Right from the off we are plunged into a thick plot involving lots of odd names and a lot of pretty colourful CGI effects. No hanging around as we discover the main baddie, the main goodie and an alien crashes on earth in his oddly shaped escape pod/ship.
To be honest when we meet Reynolds and start to get a taste for him I found myself enjoying his light banter and down to earth performance, sure he's covered top to toe in pathetic fake tan makeup which seems to be all the rage right now ('Transformers' flicks) but he comes across well as the everyday man albeit with a job as a test pilot. What I found rather weak at first was how quickly the plot rushes and thus we see 'Hal' zapped in a bubble to a site where he discovers an alien life form, given a ring and lantern and told to say an oath into it lol!!. Rather a bizarre thing to happen to anyone yet Hal just takes it all in without breaking a sweat, not overly fussed about discovering alien life it seems and just buries the body...plus the lantern looks like a cross between a Christmas decoration and a toy.
In fact the whole intro sequence where Hal gets taken to an alien planet, sees the alien city and then a mass of alien lifeforms (Green Lanterns) is nicely done and looks great but the fact Hal doesn't have a heart attack at what has happened to him is kinda hilarious really. You'd think you'd be in shock somewhat. Oh and all aliens can speak English too.
The effects throughout the film are dubious to be blunt, a mix of brilliant colourful lights, mainly green, nice space and landscape vistas and some reasonable alien work here and there is marred by terrible blue/green screen work against live action characters. Some bad CGI work on certain aliens and pretty much all the Lanterns superhero effects look cheesy and dated, the sequence where Hal is trained and the helicopter crash are probably the worst examples of this. A lot of the battle sequences involving the the Green Lantern/s tends to look like a dated computer in-game sequence and slightly toonish almost, not really bad but not exactly stunning considering what can be done, all this of course isn't helped by the rather crappy looking superhero outfit and silly 'Green Hornet/Robin' mask.
Makeup on characters is actually pretty nice looking, 'Sinestro' looks sharp with decent looking 'Spock' ears, 'Abin Sur' with his purple skin looked good and Hector was actually pretty scary and dark for a film aimed at younger people, not ugly but just slightly disturbing in appearance and actions.
I actually started off enjoying this, the colourful characters, the light-hearted over the top superhero silliness of it all was fun but the ever increasing daftness of the plot and action (the way Hal just nips back n forth from between earth and 'Oa' is amusing, sure he's a superhero but really?) added with a lot of cheese and your typical superhero cliches (the 'Parallax' can defeat many Lanterns all at once but fails against one in the end!?) really began to take its toll. Unfortunately there are now so many superhero films made and being made that we have seen everything there is to see and they are all basically the same accept for a different outfit on the hero. 'Avengers' may be the last superhero flick that will be deemed decent and slightly original apart from that all these superhero films are now really running out of gas.
PS. cue Lantern sequel or reboot.
4/10
This is about the only superhero film in recent history that I've had no interest in watching. Looks like I was wise in my indifference (>.<)
ReplyDeleteHow'd you like my Lantern gif?
ReplyDelete