Well, the animation is good. The movie has that much going for it right off the bat.
The opening music is sort of iffy. Rest of score is good, if somewhat generic. Think Buck Rogers meets X3 for the credits. Meets uh...the 80's.
Abin Sur's ship looks like a Dirt Devil. The hell was that all about? Abin Sur himself looks ridiculous. I'm not sure why they felt the need to make him look like THAT, unless it's to explain why he was chosen to go "undercover" in Kanjar Ro's organization.
I'm confused about the ring's translation capacities. Does the ring translate speech or does the ring teach Abin Sur how to speak English?
The origin is, as has been pointed out, rushed and exposition heavy. And lacking weight. It's like "Oh, hey, here's a ring, you're a protector of the universe now". Ridiculous transformation sequence for Hal. Absolutely absurd looking.
Hal doesn't really do much of anything when he becomes Green Lantern at first, except fly his simulator back to Ferris Aircraft. Then the key Corps Members come to take him to Oa.
But don't expect to see the Oa you're used to. It seems to be composed of floating tower things, though there are a few shots that kind of resemble Oa from the comics.
Ch'p!
The Guardians are a LOT more human than I thought they would be. They're very casual. And they sort of look like Skrulls. It sort of works and doesn't at the same time. It's an interesting approach, though.
Does Hal get trained by Kilowog at all? Heck no, but the writers are kind enough to give us two lines of Kilowog *****ing about it to rub our noses in it.
The Central Power Battery is green and yellow (or gold?)...and much smaller than I'm used to it being. The concept of the Book of Oa has apparently been combined with that of the Central Power Battery. Something is understandably lost here. Salaak shows up, but not in his normal capacity. See, Hal sticks his ring in, thinks of the secret code, and learns all there is to know in the universe. Apparently. Except the things the plot doesn't want him to know or...something. And in all the exposition, apparently the rings don't have to be charged every 24 hours. Come to think of it, Hal doesn't even have his own Power Battery. None of them do.
And then Sinestro takes Hal, who has not, near as I can tell done ANYTHING as Green Lantern but bring his simulator back to Ferris Aircraft, on an adventure. No training or anything, just a dip in the Central Power Battery. And does Sinestro call Hal Jordan "Hal Jordan"? Nope. He has about twelve "Earth" related nicknames for him.
Sinestro apparently hates authority with a passion. Which at first led me to believe the writers don't get Sinestro. At all. More on that later.
So...remember how cool Denzel was in TRAINING DAY when he wanted some information? Take that...and rape it. That's what Sinestro's like at first. Three second interrogations, no weight to them...it's sad to watch.
A STAR WARS Cantina scene with little to no atmosphere that is apparently held inside those alien smoke towers from the first episode of JUSTICE LEAGUE? Whatever. Anyway, Sinestro and Hal go to this alien bar looking for someone named Kutch who Sinestro somehow knows killed Abin Sur...they meet the alien equivalent of a crack ****e...I dunno, I wasn't paying attention...
Then Kutch shows up as Sinestro's interrogating his girl, Hal stands in a jello bubble getting shot at...and then a bomb gets stuck in the jellow, even though lasers couldn't, and Hal blows up. Except he doesn't...he escapes through the sewer somehow.
Sinestro chases Kutch, who is an alien composed entirely of tentacles (which is sort of cool, he can fire energy blasts from them and slice at people)...can't catch him, but then he does. Except he doesn't. Ooh. Tension.
Hal catches up with Kutch instead, and he gets his ass handed to him, but then, after getting pulled through the sewer, he hits Kutch with a green chair and blows up some pipes which fall on Kutch. It's kind of cool.
Finally we see the Sinestro that hates chaos show up. But he lacks control in almost every sense. So the writers sort of get Sinestro. They understand that the word "order" has something to do with it, but they don't seem to understand how. It's basically "I'll go as far as I have to in order to maintain order", but we never see why that's neccessary.
The Green Lanterns have a space station shaped like their insignia.
Once there, we see Sinestro being cruel and torturing Kutch. It's pretty sweet.
Then Boodika tells us that it's sad Abin Sur died because he had family and friends. Which I guess humanizes her for the big twist that's coming. Wait for it, people, it's a big one.
First, though, she uses her ring to teach Hal things that the Power Battery that's supposed to hold all the knowledge in the universe didn't teach him.
Things like that the Green Lanterns power comes, not from the Guardians, but from a crystal called "the green element", which happens to have a vulnerability of yellow. There happens to be a "yellow element" as well, which is a yellow crystal. It's explained that yellow is the one part of the light spectrum that can resist the green. Ok...fair enough.
Now, in REVENGE OF THE FALLEN fashion, The Guardians hid the yellow crystal in another dimension for some reason. Naturally Kanjar Ro found it somehow. Mind you, they don't say how. He just did.
Then the camera pans past Arisia, who no one wanted to see instead of Boodicka, right? Then she shows up again, and I realized that even after Boodicka was "humanized", I would still have rather seen Arisia than Boodicka in a key role. Because she's hotter.
There's a bit of friction between the Guardians and Sinestro. It's nice to see, but weird, because it's like watching Sinestro argue with a bunch of grandfatherly old men.
And then it's basically just pretty much outright revealed that Sinestro is a villain who is working with Kanjar Ro. Kanjar Ro shows up and is all "Hey, Sinestro...where you at?"
An incident ensues in a spaceport, where none of the Lanterns can figure out to stop a runaway spaceship except by tugging on it with their ring beams. Until Hal forms a giant spring, that is, which was fairly inventive.
Then there's a space chase in a wormhole or something, Hal takes the lead with his fearless awesomeness, gets aboard the ship, fights one of Kanjar Ro's men in a battle suit thingie, and there's a brutal sequence where after being beaten, this battle suit thug gets sucked out the hole into space. It's pretty gruesome.
Sinestro kills Kanjar Ro, and then frames Hal for the murder.
There's a pretty cool sequence where Sinestro interrogates Kanjar Ro's corpse. Then gets caught doing so.
It's revealed that Boodicka is a traitor, like Sinestro, because...well, we're never really shown or told.
The twist surrounding Boodicka is...pointless. You don't care she's evil because she's had like four or five lines and some "pensive" moments so far, for a total of about two minutes of screentime. Then she tries to kill Hal in a condomn. Then he gets out of the condomn, and it turns out she's just a complete moron with no reflexes, and dies. Then Arisia shows up again...and she is just so hot.
We get to see Qward and The Weaponers, which is what Sinestro was looking for all along. They've been building a yellow Power Battery and ring for Kanjar Ro, but then they decide to give it to Sinestro, because he says he was Kanjar Ro's partner, and they're tired of waiting for Kanjar Ro to show up to claim it.
Sinestro puts on the yellow ring, which hurts him for some reason, and then uses the Yellow Power Battery as a giant space laser, which flies along with him for some reason. It's one of the dumbest things I think I've ever seen. It's like the floating Eye of Sauron, but it's just...so not appropriate.
Sinestro kills a bunch of GL's on Qward when they track him down, but does it offscreen.
Then there's a standoff between he and the Guardians on Oa that is decent, with them using their blurry power against his yellow glow, and Ganthet, who suddenly has a name and matters, plays Yoda, and lifts some debris off a ring for Hal via telekinesis.
There is then a pretty decent space battle, where Sinestro takes on the Corps, including Kilowog, Arisia, Ch'p, and others. Pretty d ecent stakes, he incinerates some Lanterns, and generally kicks their asses. Meanwhile, his giant Battery Eye Laser Thing blows up the Oan Central Power Battery. But it's not destroyed, it just runs out of power, and goes bouncing along threatening to crush everyone, but doesn't.
Hal finds some hidden green energy in the dead Power Battery, and taps into it, becoming sort of like Fire meets The Human Torch meets Ion. He has a ****ton of power. Hal and Sinestro fight. It's pretty cool, and large in scale. Hal crushes Sinestro's Yellow Battery between two moons. Two giant, glowing green moons which Sinestro apparently doesn't see.
Then it turns out Kilowog had power in his ring, or it comes back or something like that, and he saves Hal, whose ring has just run out of power.
Ganthet talks about how the Green Lanterns should be aware of threats from wherever in a line I'm pretty sure was stolen from my own Green Lantern script, and then the Green Lanterns recite The Oath, which Hal learned that morning. Apparently the Central Power Battery taught him random warlord names, but not the Green Lantern's oath when he first accessed it.
Chris Meloni is good as Hal, but not great.
Michael Madsen...doesn't...what's the word...emote, as Kilowog. He's okay, I guess, but nothing memorable.
Victor Garber does well as Sinestro, though it occassionally becomes one note.
7/10.
Maybe. The fact that there's a movie about mostly Hal Jordan is getting it that rating.
The stakes are higher during the battles and events then usual, so that's nice to see. Lanterns appear to die, as do crewmembers and innocents.
This is a GREEN LANTERN movie for people who like the basics, but it doesn't really even have some of the key basics in it in a lot of ways. I was disappointed.
Bottom line, though, aside from the action, which is decent, and in some places, absolutely fantastic, the movie is basically exposition and jokes. There's very little heart to it, and the attempts at heart just aren't executed very well.
And luckily for the audience, the writers don't just use exposition in the dialogue...they then help us understand what the exposition they just told us means. And is it the rings that are used? Hell no. All the characters just talk and talk and talk about what things are. It becomes tiring. It makes you want to scream, and I'm ashamed to say that I actually cared when Boodicka started her "You have to understand...Abin Sur was well liked". That's literally about the most emotional thing that happens in the movie other than Sinestro screaming with power and rage and Hal juicing up.
Disappointed, and I want someone other than Bruce Timm to handle the next few animated projects.
