Green Lantern is amazing. That's it, that's my entire review. Green Lantern is amazing, great and good even. It's probably the superhero movie closest to the comic book counterpart ever made. Go see it. Right now. Turn off your computer, go see the movie, then come back. I'll wait.
Back? Wasn't it great? Now then, since that silliness is out of the way, Green Lantern has been getting just completely hammered by critics all across this great nation. Sure, most or all of them are liberals so their opinion doesn't really count, but I thought it would be fun to go a little different direction than the straight and (mostly) spoiler free road I usually take on movie reviews and actually do to these critics what they're doing to movies and the filmmakers who worked so hard to make them. Basically, I'm going to dissect their reviews, show them to be the snobby and ignorant morons we all know them to be, dash their hopes and hopefully make them cry. And I'll explain to you why they're completely wrong. First off, most of the criticism is aimed at material taken straight from the comics, and not the fault of the movie. I couldn't find the review again to cite who it was and which publication they wrote for, but yesterday I read a review where the reviewer was complaining that the giant fist Hal Jordan makes while in a bar fight is more at home "in a cartoon that a motion picture." Are you kidding me? That's the whole point of the character. His ring takes things from his IMAGINATION and makes them real and useful. This same cretin also hacked on the giant Hot Wheels ramp GL makes to save a crippled helicopter (a scene which is an obvious nod to Richard Donner's Superman). Um, yeah, that was cool.
First off we have some quotes from Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine:
"Even by the standards of the current run of mediocre comic-book movies, this one stands out for its egregious shoddiness. Its characters, dialogue, and pacing recall a destined-to-be-canceled Saturday morning cartoon from the early '80s or possibly an extended Hasbro infomercial. "
First of all, we already know from your first sentence that you don't like comic book movies and are already convinced it's a waste of your time. The truth is, it's way cooler than the cartoons of the 80's (which were awesome anyway, you twit) and thus, your opinion is already invalid. But wait, there's more!
"His ex-girlfriend and fellow pilot Carol (Blake Lively) gives it to him straight: Hal is an immature, irresponsible twit, perhaps due to unresolved grief over his pilot father's untimely death. (Are there any superheroes with unproblematic fathers? Caped crusaders who just call their dads on Sundays to talk sports?)"
Yes, John Byrne's Superman has a great relationship with his father. They do all the stuff you just asked about: talk sports, Superman regularly flies to Smallville to ask his Dad for advice, and such. Also, the period goes outside the parentheses. What you have in parentheses shouldn't be a separate sentence all its own, that's the point of the parentheses. And you're a professional? You get paid for this?
"There's the abovementioned Parallax, a city-block-sized galactic invader who's sort of an ash cloud in the shape of a fanged octopus. (I'll grant the movie this: Parallax's animated swirling smoke-tentacles look pretty rad.) "
Oh, look, you did it again. Again, the period goes OUTSIDE the parentheses. Also, "abovementioned" should either be two separate words, or hyphenated. Please, if you're goint to accept money for writing, try to pay attention to the rules of spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and grammar we've all agreed to.
Next we have some mindless drivel spouted from Claudia Puig of USA Today (a newspaper I don't read anyway). ATTN DANA: see how it's done?
"The action switches to Hal (Ryan Reynolds), a hotshot fighter pilot. We find out, via intrusive flashbacks, that he's scarred by witnessing the plane crash and death of his pilot father."
He's a test pilot, not a fighter pilot. Did you even watch the movie? Come on, you can tell me. You stayed home to watch Sex in the City dvds, didn't you? As for the intrusive flashbacks, I am forced to agree. That isn't
I just noticed that my previous comment didn't post and my last comment doesn't make sense without it. Basically, all I said was I miss the noirish narration the original cut had. It was sort of Phillip Marlowe in the future. It fit the movie.
One lab accident away from being a supervillain! Bazinga!