I’m not saying Green Lantern was a horrible movie, but I’m not saying that you should actually watch it either. The movie takes the basic ideas of Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, ring, green and lantern) and mixes them together in a weird way that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The movie, which should be ripe for special effects with the ring creating all kinds of crazy stuff, gets bogged down in the need to setup the special effects and the story and characters get lost in the shuffle. So, what went wrong?

Hal Jordan is a hotshot test pilot who’s blows his companies exhibition of unmanned AI drones when he goes to extremes and manages to beat them in a head to head dogfight. Winning comes at a cost of his plane (which blows up), his job (the military pulls the funding for their drones funding) and his friends (coworkers who are now out of a job). Then he is grabbed by a mysterious green ball of energy and plopped down by a dying alien who gives him the ring and lantern (and no instructions). After a couple attempts to figure out what is going on, Jordan is dragged through space to a planet called Oa. Oa is controlled by the Guardians, an extremely powerful group of aliens who have created the Green Lantern Corps. A quasi-police force to guard the galaxy from evil. The alien who died on Earth was a Green Lantern named Abin Sur and Hal Jordan was chosen to be his replacement. On Oa, Hal meets a bunch of the other Green Lanterns and starts his Green Lantern training.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Hector Hammond is brought in to examine the alien body (Abin Sur) that US Government has recovered. Sur was killed by an extremely powerful being known as Parallax and Hammond is attacked by a small bit of Parallax that was left inside the body. The attack starts giving Hammond a giant head (literally a giant head) along with telepathy and telekenisis. Jordan, feeling overwhelmed and not sure he can live up to being a Green Lantern has returned to Earth. After a pep talk from his ex-girlfriend (and ex-boss) he finds himself up against Hector Hammond and then Parallax.

Overall, the movie is a giant mess. There is a huge subplot with Sinestro and the Guardians trying to figure out how to capture/defeat Parallax that ends in the creation of a yellow ring (which uses fear power, green uses willpower). The whole subplot becomes useless when Jordan defeats Parallax, except to setup a future movie (which based on how much money the movie lost is unlikely to happen). The movie tries to do some psychological grounding by having everyone in the movie suffer from Daddy issues, but it plays out badly and really has no impact on the movie after it is introduced. It tries to be all things to all people with the science fiction aspect of Oa and the intergalactic police force as well as the Earth superhero and ends up being neither. The movie isn’t given any room to breathe and allow a genuine story to develop. Not recommended.