GREEN LANTERN directed by Martin Campbell, written by Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim and Michael Goldenberg, with Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Mark Strong. A Warner Bros. release. 114 minutes. Opens Friday (June 17). See listing Rating: NN
Having played vampire slayer Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity and swaggering mercenary Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds finally gets a superhero franchise all his own. But he deserves better than Green Lantern, which casts him as Hal Jordan, a test pilot recruited into the universe-policing Green Lantern Corps and almost immediately pitted against both a world-destroying menace and a personal rival (Peter Sarsgaard) turned into a grotesque mutant.
The comic book character comes with decades of mythology, and this movie tries to cram in far too much of it. Journeyman director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, sure, but also GoldenEye and the two Zorro movies) can’t balance the intimate emotional beats with the galactic scope of the story.
Without a singular vision to drive it, Green Lantern quickly deteriorates into a jumble of storylines, characters, exposition and explosions that tries to dumb down a nerdy sci-fi concept for a mass audience and winds up satisfying no one. Like The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, it feels like a superhero movie made by committee.
