Okay, first things first: NO PEOPLE OF COLOR WERE KILLED IN THE MAKING OF THIS MOTION PICTURE. I know what it looked like, but trust me, she’s okay. To continue:
There are basically three routes to superherodom: some are born to it (Thor, Superman), some achieve it (Batman, Iron Man) and others have it thrust upon them (Flash, Spider-Man). But only two superheroes were actually chosen to wear the cape and tights: the Spectre and Green Lantern. This is the ultimate adolescent wish fulfillment—you weren’t born special (not in the positive way, at any rate), you’ll never make the football team and the most exotic thing you were bitten by on a field trip was maybe a mosquito. But there was the chance that some Higher Power who knew what it was doing would pick you, from all the people on the planet, for something special because you were special.
When a dying member of the intergalactic peacekeepers known as the Green Lantern Corps crashes on Earth, he instructs his ring (their primary weapon) to find his replacement. The ring, which never makes a mistake, chooses Hal Jordan, a hot-shot test pilot, as skilled as he is reckless. Hal is the first human selected for the Corps and is largely met with suspicion and scorn from his fellows, particularly Sinestro, who seems to be the Lanterns’ de facto spokesperson and Kilowog, who is charged with training him. And all this could not have happened at a worse time, for the Corps creators, the Guardians of the Universe, are being threatened by a menace they may not be able to stop.
Like all superhero origin stories, Green Lantern suffers from having to compress decades of back-story into a two-hour running time (the first Green Lantern story appeared in 1940!); relationships and motivations are dealt with in shorthand, but then, in a world where a ring and a battery will allow you to make just about anything you imagine come true, why not? But the screenplay does do a lot of things right and occasionally has fun in the process. Hal still had not become a master Lantern by the end of the movie, there is a hilarious examination of the whole concept of secret identities, and the solution for what to do with the bad guy once you’ve got him on the ropes is not exactly from Superhero 101.
And there is a subtle theme running through the movie, the relationships between fathers and their children. The Guardians are like distant fathers (and one mother) to the Corps, the Lantern who passes his ring to Hal is like a father passing the family business to his son, and the most rational, functional adult in the movie has a father’s unconditional support. The other two major characters are either trying to live up to a father’s reputation or live down his disapproval. (And in a particularly Disneyesque touch, none of them seem to have mothers.)
Green Lantern is not as razzle-dazzle as some of the other superhero movies (so far) this year, but it is light-years better than that movie with the other green guy. And the black people are still alive when the credits roll.
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