I rewatched that one this afternoon and I found that I actually liked it better than on the first viewing. Yes, it's fairly bad in a lot of places, especially the beginning and the end (both of which are generally important for a movie to succeed). But the middle was pretty solid most of the way through, and ultimately I thought it worked as entertainment, though it could certainly have been improved on.
Pros: Great visual effects, stirring music, decent romantic chemistry between Reynolds and Lively.
Cons: Significant plot holes, too much Hollywood-comedy in the early Hal Jordan scenes, human main villain is a dumpy-looking weirdo who screams like a little girl, alien characters other than Sinestro aren't very satisfying, end-credits scene completely contradicts the plot climax for no real reason.
Toss-ups: Lack of technobabble is potentially either a pro or a con, depending on how you view it - the film doesn't waste much time explaining how things work, which is arguably better than explaining them with nonsense, but also can leave the audience with no idea what's going on.
I'm sad that the film tanked so badly and will likely not receive a sequel. I don't consider it unsalvageable, and would love to see someone do a Phantom Edit-style recut on it to do a better job of framing all that great CGI with some more sensible plot.
From a structural standpoint Green Lantern has a lot of issues. Opinion is definitely a factor, but it doesn't take much analysis to completely destroy it.
GREEN LANTERN SPOILERS (for the five people who care)
Kilowog teaches every recruit the importance of gravity and its effects on objects of varying size. Why does it take a rookie to defeat Parallax with a basic technique that should be internalized by every single Green Lantern on day one? Why not send Kilowog, Sinestro, and Tomar-Re to just blow up Parallax while high fiving each other and being awesome? Well, it isn't much of a movie. If we accept the movie as it is, then either Hal Jordan is the only competent Lantern of the bunch (which, 90% of the film shows us that he isn't), or Parallax isn't the threat everyone was claiming he is (meaning a lot of innocent people died…due to Lantern incompetence).
People are allowed to like whatever they want to like. It's totally fine. I watch Two Broke Girls because of a weakness for Kat Dennings, despite the show being pretty lame. Opinion is certainly one thing, but there are many, many critical perspectives that have structure, criteria, and expectations for a work to be worthwhile. I don't know very many that would hold GL in high regard.
But, hey! I'm happy GL let Michael Clarke Duncan be Kilowog before he passed. The 73 seconds we got to see him call Ryan Reynolds a poozer were something.
This is quite often a common theme of the GL comics. The Rookies are usually the ones left to defeat the badguy. It's mostly because (… thin reasoning here…) the Green Ring is based on Willpower. And often the older members have seen to much, have too muchbaggage, or whatever and loose some of their Will to fight - where as the younger, rookie members have strong, un touched wills to fight back with.
In earlier comics, yes. Parallax as a Fear entity is less than ten years old in the comics. In these comics, rookies are often green (no pun intended), scared, and inexperienced. If not careful, rookies can drop like flies (no disrespect to the late GL Bzzd of Sector 2261) without proper training and field time. If they wanted the "Rookie is a bright-eyed idealist full of Willpower and pep ready to give the villain a good ol' one-two", then they didn't properly convey that with their choice of villain and their protagonist's "I'm just so unsure of myself for SEVEN EIGHTHS OF THIS BLASTED MOVIE" attitude.
I bought the Golden Age story arc explanation as an apologists argument the first time I saw the movie, but after thinking about it for about five minutes after I got out of the theater I found it to be superbly lacking. I'd recommend the animated films Green Lantern: Emerald Knights or Green Lantern: First Flight if people want to see a proper Green Lantern Hal Jordan. The CG animated series is also a rather impressive portrayal.
Forgive me if I came off as defensive or snippy. I was SUPER disappointed by this film. My first experience with DC comics was Blackest Night and Geoff John's pre-New 52 Green Lantern run, which were fantastic (Up until The War of the Green Lanterns...that was just an awful start to a never ending stream of pontificating, self-righteous, boring villains that constantly undermined and diluted the heroism of the Green Lantern Corps). I'll admit that I had high expectations, but I didn't expect the flick to be THAT disappointing!
Reynolds wasn't playing Hal. He was playing a mishmash. The big fist in the street fight? That was Hal. The minigun against Sinestro? That was Kyle. The catapulted fuel tanker and the AA gun? That was Kyle. Hal does "big flashy" effects. Kyle does intricate effects due to being an artist. He would also never do the same effect twice. Stewart wouldn't be much for SFX images. Just direct application of willpower to get the job done.
I'm not so sure about older comics, but in the newer comics Stewart's constructs are the most solid. All of his designs have hard light screws, gears, and moving parts inside the structures rather than just outer manifestations of an image. The Justice League animated series mainly portrayed his constructs as direct applications of willpower. I'd think that John's constructs would be some of the most interesting to design, as they would be the most detailed. Jordan's are straightforward, Gardner's are intense, Stewart's are detailed, Rayner's are creative, and Baz's are…well, he's got a gun. So…that's something.
I always want the comic Green lantern, I want Anvils from the sky, giant pie to your warship Looney Tunes Green Lantern, and while every once-in-a-while they flirt with it, they never go far enough.
I mean really, take anything, make it big enough, it will eventually get the job done.
They should give the ring ot a nine-year old who really, really hates the bad guys and let him fix enerything.
That was not one of the bits I had a problem with. If we're going to have Parallax just be a giant space monster, then I can live with the way it was taken out. After all, it only fell into the sun because it was determined to chase Hal there, having decided Hal was a threat (an ironically self-fullfilling assesment, but that's pretty typical of comic book villains). Had any of the other GLs tried that trick, Parallax probably wouldn't have bothered following him, but Hal managed to tick him off enough to abandon an entire city full of victims and go fly off into space after one guy. I have more of a problem with that decision than with the fact that only Hal thought of trying it, and either way, I can accept it as tolerable dumb-action-flick plotting. (GL certainly deserved to be more than a dumb action flick, but Hollywood tends to assume that's all anyone wants to see.)
As I said, the ending really wasn't great; the best scenes were all in the middle.
[/GREEN LANTERN SPOILERS]
Kinda like how in Pacific Rim, they build giant humanoid robots to punch the giant monsters instead of shooting them because they have toxic blood, and need to be beaten mostly with blunt force or cauterizing energy weapons (nevermind why the Army doesn't just make plasma cannon tanks). A shaky justification is better than none.
I could see the Golden Raspberries doing something like that, but don't think Thor was bad enough to qualify for a Razzie nomination. (There was a year that Mariah Carey's cleavage got such a nomination – maybe even a win.)
Do we need to split this topic again to talk about how cool Thor and Thor 2 are? Or possibly split off another topic about how Kat Dennings is so fly it should be illegal?