Finally, alien lifeforms get some proper respect in the comic book film world!  I like aliens in my superhero mix.  I’m sad there really is more of that in comic book movies.  Sure, there’s Superman, but he looks like a flying human, his antagonists always look like a human and instead of exploring the unknown every Superman film has been a grand metaphor for identity and belonging in society.  In the Green Lantern, there are aliens.  You can see flying green creatures tossing energy bolts from rings and giant clouds with floating heads.  There are LOTS of aliens, and they have personalities and screen time.  For once the movie studio didn’t shy away from create an out of this world epic that gives itself time to build a vast universe to play in.

I love world building films.  I thought Marvel’s production of Thor did a wonderful job of creating a universe in which you could make a dozen films that never had to focus on Earth.  If DC decides to mimic Marvel in combining all of their properties into a Justice League movie, this is where to start.  Green Lantern quickly shows that there’s not only a world outside of our own, but a huge galaxy of which we are a tiny spec in the far reaches.  Similar to Marvel’s Thor in scope, both films have shown an expanded universe where you can explore new planets, lifeforms and stories without having to resort to the damned “Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey” that has to louse up every origin story in comic properties.

Where Thor opted to skip the origin and get right into the action (an incredibly wise decision), Green Lantern suffers from trying to shoehorn traditional plot details into an otherwise strong film.  Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) would play well as a cocky fighter pilot who is chosen to become a powerful space cop yet has to overcome his fears to become a true hero.  That journey gets derailed several times with a romantic subplot involving Carol Ferris (an utterly wooden Blake Lively) and an even weaker subplot involving a quasi-love triangle including Hector Hammond (Peter Skaarsgard) that has nothing to do with love or triangles.  While Hammond is a great, almost sympathetic villain, anything involved Carol brings the middle of the movie to a halt.

The action scenes are big, the 3D is well done and the post-credits blip gets you excited for the next round.  Hopefully the film will clear enough at the box office to get the second film started right away, as the Green Lantern does successful job of setting up a never-ending universe of stories to tell and I can’t wait to see what they come up with when Earth doesn’t have to be in peril.