I know it’s been forever since I posted last (thanks for the list of 1000 and 1 chores).

Today I will be writing about the movie, The Green Lantern.  I saw it on opening day, and it was a decent movie.  But now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I realized that this movie by far, is not the best superhero movie.  Certainly, the film looked like a comic, with all the spandex and aliens, but the depth to the story was missing.  In that film, what you see is what you get, never-mind that there were a few mentionings of a deeper plot-line.  Those concepts were not explored.

Hal Jordan...in spandex

One of the lines of the film is (I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t fully remember the line) , “We are scientists, we search for truth, but there are those who enable us to do what we do, who don’t really care about truth.”  This concept was not really developed.  The screenwriters mentioned that in discovering an alien, and how his form was much like ours, suggests that there is a common alien ancestry.  This was mentioned, and set aside by the writers.  I believe that if this concept was further explored, such as, if the scientists brought the information about the alien and common ancestry to the governmental official, and were turned down, then I’d believe that there would be some merit in the quote.  Then, it would be somewhat logical to try to get the media onto the big discovery, but they being bought off by the government, prevented the scientists from letting the public know.  All the while, Parallax in human form, would be growing.

Parallax

I also found that the quarreling forces of fear and willpower did not really feel like opponents in energy.  The writers made it feel like one of the ancients just got mad at the other ancients, took up the power of fear to fight against the energy of willpower.  It was not clear that willpower can be stopped or paralyzed (origin for Parallax?) by fear.  This was brushed over.  A way this could have been done is not to see Sinestro’s shock of seeing his Lanterns getting incinerated, but the writers could have done a voice-over of the Lanterns and how their thoughts changed from dedication, to shock, to fear.  Then the concept of these two energies would be better understood.

Sinestro...the leader of The Green Lantern Corps

I applaud the writers for not having an exorbitant amount of sex and/or kissing, the plagues of media.

All in all, The Green Lantern tackles a lot of information and to be honest, this was not done so skillfully.  This movie was not bad, but it was not good.  If you’re looking for something mindless at the end of a long day of work, I’d recommend it.  If you’re looking for a live-action film of a thoughtful series, I’d say that you’re wasting your money.

Ariel Ceylan, over and out.