GREEN LANTERN (2011, Blu-ray released October 14, 2011 – MSRP $35.99)
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Green Lantern is a whole mess of missed opportunity. What could have been a killer first salvo in Warner‘s next franchise attack on the hearts, minds and wallets of the movie-going public has turned out to be a dud, due to some tragic missteps in craft and casting. And while the Blu-ray offers a lot of value and a powerful lossless soundtrack, the transfer on this bad boy just doesn’t cut the mustard.
- “In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, an elite force of protectors for peace and justice has existed for centuries. They are the Green Lantern Corps. When a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of the Corps’ newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Bringing the popular superhero to the big screen for the first time, “Green Lantern” also stars Blake Lively (“Gossip Girl”), Peter Sarsgaard (“Orphan”), Mark Strong (“Sherlock Holmes”), Academy Award(R) nominee Angela Bassett and Academy Award(R) winner Tim Robbins.“
I was rooting for Green Lantern from the moment it was announced until I finally sat through it in the theatres. At that point, I just gave up, not willing to waste any more good will and enthusiasm on such a failure of artistic and corporate momentum. Green Lantern has everything going for it – a great concept, fun designs and years of story backlogged in thousands of comics and cartoons. It also has the fabled and exhaustive Green Lantern Bible written by sci-fi great Larry Niven for DC comics in its corner, but that’s another story all together. Since GL’s willpower-and-imagination based energy constructs were really the only genuine obstacles in the path of bringing this story to screen for years – a hurdle now easily cleared through the magic and ubiquity of CGI – making a decent film should have been child’s play for the studio. Sadly, the script suffers from problems a first-year screenwriting student could spot and likely fix (a shallow and unlikable protagonist who never has to struggle to be the best pilot, a chick magnet or the recipient of magic powers and who suffers no ill effect for his petulant and privileged shortcomings, for starters) and the tone of the work is all over the map. Worst of all is Ryan Reynolds in the title role.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I dig Reynolds. And he does his level best here. But no matter how much CGI is slathered over him, no matter how he desperately tries to slip seamlessly into the material, he’s always just Ryan Reynolds up there on the screen, looking green and like he’s hard at work trying to be the right guy for the role. And he’s not. He never was. Never mind the rest of the film’s problems. This is the biggee. You know how Superman 3 and 4 are real stinkers but every time Christopher Reeve steps on screen as Superman you totally forget that the movie sucks because… well, damn, that’s Superman up there on screen? That never happens in Green Lantern. It’s always, always Reynolds on screen. And that’s why this movie fails. The audience wants to see Green Lantern, not an actor dressed up as Green Lantern. And the film just doesn’t deliver the goods.
Speaking of not delivering the goods, what’s up with this Blu-ray transfer?! When I look at the muddy, dark presentation of Green Lantern I can’t help but recall the studio head’s quote about making the sequel more like Nolan‘s The Dark Knight and that maybe, someone got the idea that cranking down the brightness on this bad boy might be a great first step at righting the wrongs of the film. If that’s the case, it’s an extremely dumb idea. The one thing the movie had going for it in the theatre was it’s look – bright green and alien when at its best. Now, most of the film is cast in shadow, which in turn throws off colours resulting in some pretty funky skin tones. What a shame. This could have at least been a fantastic Blu-ray disc instead of another case of the studio not having a clue how to tackle this character. The good news here is that the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track kicks all kinds of ass, delivering booming lows through your sub and tons of spacial effects through the surround channels. Finally, something to get excited about!
Aside from a kicking, lossless audio track, the other reason for fans to be excited about the Green Lantern Blu-ray is the reasonable bounty of special features included on the disc, best of which is Warner’s famous Maximum Movie Mode, in this case, featuring DCE Chief Creative Officer and Green Lantern comic scribe Geoff Johns in the host’s chair. This isn’t the MMM at its best though, the sort where directors like Zack Snyder step into frame, the film receding onto screens behind them as they fast forward, rewind and zoom in on small moments to blow out and examine the details of their movie making process. This is more like a run of the mill picture-in-picture track, with pop-up info, behind the scenes clips and nuggets of interviews. It’s still good stuff, just not quite as cool as what Warner has done in the past. The 47-minutes of ‘Focus Points‘ featurettes are also available to be watched outside of the MMM.
The other significant feature of note is the inclusion of the Extended Cut of the film, which adds back the prologue scenes that set up critical character relationships and detail the moments where Hal lost his father. In my opinion, it was a big mistake to cut this sequence. The final, theatrical cut of the film uses scenes from it in flashback when Hal is in jeopardy early on in the film (the Extended version of the film foolishly leaves them cut in at full length and would have been better served simply flashing images of Hal and his dad, since we’ve now watched the entire scene play out.)
NOTE: The US version of the Blu-ray disc includes a digital copy of the film via the brand new (and apparently hinky) Ultra Violet streaming service. The Canadian disc that I reviewed, which is otherwise identical in every way, was intended to include a standard digital copy of the theatrical cut of the film but due to a manufacturing error was left out. I haven’t heard about a fix for this yet but I’ll let you know as soon as Warner announces one.
Special Features:
- Theatrical Film
- Extended Cut
- Maximum Movie
- Mode with Picture in Picture Pods
- The Universe According to Green Lantern
- Ryan Reynolds Becomes Green Lantern
- Justice League #1 Digital Comic
- Additional Scenes
- Preview of Green Lantern: The Animated Series
- BD-Live
- Access code for Sinestro Corp Batman Skin on the Warner Bros. Interactive video game Batman: Arkham City
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