Green Lantern (2011)

Plot of Green Lantern: Somewhere near the beginning of the film we see Green Lantern Sinestro pleading with the eternals(sort of heads on sticks) for something, and the voice over tells us that the Green Lanterns are an intergalactic police force who keep stuff in order, and have imprisoned the villain Parallax on a deserted planet, but when some space men accidentally fall into the hole containing him, he escapes. In a battle with Parallax, Abin Sur the Green Lantern in charge of earth, is injured and crashes on the coast of America. Meanwhile Hal Jordan a wild commercial test pilot, has a job of testing some AI powered fighter jets in combat, and trickily beats them, but has to eject from his jet. His fellow pilot is Carol Ferris, daughter of the owner of the company who have developed the pilotless jets. In this environment Abin Sur, dying, releases his ring to find a replacement for the role of Green Lantern, and it finds Hal, who takes on the role and is transported to the Green Lantern home planet for training. On earth Hector Hammond is taken to an FBI facility to carry out an autopsy on Abin Sur and is contaminated with Parallax DNA, turning him into an evil teleporter, an enemy of Green Lantern and Carol. But Hal has failed in his training and has returned to earth, but still seems to have superpowers. What next? Well, Parallax is on his way.

Content: No sex or nudity or drinking smoking or drug taking. There is a lot of exposition by an unseen narrator in an attempt to provide the viewer with the Green Lantern’s back story, and scenes on the Green Lantern planet where Sinestro talks with the heads on sticks. On earth Hal and Carol, test pilots are used to shown off the capabilities of some pilotless jet fighters. Hal shoots them down, but crashes his jet. Events of the planet where Parallax is imprisoned are seen, allowing him to escape. GL Abin Sur crashes on earth and dies and his green ring chooses Hal as a replacement. Hal goes through training on the GL planet and at an event at Ferris Aviation when Carol’s father’s helicopter is damaged by the newly evil Hammond, who now has a bulbous head, Hal saves the day with his super powers. Green Lanterns are able to conjour effective defence systems and then use them. In this case Hal turns the helicopter into a car and it is driven into a safe landing.

A View: I only watched this because I had heard that it was a bad film. It actually covered its massive production costs, but these blockbusters have to do a lot better than that to make money. It is said that the film visualised by the director was never seen, the producers apparently hacking away at the raw material. But however it went the exposition was totally excessive. If they could not have done without it, they should not have bothered with the film. On the other hand I thought Blake Lively did pretty well; this could have been because she and Ryan Reynolds were getting it on in the real world. But overall I’m afraid it’s another dud from the DC Comics stable.

Fun fact: Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively met on the set and subsequently married and had children together.