It's 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that opens this weekend. Via a heavily CGI'd prologue, we learn that The Universe is patrolled by a group of multi-species warriors called The Green Lantern Corps--with each member issued an actual camping lantern, which they use to recharge the clunky rings that allow them to harness "the emerald energy of will-power" to "create what you see in your mind."
When a dying Lantern uses his last breaths to command that his ring seek
out his replacement, the ring ropes in Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds), a
bad-boy human pilot given to daddy-issue flashbacks, and flirting via
terrible double entendre with aerospace exec Carol (Blake Lively).
Hal
is transported into space, where Lantern leaders are skeptical that a
human can make it in the Corps. But then the evil threat known as the Parallax gets its hooks into
Hector (Peter Sarsgaard), a scientist creepily obsessed with Carol, and
from there somehow it becomes apparent that the future of the Earth is
in danger, so. . . . Director Martin Campbell never rewards the viewer
for even trying to keep track of what is going on. Instead, try to grab
on to the small pleasures: Sarsgaard gives a grand camp performance, and
while hardly registering as a villain, the Parallax is a breathtaking
visual idea.
As for Reynolds, his body is a marvel of precision
sculpting. The pulsing of his abs is the closest Green Lantern gets to
character detail.
