At the Movies with Fatwayne

This is another film inspired by the comics (DC Comics). I am no authority or fan of comic books and actually thought that this movie would prove to be sort of hokey.  I am here to tell you that not only was I wrong in my anticipation of this film but I totally enjoyed every single minute of it. The storyline was interesting and very entertaining. It was enhanced thanks to the excellent usage of CGI in both the characters and the worlds that they inhabit.

There was one instance where I absolutely wanted to stand up and scream “at last”. This came after Hal Jordan (Earth’s Green Lantern) saved hundreds of people including his long time love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). He later floats down to her balcony where she thanks him for saving her life. As she looks at him her face reacts with recognition despite his little green mask that serves as a disguise. She says Hal, is that you? (or words to that effect). I was blown away because I have always considered Superman’s glasses or Batman’s mask-like visage and a host of other superheros affectations to be a joke at disguising their identities. What a kick in the ass that was!

It seems that millions of years before the Earth was even formed a highly intelligent and advanced group of beings formed together calling themselves the Guardians of the Universe. They used the “green” essence of willpower which enabled them to form an intergalactic force for good which they called the Green Lantern Corps. One of these Lanterns, Parallax, turned very wrong after he was exposed to the yellow essence of fear. He was imprisoned on a deserted planet called Ryut by the most successful Lantern of all, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison).  We are now taken to the present time where Parallax manages to escape his prison and go on a rampage. He meets up with Abin Sur and mortally wounds him. Sur  crash lands on Earth and commands his ring to find a successor for him. The ring finds a rather immature test pilot, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) and transports him to Abin Sur’s crash site where Sur confers the powers of the Green Lantern to Hal just prior to his death.

Meanwhile, as Hal is off to the Lantern’s home world of Oa to learn about his skills and responsibilities there is trouble brewing back on Earth. A scientist, Dr. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) is summoned by the government to perform an autopsy on Sur’s body. In the process he is infected by leftover DNA from Parallax which was inside the body. This turns out to be most unfortunate for Hector even though he is gifted with the powers of telepathy and telekinesis he non-the-less losses his sanity and goes about causing all sorts of havoc.

The movie manages to tie all of these strings together and give us a neatly tied conclusion. It also makes no effort to conceal plans for a sequel, this time with a Lantern using the essence of fear to further enhance his own agenda. Stay tuned.

Rated  -  PG13  -

Fatwayne’s Rating  -  -