I don’t need to tell you that Green Lantern isn’t a good film.
I know that, you know that, the nosy neighbor down the street knows that, and especially–especially–star Ryan Reynolds knows that. His disdain for this film is hilariously petty, going as so far to make darkly hilarious joke about it in a post-credits scene for Deadpool 2.
However, I do have this sort of strange fondness for Green Lantern. I went to see the film when it was in theaters back in 2011, and my eleven-year-old self loved it. So much so that I ended up rewatching it constantly when it was on TV. That all changed several years ago when I rewatched it for the first time in a while and I had an epiphany: it’s not good. Like…at all.
But I still had a fondness for it! I guess it was at that point that I realized that Green Lantern was my guilty pleasure film, and having just recently rewatched it again a couple of weeks ago, that status remains.
The main protagonist of Green Lantern is test pilot Hal Jordan (Reynolds). Hal’s whole shtick is that he’s a cocky guy with a devil-may-care attitude…mixed in with childhood trauma that is the number one feature of being a superhero. Said trauma is that Hal’s fearless father, Martin, died in an explosion, and Hal struggles with living up to Martin’s example (especially on the “fearless” part). Now, when he eventually becomes a member of the Green Lantern Corps–think of them as an intergalactic police force that can create energy-based constructs from rings powered by the energy of will–that creates a huge problem: Green Lanterns are meant to be fearless. How can you be a Green Lantern when you’re afraid?
Well, that’s basically the crux of Hal’s character arc. He’s too afraid to be a Lantern, that beats him up for a bit, he becomes a public hero, tries to get with his childhood friend, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), he fights some bad guys, and lo and behold, he overcomes his fear! Sounds great, right?
It isn’t.
On paper, that sounds like an effective arc for your protagonist. In execution, however, it just falls apart. Hal is such a boring character that I found myself rooting for an entirely different person altogether: Sinestro (Mark Strong). Now, unlike Hal, Sinestro is the Green Lantern top dog, having overcome his fear entirely and leads the Corps with confidence and strength. Heck, he connects to the central villain, the monster Parallax (voiced by Clancy Brown), by attempting to stop it and even gets a shiny new Yellow Lantern ring in a post-credits scene that will definitely lead to the inevitable Green Lantern 2/Green Lantern Part II/Green Lantern: Yellow and Green and not go anywhere whatsoever because this film bombed at the box office.
But I digress. Let’s go back to Hal. His arc is about as interesting as room temperature Pepsi because it’s just flat. There’s this almost amorphous quality to it that it doesn’t work. He’s just…scared, but of what exactly? Living up to his father? The film barely touches on that. Being a Green Lantern? Sure, makes sense, and yeah, Sinestro kicked his butt during a training scene–which would surely ruin one’s confidence–but he’s still new to the whole gig. Commitment? Maybe. Carol does chastise Hal about not committing to a possible relationship years prior. I feel that if the film actually took the notion of Hal’s fear and made it a tangible thing by focusing on something in particular–like the commitment angle, as it would’ve connected to him becoming a Green Lantern–then I think it would’ve worked much better. (Heck, that also could’ve connected with the idea of living of up to his father, too!)
As I mentioned in the previous section, Hal fights some bad guys, one of them being the monster Parallax. However, I want to save my discussion on that monster for a bit. I actually want to start with the bad guy that this section is named after: Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard).
Now, Hector, by all intents and purposes, is a loser.
Seriously, he’s a loser. (And don’t take my word for it, either. There’s a scene in the film where one of his students calls him that.)
Despite that, he’s pretty intelligent in his own right. So much so that he’s recruited by Amanda Waller (a criminally wasted Angela Bassett) to perform an autopsy on the alien body of Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) after he was killed by Parallax. This autopsy results in Parallax’s…fear essence (?) to infect Hector and give him telepathic and telekinetic abilities. As a result, Hector proceeds to go off the deep end, murder his father (Tim Robbins), grow a giant, mutated head, attempt to kill Carol and Hal several times, and be unceremoniously killed by Parallax. Guy’s had a tough break.
Shame that he’s such a bland “antagonist.” Hector has barely any character development outside of the fact that his father despises him–hence the patricide–and that he was in love with Carol from “the moment he saw her.” That’s it. He’s not memorable, he’s not malicious, he’s not menacing, et cetera, et cetera.
Honestly, Hector’s inclusion in this film could’ve worked if he was the only antagonist. By having Parallax be the main villain, there’s just not enough time to fully develop Hector and give him his own arc. (In a way, this actually works in the film’s disfavor: both him and Hal are bland, boring foils to each other.)
Onto the main event…Parallax.
His whole deal is that he was a former Guardian of the Universe–they’re the founders of the Green Lantern Corps–who became fixated on mastering the power of fear by entering the “forbidden chamber.” Unsurprisingly, this blew up in the Guardian’s face as he became infected by the fear energy and mutated into Parallax. He was hidden on a planet called Ryut by Abin Sur for an unspecified period of time before escaping and killing Sur. This leads to Sinestro and the Corps attempting to stop him, only for Hector’s infection on Earth to draw him there instead. This, in turn, leads to Hal defending the planet from Parallax and successfully defeating him by *checks notes* punching him with a large, green fist and launching him into the Sun.
Yes, that last part actually happens.
In short, much like Hector, Parallax is a terrible antagonist. In fact, I’d say that he’s an even worse antagonist! At least, there was a (meager) attempt to give Hector some character, but Parallax is just a gross, CGI monster. (The cherry on top is that it’s a huge waste of Clancy Brown’s voice acting talents. You’re telling me that you get an actor of his caliber to say generic, evil lines that you’re not going to remember once the credits roll???)
Honestly, knowing of Parallax’s history in the comics–especially knowing that Hal took his moniker at one point during the mid-1990s–this character would’ve made a great villain for the end of a trilogy. You could’ve slowly built up to him, had him lurking in the background, all that jazz.
But alas, that is not what we got. What a shame.
If you’d like to read my review on Letterboxd, you can click on the link down below. Thank you for reading!
Sources Used
Sinestro Post-credits scene | Green Lantern Extended cut
Green Lantern #4 Movie CLIP – Is That What I Think It Is? (2011) HD – YouTube
Hal Jordan vs Parallax | Green Lantern Extended cut #youtubeshorts #youtube #ytshorts – YouTube