I Left My Heart on Oa

Spoiler Alert: Screw this movie.

I say that as a former reader of DC's Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, and even my dad's old issues of Green Arrow/Green Lantern. Decades of rich storytelling, cosmic mythology, and intergalactic heroics ruined in two hours of franchise-building, quadrant-pandering, and story-by-committee.

I could literally hear the different timbre of multiple keyboards being struck by the writers. That's how much of a mash this movie is. No piece fits with the other. No piece is strong in and of itself. It tries to be all things to all audiences, and fails. Like a cinematic equivalent of Hershey's Take 5. Instead of being a good adventure movie, it's a date movie, a douche a-hole buddy comedy, a Cronenberg body horror flick, and a Spielbergian sci-fi extravaganza. Each one of these movies suck.

Hal Jordan's biggest moments in this movie are disrupted and undercut. Even the key realization of overcoming fear being more important than feigned fearlessness is made by Carol Ferris, not Hal Jordan himself. The flashback scenes are bungled to the point of absurdity. Hal crashes a plane because he can't stop thinking about his dad, who died in a crash decades prior. Why does he think about his dad? Because he looks at a picture of him in his cockpit. It's a wonder he doesn't crash his plane every time he flies, because all he has to do is LOOK AT THE PICTURE AGAIN.

Things happen in this movie for no reason. People say things for no reason. It really hurts me to slam this movie, THIS MOVIE, as if it's a bad joke. I've enjoyed these comics ever since I was a kid, back when I swore they would never make a film based on Green Lantern. Not even Daredevil was this bad, but at least "Daredevil" didn't feel like Daredevil. "Green Lantern" is a Green Lantern movie through and through, steeped in the mythology and storyline. And it makes a vomit sandwich out of it all.

It would have been better if this movie had never been made. Forget about Guy Gardner, or John Stewart, or the rebirth of the Corps, or Blackest Night, or even the Justice League. All that is over and done with. This film validates skipping the so-called B-list characters. It justifies the fatigue and cynicism that audiences have with superheroes, and with summer movies. It justifies waiting for video, waiting for Netflix, and flat-out avoidance of comic books in general.

Screw this movie.