Green Lantern 3D (6/10)

Unlike X-Men: First Class, I didn't find the trailer for Green Lantern any impressive so naturally I had less expectation for it. Which was a good thing.

I think the biggest problem with a superhero character such as Green Lantern is that the power itself is undefined and only has the limit as far as the imagination goes. So how powerful is the ring? It's not defined so there's no way of judging how powerful it is.

And with so many in the Green Lantern Corps, how was it that they couldn't defeat Parallax when their power was virtually limitless? And everything in the end had to rely on the newest member to the Corps? So you can probably guessed now the ending, the way Hal Jordan defeated Parallax, was completely unimpressive.

Not only that part of the story was a disappointment, but the Hal's first real enemy being Peter Sarsgaard's Hector was also too undefined. The problem here was that Hector wasn't supposed to be the real enemy as he was the reason that drew Parallax to Earth, and Parallax was the real threat to mankind. But then Parallax had less or no character build-up, nothing to understand what it really was, or how powerful it really was. In theory it was supposed to be really powerful but obviously in the end it wasn't.

And when Hal's ring touched Hector's head, did Hal see that vision of Parallax or did Hector, or none of them did or both of them did? I'm so confused. I think the biggest problem with this movie was the writing. Granted it may be adapted from the comics, I've never read Green Lantern so I wouldn't know; but still, I thought it didn't translate well through the big screen.

Other than the above, I thought the cast did very well. I would have liked to see more of the characters by Mark Strong, Geoffrey Rush and Michael Clarke Duncan (or even more focus on Hal Jordan's family for that matter). I thought as an introduction to the origin of Hal Jordan, that part of the story was done very well too. Ryan Reynolds was great as Green Lantern. He definitely looked the part. And as much as I dislike Blake Lively from her previous work, I have to admit she did a very good job here. She was like the anchor to all the fantasy that is the Green Lantern, both for Hal Jordan and for the audience alike.

There's quite a big difference between this movie and, say, something similar that came out a few weeks ago, Thor. The focus between when Thor was on Earth and Asgard intertwined seamlessly. But here, Oa never got that kind of treatment because Hal never spent too much time there.

A lot of things were lacking but Reynolds and Lively made it at least enjoyable to watch.