Blake Lively is a pretty unconvincing fighter pilot but at least she recognizes Reynolds when he's in his stupid, fake looking costume.  They should have just made a real one.  It would have been easier than the Batsuit and even Superman's get-up.  It doesn't even have a cape!

Tim Robbins and Peter Sarsgaard wander in from another movie from time to time, as a Senator and his Xenobiologist son.  Sarsgaard pities himself for teaching at a lowly community college (Xenobiology at a community college?) but enjoys beating up his students with the psychic powers he developed from contact with one dead alien hidden inside another from the top secret consulting gig his dad secured for him at an underground lab run by Dr. Angela Bassett, who has very distracting hair.  I told you this felt like another movie.  Her hair is weirder than the monster Sarsgaard turns into.

After Sarsgaard tries to kill his dad a few times he eventually gets it right and then goes after Lively because apparently they all know each other from an unexplained time before this and he has murderously unrequited feelings for her.  Did they all go to college together like in the Fantastic Four?  I can't figure out anybody's age in this: Tim Robbins is Sarsgaard's father?  Lively and Reynolds dated years ago?   How many years ago?  Hopefully not too many.

There is a setup for a sequel during the credits that feels pretty perfunctory even by the standards of setups for sequels during the credits.  Hopefully if there is a sequel the GL Corps will feel more like an intergalactic peacekeeping force and less like the Space DMV.