A hero who is handsome and rebellious finds himself at odds with the system. He is chosen by an alien force for a greater purpose, and after some awkward training and promises that he has been chosen for a very important reason, he has some doubt about his own ability. His friends help reassure him that he is great, while one is secretly planning betrayal. The hero fails to overcome his first major hurdle, but fares much better on his second attempt, and very nearly loses everything before taking on the incredibly difficult task no one ever thought he could do.
The funny thing about this is that I don't even have to come up with a movie to pretend I was describing all along. You can probably think of one yourself. The Matrix would be a good choice. As would the first Spider-Man movie. And the second. I've never seen the third, but I imagine you could work it in there too. Heck, I just saw Thor a few weeks ago, and it has the same formula.
Green Lantern is not a mind blowing departure from traditional action movie fair. In fact, it's almost to the point where it is parodying its own adhesion to the formula.
It works though. I grinned and laughed at the jokes that were made, and enjoyed the human-juxtaposed-to-alien interaction that stands for humor in these kinds of movies. If you thought that Peter Parker shouting "Shazam!" on top of a building while trying to get his web to work was clever, you will enjoy this movie (And for that matter, it does stay fairly true to the source material, according to my incredibly reliable Dad.) Just don't expect yourself to think very hard while watching the film.
Some minor complaints though; There are some obvious editing issues towards the end, and some unpolished bits that make it sub-par even as a B-ranking superhero movie, which is probably why critics are hammering it hard (IMDB 65%, Metacritic 40/100, Rotten Tomatoes 24%), but from an audience perspective, there's nothing truly terrible about the film, and you might even enjoy it, especially if you enjoyed the original. Just don't expect it to take itself too seriously.
Edit: Oh, and towards the beginning he has some family members that make him seem like an everyday man who just screws up in a very human and relatable way. They play such an important part in the movie that I completely forgot about them until just now, and nothing about the movie would change if they didn't exist at all. Also his father died when he was young. No word on his mother though, since she makes all of zero appearances in the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment