By Kate Rodger
Can someone please explain Blake Lively to me?
Right, now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s have a gander at Green Lantern.
This comic book to big screen adaptation has been a while in post-production, and it’s not hard to see why with the finished product, released with a 3D very stylistic inter-planetary CGI look and feel. It's directed by Hastings-born ex-pat Kiwi filmmaker Martin Campbell, who last wowed us with the blonde Bond Daniel Craig re-boot Casino Royale.
Green Lantern is a VERY different beast, and not just in colour, but with entirely different source material, genre, and target audience.
Along with Campbell at the helm, there’s a solid New Zealand contingent serving him both on and off screen. Boy’s Taika Waititi is Hal Jordon/Green Lantern’s nerdy best mate Thomas, with Jake the Muss/Jango Fett Temuera Morrison returning to outer space, this time as dying alien hero Abin Sur. On the creative team is Oscar-winning costume designer Ngila Dickson, and fellow Oscar-winning production designer Grant Major.
In the lead roles, two of Hollywood’s rising stars, Ryan Reynolds (Definitely Maybe/Buried) and Blake Lively (Gossip Girl/The Town) as his love interest Carol Ferris.
Now I confess right off the bat I’ve not followed Green Lantern through his comic book life through to this cinematic incarnation, so I won’t be making any sage observations and comparisons in that regard. But purely as a movie-going experience, Green Lantern unfortunately left me wanting.
This might be old-fashioned admission to make, but there have been several 3D CGI experiences recently which have for me detracted from rather than added to the authenticity and plausibility of the story. And while I totally get that comic books are not real, and these alien universes and characters are fictional, I want their worlds to feel like they might actually exist, and they might in fact be real. Green Lantern didn’t give me that feeling, with some very low-rent CGI.
As for the performances, apart from just not getting the point of Blake Lively, they were all pretty good. Reynolds has all the attributes one might like in a fighter pilot/superhero, Waititi was the perfect mix of geek and cool, and Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State/An Education) made an unpleasantly excellent evil-doer. They all did their level best to deliver an uninspiring, unremarkable and oftentimes convoluted script, especially in the set-up stages. The characters felt once over lightly, with not enough time and effort spent to establish them, or flesh them out, and with some very patchy even cringe-worthy dialogue.
A teen audience with a comic-book bent may find enough to chew on, especially with its two good-looking leads, but the Green Lantern’s light faded for me, and was out completely by the time the final credits rolled.
Two stars.
3 News
Green Lantern
:: Director: Martin Campbell
:: Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Mark Strong, Peter Sarsgaard, Temuera Morrison, Taika Waititi, Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett
:: Running Time: 114 mins
:: Rating: M - Contains fantasy violence
:: Release Date: June 16, 2011
:: Trailer: Watch here
source: newshub archive
