Black Panther Advances The Marvel Cinematic Universe Surprisingly Well!

The Good: Cerebral moments, Decent continuity, Good performances, Female characters
The Bad: Very basic plot progression, Some under-developed characters
The Basics: Black Panther does a good job of making a fairly-original feeling film for the Marvel Cinematic Universe . . . when it is not falling into the familiar conceits.


The Marvel Cinematic Universe is, wisely, evolving beyond the most obvious and familiar icons from Marvel Comics and it is a risky venture for the wildly successful film franchise. Fans of Marvel Comics and the films based upon them have a pretty wide stable to draw from, but the characters who are most popular are most popular and enduring for a reason, so as the MCU evolves, the fanbase is being challenged and highlighting lesser-known (in the collective consciousness, at least) characters is a risky endeavor. Arguably the greatest risk the film studio has taken - the television portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is well-acquainted with risk, whatwith making the series' Agent Carter, The Inhumans and Iron Fist . . . and finding shocking success with the obscure character Jessica Jones - thus far is with the film Black Panther. While Ant-Man (reviewed here!) mitigated some of its risk by playing with a popular genre - the heist movie - Black Panther takes a much riskier approach by blending a tormented family drama with a conflict of a society in crisis.

Black Panther is intriguing in that it marks a major turning point within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. More than the continuity aspects within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther is intriguing because it does not utilize most of the obvious conceits of the action-adventure superhero films that have dominated the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, one of the issues that does not take long to manifest within the film is that it is horribly mis-named. Black Panther would have been more accurately entitled "Wakanda" or Black Panthers; the film is vastly more about the setting than the protagonist or antagonist.

Indeed, writer Joe Robert Cole and writer/director Ryan Coogler seem to go out of their way to smartly explore the setting of Wakanda in amazing detail and with a clever eye for subtle cultural commentary. Black Panther is set in the fictional African nation of Wakanda, which has incredibly futuristic technology and is hidden from the outside world by a massive holographic field. The country's largess comes from the presence of a massive reserve of Vibranium, the hardest element on Earth, deposited under the surface thanks to a meteor that crashed to Earth in ancient times. The Vibranium deposits allowed four of the five local tribes within Wakanda to unite and create a stable, technologically-advanced society that featured its own super hero, the Black Panther.

But beyond the technological superiority of Wakanda, Wakanda is characterized by a strong sensibility of African style. Wakanda is well-defined by a visual sensibility that illustrates costume and art style that are not dominated by European sensibilities. As a result, buildings have curved ramps instead of stairs, bright colors dominate the walls and outfits, and weaponry is spear and energy-based, as opposed to advancements in gunpowder-based firearms. Wakanda is a colorful place that blends advanced technology with tribal artwork, lip plates, and body types that are not at all monolithic (there are several films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where a viewer would be hard pressed to try to find someone who did not look like they could be a lead in a film and/or a model).

Opening in 1992 in Compton, a Wakandan spy who has stolen Vibranium from Wakanda is confronted by King T'Chaka - the Black Panther at the time. Flashing forward to the present day, a week after the death of T'Chaka in Captain America: Civil War (reviewed here!), T'Challa is being formally installed as King of Wakanda. After a brief challenge, T'Challa becomes king. One of the first challenges he faces in the dual roles of King of Wakanda and Black Panther is the theft of a Wakandan artifact from a London museum and the resurfacing of Ulysses Klaue, a mercenary who stole Vibranium from Wakanda and has since eluded capture or justice there.

Determined to bring Klaue to justice after thirty years, T'Challa and his guards journey to South Korea where an American is buying the Wakandan artifact from Klaue. T'Challa finds that the buyer is the C.I.A., in the form of Everett Ross. While they disagree on who should apprehend Klaue, the point rapidly becomes moot as Okoye is made and a fight breaks out in the casino the mission has taken them to and Klaue is revealed to be armed (literally) with Wakandan weaponry. Ross captures Klaue and begins an interrogation of him, but Klaue is rescued by Erik Killmonger. In the process, Ross is shot saving Nakia and T'Challa makes the decision to save his life by bringing him back to Wakanda. Shortly thereafter, Killmonger arrives on the border of Wakanda with a surprising gift and a challenge to the throne. Deposing T'Challa, Killmonger begins to pursue a radically-different agenda for Wakanda.

Black Panther works when it tells the political story of two potential leaders who each have a different view of their nation and its relationship with the world at large. Erik Killmonger, raised in the U.S. and trained by the C.I.A., sees the plight of black people around the world and wants to use Wakanda's resources to liberate blacks, advance Africa, and dominate the world. Killmonger is one man, essentially, working alone with a vision that would overturn the world order and have Wakanda conquer.

The most interesting aspect of Black Panther on the character front is that Killmonger's foil is not a single character; it is the idea represented by T'Challa in the way he governs. T'Challa - despite being a king who reports to a council that features representatives of the four tribes that participate in Wakanda's government - has a strongly democratic idealism; he is guided by views and agendas from his scientifically-minded sister (Shuri), the Captain Of The Guard (Okoye), his old friend W'Kabi, and his ex-, a spy who is bent on stopping the oppression of women throughout Africa, Nakia. T'Challa is an interesting mix of being open-minded to opposing viewpoints and being set in his way. In many ways, Black Panther is about T'Challa slowly incorporating the various ideas he is presented with into a new plan for Wakanda.

Much like Captain America: Winter Soldier (reviewed here!) was essentially a spy thriller set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ant-Man was a heist flick in the shared universe, Black Panther is a cerebral political drama that is masquerading as an action-adventure movie. In fact, the forced action moments are often disappointing because of the way they feel entirely incongruent with the rest of the movie. The car chase sequence is especially banal. While things like Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Doctor Strange provide Black Panther with continuity cover for the film's mysticism (both Killmonger and T'Challa both commune with the dead, but they do so from a specific place in ways that could be explained as either portals or simple psychological revelations).

While Klaue is outfitted with an awesome weapon that is utilized in a clever way for his part in Black Panther, many of the conceits that follow the plot formulas for the action-adventure film fall flat in the film. T'Challa's body being tossed off a cliff, for example, simply leaves the genre fan waiting for him to pop back up in the narrative.

But the foils between T'Challa's father issues and Killmonger's father issues play out well and create an interesting character drama that the viewer wishes was explored more. The values of Wakanda are detailed well and the political differences between T'Challa and Killmonger, Nakia and Okoye, Ross and Klaue make for an intriguing story of political theory disguised in a science fiction/fantasy setting.

The acting in Black Panther is good. The performers are all convincing in their roles, but given how few of them I was familiar with prior to the film, it is hard for me to write more. Andy Serkis (Klaue) is well-cast, but his giggles are reminiscent of his most famous performances and Martin Freeman's biggest performance challenge seems to be maintaining an American accent throughout (which he does well). Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, and Letitia Wright are all good, but most aren't given a lot that allows them to show off much range or greatness. Indeed, Boseman's best moment comes at the film's climax when T'Challa amends what could be the film's most sexist and demanding moment into a request. After a film populated by strong women and men who accept that as the norm, that moment stands out and after a moment of disgust at the writers, the film turns back to its delightfully progressive direction.

Black Panther is worthwhile and it is a solid addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it could have been more by focusing on what made it original, as opposed to trying to force it to conform to the familiar paradigms.

8/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2018 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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At Least It’s Not “Home Alone In The White House:” Olympus Has Fallen

The Good: Decent performances, Attempts at character/character development, Effects/tension.
The Bad: Increasingly absurd and predictable plot
The Basics: Shakier than many might want to admit, Olympus Has Fallen is engaging . . . so long as one shuts off their brain.


Sometime, admittedly, a work suffers in my estimation because of when I encounter it. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is true. In the case of Olympus Has Fallen I feel less bad about my bias. My wife and I have been watching Babylon 5 (reviewed here!) nightly and that show features a cast of characters who tend to have a sense of personal ethics and a backbone. One of the themes of the show is the value of sacrificing the individual to service the greater good. Apparently, the writers of Olympus Has Fallen either never watched Babylon 5 or did not embrace the themes.

It’s too bad, because Babylon 5 is quite a bit smarter than Olympus Has Fallen and I spent much of the film waiting for one of the characters to make things easy and thus defuse the entire situation. Up until the film’s last ten minutes, a perfectly reasonable solution to the hostage situation the film focuses on was for any one of the four relevant hostages to sacrifice themselves and thus effectively neuter the hostage-takers. In fact, the President makes things more dangerous for the members of his staff whom he encourages to surrender!

At Christmastime, the American President, Banjamin Asher and his family are headed to an event when their motorcade is attacked and the first lady is killed. A year and a half later, the secret service agent (Mike Banning) who was blamed for failing to protect her is eager to return to White House Security. Asher has the South Koreans to the White House to talk about the growing nuclear threat from North Korea. At that time, the White House is attacked and in securing the President and his guests in the subterranean bunker below the White House, the President and Secret Service inadvertently lock themselves in with the masterminds behind the attack. The North Korean terrorist Kang, who had worked with the U.S. as a South Korean diplomat to carry out his acts of terrorism and the traitorous American, Forbes, take the President, Defense Secretary and others hostage in order to get the codes to a nuclear weapons deactivation system known as Cerberus.

While the President holds out against torture and allows his brutalized staff to comply to protect them, the Speaker Of The House, Trumbull, is elevated to the Presidency to deal with the current crisis. Even as Kang and his forces work over the staff for the Cerberus codes, Banning infiltrates the wreckage of the White House to find the President’s son, Connor, to prevent him from being used against the President. As the effort to save the hostages and avert all-out war with North Korea comes from Trumbull’s apparent willingness to accede to Kang’s demands to remove U.S. troops from South Korea and the Pacific, Banning acts as eyes and ears inside the besieged White House.

The tragedy of Olympus Has Fallen is not that it depicts an incredibly brutal series of events (there is no entertainment value to watching Melissa Leo’s Secretary Of Defense McMillan getting brutalized), it is in that most of it is entirely avoidable based on a single act of sacrifice. But, more than that, on the character front, none of them are presented as being smart enough to realize that. Olympus Has Fallen features the obvious and familiar dichotomy of politicians being spineless jerks who fold and are generally unprincipled and only soldiers, secret service officers, etc. (who have a decidedly more militaristic bent) can hold out against violent adversaries. Accepting the conceit of the Cerberus device, which had the activation codes split up among four people, it makes perfect sense that either all four people would never be allowed in the same place at the same time (much like one of the members of the Cabinet being kept away from the State Of The Union Address in order to protect the line of succession) or, barring that, the moment one of the four people with the codes realizing what Kang had planned to commit an act of sacrifice.

So, I was a bit disappointed.

To be fair to Olympus Has Fallen, the film did not take the most obvious plot progressions it could have. I kept waiting for, late in the film when all else had failed, Banning’s partner, Leah, to get abducted and thus force him to stand down. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Still, most of Olympus Has Fallen progresses in an obvious and pretty brutal way.

What is better-than-average is the acting. Gerard Butler is credible as Mike Banning and he, predictably, gets through the action sequences exceptionally well. More than that, he actually displays his charisma (which I usually refer to as “alleged charisma”) in the early scenes of the film, making the character seem likable and smart enough to be a credible secret service agent. To his credit, Dylan McDermott – who as recently as five years ago would have been credibly up for the role of Banning – plays Forbes with a character-appropriate level of dispassion and conniving, never hinting that he could have been the film’s action hero.

Rick Yune is decent as Kang, though he plays the most horrible version of a patriot. Kang is calculating, but comes in with a plan and an efficient demeanor which Yune plays perfectly. At the opposite end of the spectrum is Melissa Leo as McMillan. Leo’s performance is difficult to watch as her character is pretty horribly brutalized by the terrorists. It’s impossible not to watch Melissa Leo in Olympus Has Fallen and not have one’s stomach tighten in disgust; so realistically does she portray getting tormented. Aaron Eckhart is appropriately presidential in his bearing as President Benjamin Asher.

But, I suspect the reason Morgan Freeman is getting so much high praise for his performance in Olympus Has Fallen is that, in the role of Trumbull, he seems anything but Presidential. It’s hard to imagine Morgan Freeman as not being commanding, powerful, confident and smart enough to lead the free world, but he makes Trumbull uncertain and shaky at the beginning and the performance is a wonderful one because it goes against any number of other performances we have seen from Freeman (or interviews with the actor himself).

Still, it is not enough to save Olympus Has Fallen from “average” territory. Go in with low expectations and it is fine, but for enlightened folk, it is a much harder sell.

For other works with Melissa Leo, please check out my reviews of:
Flight
Red State
Welcome To The Rileys
The L Word - Season Two
Hide And Seek
Homicide: Life On The Street

5.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Eh, On The Action-Adventure Front: Mr. And Mrs. Smith Fizzles.

The Good: Everything looks good
The Bad: Lack of convincing characters or acting, Predictable plot twists
The Basics: Unfit for consumption by clever individuals, Mr. And Mrs. Smith is simply another Hollywood action-adventure with nothing truly to recommend it.


Sometimes we sit down to watch a movie with the hope, the barest hope, that it will not be as terrible as we suspect it can be. Mr. And Mrs. Smith, if you want the short answer, is just as terrible as you might expect of a big-budget Hollywood, action adventure movie staring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Unlike the far better Jersey Girl, which suffered because of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez's relationship off-camera, this piece of cinematic garbage apparently benefited from Jolie and Pitt's off-camera whatever.

John Smith and Jane Smith are bored with their marriage and in counseling to work on their problems. There, they recount what led them to counseling; they both learned that the other was lying to them about the same thing, in fact. Both John and Jane are hired assassins working for different companies. When one of Jane's missions is blown by John, he becomes her target and the two set out destroying just about everything in order to get to one another.

Along the way, they learn how much of their relationship was built on lies and how much genuine feeling they have for one another. And it all resolves itself in a feel-good Hallmark movie-of-the-week type way.

It's just crap. Save yourself the time and money. Better yet, watch a decent action adventure, one with brains. Spend a little more and get the first season of Alias on DVD. That's a vastly better use of your time and money. And I can say that without even knowing you. You can do better than this.

The best thing about Mr. And Mrs. Smith is that it looks good. The people are unnaturally attractive, their hair doesn't get messed up or singed off when giant explosions go off near them, and the explosions themselves look great on the DVD. This is a movie where things look good and Doug Liman, the director, hopes that will be enough.

He's wrong. First off, Simon Kinberg, the writer of this movie, should be forced to turn in his WGA card and spend the next five years selling ice cream. There was not a line of redeeming dialogue in this entire movie. The characters are utterly flat and it makes no sense whatsoever that they would spend minute after minute recounting all of the lies between them and then conclude that they should be together. This is stupid even for Hollywood fare.

The acting is all-around terrible as well. Brad Pitt supports the notion that he is simply good looking and can't act. There is none of his brilliance from 12 Monkeys (reviewed here!), none of his humor or charm from his guest appearance on Friends, nothing but a guy in a suit playing a part Keeanu Reeves could have covered just as insightfully. Angelina Jolie and Vince Vaughn (Pitt's sidekick and best friend in the movie) are dull and cringeworthy unfunny, respectively. Vaughn's appearances on screen are enough to make the viewer grab the remote to fast forward through his banal, predictable jokes and phrases.

The plot is predictable and all of the reversals that are executed, we've seen before in better works. I should try to say more that's bad about this film, but that's it. That's all there is. You have a terrible script with an inane plot, lousy dialogue delivered by actors who either can't or aren't performing and you have a lousy movie. This is it.

For other works with Michelle Monaghan, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Source Code
Mission: Impossible III
Constantine

2.5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my Movie Review Index Page for a complete, organized list of my movie reviews!

© 2012, 2006 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Master Criminals Vie For The Perfect Heist In The Score!

The Good: Excellent acting, Good characters, Generally well-executed plot
The Bad: Disappointing (obvious) twist at the end, Disappointing underuse of Angela Bassett
The Basics: In yet another crime caper, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton give great performances as criminals competing to be masters.


Somewhere along the line in U.S. society, a line became not only blurred, but completely smeared. If you look at early movies, there were a line between good and evil and all of the movies were about how good triumphed over evil. Often, those old movies had the good guys behaving almost identically to the bad guys (punching people out, yelling at innocents to get information, etc.) to triumph, but you always knew who the good guys were and you were always rooting for them. Then, there came movies where the bad guys were more interesting, delicious even, than the good guys and we hated the ends of the movies because it didn't make sense that good could beat such an excellent bad guy. Somewhere in the nineties, continuing through today, movies started to focus on bad guys solely and we started rooting for the most human or likable bad guy without actually judging the quality of how bad they were.

The Score is one such movie, about a loose confederation of career criminals, led by Max. Max owes some serious money, so he hires Nick Wells to perform one last heist for him, a golden scepter stuck in a customs office. Max uses Jack Teller, a young criminal looking to score his first big theft. Jack's angle is that he has access to the customs office as he has been posing for weeks as a mentally retarded janitor there. Nick, eager to escape his life of crime and settle down once and for all as a nightclub owner, reluctantly takes the job and finds himself in a crossfire of lies and deceit.

Yes, it's another bank robber-type movie. Here, though, there's no moralizing over the actions of the characters, outside Diane (played by Angela Bassett), they are all morally corrupt thieves, hackers and liars. Outside the context of the movie, it's hard to like any of them (Diane being difficult to like because she is such a nonentity in the film).

But that's the power of The Score. Watching this movie, we willingly suspend our disbelief and our cultural values of property rights to root for Nick. We want to believe that he wants to make good and we come to see him rather early on as the most benevolent of thieves in a world populated by criminals. In short, he's the one to root for because he seems to have some aspirations of doing right and going legitimate.

Indeed, Nick is likable throughout the movie, played by Robert De Niro as tender and genuine in his scenes with Bassett's Diane. De Niro reminds us how great an actor he can be by making Nick different from his other characters. This is not a loud, angry performance, nor should it be; his character is both cunning and feeling his age. De Niro provides us with a far more reasonable interpretation of an aging person and a criminal who has survived so long without being caught than he would had he played him pretty much any other way.

The person who steals the show (largely because Marlon Brando looks like he's ready to die in every scene he's in in this movie) is Edward Norton. Norton does an amazing job playing a character playing a character. It seems like every ten reviews, I run into a story that requires a character to play another person, but the repetition here is certainly worthwhile; Norton quite adequately plays Jack playing a mentally retarded person without ever making the viewer feel it is Norton playing a mentally retarded person. That's skillful acting. Norton's use of body language and voice create an impressive alter ego that makes us believe in the will of Jack.

The only real problem, then, is in the resolution. There is a surprise twist at the end, but it is not a surprise to those of us who have respect for the way the world works. If we are to believe that Nick has survived so long without being caught, the end is more inevitable than surprising. Still, the reactions he receives are fun to watch and the movie is quite enjoyable.

While not living up to the caliber of The Usual Suspects, The Score easily engages the viewer and makes them root for one criminal over another. Too bad there's not more of a place for the good woman (Angela Bassett, whose part as Diane is miniscule) here.

For other works Frank Oz is involved in, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Monsters Inc.
Bowfinger
The Muppet Christmas Carol
The Star Wars Saga
Labyrinth

7/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Movie Review Index Page by clicking here!

© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Arguably The Most Anticipated Summer Blockbuster, Green Lantern Is Exciting And Fun!

The Good: Amazing special effects, Good character development, Wonderful acting, Smart characters.
The Bad: Rushed quality/editing, Underuse of Corps.
The Basics: Green Lantern arrives and no one is more surprised than I to discover that it is not the best movie of the year (or even this Summer Blockbuster Season), though it entertains thoroughly.


Superhero movies have a lot to live up to since The Dark Knight (reviewed here!). The Dark Knight illustrated that super hero films could be smart, psychologically deep and entertaining and while I've remained in the minority in my belief that Watchmen (reviewed here!) did all that and more, I can recognize that many people are still waiting for the film that will top The Dark Knight or serve to fill the same niche in their collection while providing them something new. This summer, the DC blockbuster in a Marvel-heavy summer is Green Lantern. And after all of the hype, I am pleased to say Green Lantern comes close, even if it does not quite live up to the impossible standards fans might have had for it.

Green Lantern is a bigger superhero film and it reflects a story that is much bigger. Going into the screening tonight, I figured the movie could only disappoint me if two things happened: 1. Ryan Reynolds made a joke out of the role of Hal Jordan and the Green Lanterns and 2. Sinestro, who has been shown in all of the promotional materials for the movie as a Green Lantern, turned to the Yellow Side. I'm not against ambitious moviemaking, but with it well-leaked that Hector Hammond and Parallax were going to be villains in Green Lantern, adding the fall of Sinestro into this first volume seemed like it would be overkill. Fortunately, Reynolds manages to not make Green Lantern the laughing stock of the cinematic superhero universe. As for the other, my stomach tightened when a yellow ring is forged, though the creative staff managed to not make the ultimate mistake with rushing Sinestro's turn.

All I truly know about Green Lantern, the comic book upon which the film Green Lantern is based comes from reading the Blackest Night Saga. But the whole idea of the power rings are related quite succinctly in Blackest Night: Tales Of The Corps (reviewed here). The basic premise of the Green Lantern Corps, though, is that the Green Lanterns are interstellar police officers monitoring sectors of space from threats to entire worlds. The Green Lanterns derive their power from willpower and with that basic understanding, I felt both up to speed going into Green Lantern and not tied to the specifics of the Green Lantern mythos. In other words, this is a very pure review of the film Green Lantern. Fortunately for those who do not have the background in the comic book, the film Green Lantern adequately explains all of the principles. And for those with more familiarity with the source material, there are in-jokes like Carol's code name being "sapphire" that fans will appreciate.

To protect the universe, the Guardians divided the universe into 3600 sectors, each with a Green Lantern responsible for patrolling and protecting the sector. One Green Lantern, Abin Sur, was responsible for imprisoning the ruthless, fear-based creature Parallax on Ryat. But there, a guardian becomes possessed by Parallax and it kills a team of Lanterns and begins to hunt Abin Sur. In an altercation, Parallax wounds Abin Sur and the Green Lantern escapes to the nearest planet in Sector 2814 to find his replacement. On Earth, test pilot Hal Jordan is engaged in a test with two drone planes and his human partner, Carol Ferris, where he manages to defeat the Ferris Industry Sabre 3 drones, at the cost of his plane. Reeling from the likely loss of an important contract, Hal Jordan is on his own when he is engulfed in the green light from Abin Sur's ring and Jordan meets Abin Sur who gives him the green ring of power before dying.

While Hal Jordan begins to learn about the powers associated with the green lantern ring, the Green Lantern Sinestro appeals to the Guardians of Oa to allow him to take a team to attempt to destroy Parallax. As Hal Jordan trains on Oa under Tomar-Re and Kilowog, on Earth Hector Hammond, the reclusive son of a powerful Senator, is brought in to autopsy the body of Abin Sur. While he does, a fragment of Parallax infests Hector, which causes him to develop powers like the ability to read minds and puts the man in touch with the main body of Parallax. As the Guardians contemplate Sinestro's desperate plea for an ultimate weapon, Parallax zooms in on Earth with only Hal Jordan standing to save the planet.

As one might guess, Green Lantern is a big summer special effects-driven film. Right off the bat, it is worth noting all of the special effects truly are incredible and this is one of the most visually spectacular films I have seen in a long time. The characters that are virtual look good, there are seamless transitions between Ryan Reynolds and his digital counterpart and the constructs Hal Jordan imagines into being look cool. Green Lantern would have been d.o.a. if the effects looked cheesy or if Hal Jordan, whom the ring chose, did not adapt to creating compelling or interesting constructs with his willpower. As the movie goes on, Hal Jordan's imagination and willpower - in combination with a rocking special effects team - develop cooler and cooler constructs and they look great.

So, why am I not absolutely bowled over by Green Lantern? The main problem with the film is that it is rushed. The story is rushed and the editing is poorly done, lending the feeling that the movie was put together, more than it flows. So, for example, the viewer does not see Abin Sur's ship crash on Earth. Instead, we see him escape Parallax, then we see the crashed ship in the water and Abin Sur sending the ring bubble out to find his successor. I'm not saying the audience is not smart enough to realize Abin Sur has crashed, but the movie would have flowed better had that transition been included. Hector Hammond is abruptly dropped into the film and while the connection between him, Carol Ferris and Hal Jordan comes out, some backstory that included all three would have been nice.

And while the Yellow Power Ring makes its appearance, that, too, feels rushed. Hopes that there would be a sequel, Green Lantern: Fall Of Sinestro wherein the complicated struggle Sinestro has as he is overcome with the power of fear in a complex character study, are dashed during a scene midway through the closing credits (waiting until the very end of the credits only yields an advertisement for Green Lantern graphic novels. The only saving grace of this rushed scene is that it is entirely out of context: the tease could be for a scene midway through the next movie, for all we no. Yes, there is still the potential for a sequel laced with character depth, not just a lame conversion of the most powerful Green Lantern seen in the film by curiosity.

Fortunately, on of the real strengths of Green Lantern comes in the characters. Hal Jordan is cocky, but likable and all of the characters are reasonably smart and have some adult sensibilities to them. While Hal Jordan struggles to rise to the occasion, the whole point of the initially pointless plane testing scene that is the first big sequence in Green Lantern becomes to make it plausible that Jordan has a fearless quality to him. The testing scene also allows the viewer to witness the key backstory element for Hal Jordan's characterization as we see him lose his father. The strength of Hal's father lives on in him.

In this regard, Hector Hammond makes for a compelling foil. Hector's father is very much alive, but is so disappointed in his xenobiologist son that he keeps Hector at arm's length. Moreover, Hal Jordan's power comes from his willpower and Hector is pretty much the ultimate villain. Hector Hammond is not a villain so much as he is collateral damage, a bystander who is randomly infected with the evil Parallax. From that, his body begins to undergo horrible changes that are outside his control and while he manifests similar powers to Hal Jordan, his are powered by the fear others have for him.

Even as the transformation happens, Hector Hammond asks the right questions and this is the reason I suspect this movie might age better for me than the impression I had from my first viewing. Hector is smart enough to understand that he and Hal have been given great power, but he cannot understand how their lives are diverging so much. Carol Ferris is similarly smart, recognizing Hal Jordan despite the fact that his cheekbones are covered. Carol does something few people do in any movie, much less superhero films; she effectively denounces the binary view of the protagonist. Ferris observes the immaturity of treating the world in absolutes and that moment, very early on in the film, is very refreshing and disarming. Even Hal Jordan's best friend is smart enough to realize that Hal Jordan is developing some serious powers.

While all of this is good, the scenes on Oa are far too brief and Tomar-Re and Kilowog are essentially relegated to being cameo appearances and Sinestro is not given nearly enough time to develop. Even in their limited roles, Geoffrey Rush (Tomar-Re), Michael Clark Duncan (Kilowog) and Mark Strong (Sinestro) are distinctively performed to make one believe they are higher beings than the human Hal Jordan. Similarly, Peter Sarsgaard is great as Hector, with his ability to emote so much through just his eyes. Blake Lively plays Carol Ferris as smart and sassy enough to hold her own in all of her scenes.

But it comes down to Ryan Reynolds to sell Green Lantern and he lands it. First, Reynolds makes Hal Jordan likable and he does it without his usual smirk and slouching. Instead, he is boisterous when Hal is piloting and he is quiet and human when he is on his own. The subtle scene wherein Hal and Hector converse shows off Reynolds' serious abilities and helps to define Hal Jordan as something other than a dumb jock type. As important, Reynolds manages to play the extraordinary Green Lantern in a completely different way from how he played the extraordinary Wade in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (reviewed here!).

Green Lantern is fast-paced, even to its own detriment, and while it did not leave me feeling as excited as I did after seeing The Dark Knight the first time, the potential for the franchise looks good and all of the pieces are in place for a grand continued adventure.

[NOTE: Having seen the film twice now, spend the extra money for the 3-D version; this film uses that exceptionally well!]

For other live-action DC superhero films, please check out my reviews of:
Superman Returns
Batman Begins
Jonah Hex
Catwoman

7.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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