Now on Screen: Green Lantern, True Legend

By John Semley

Because Toronto’s more movie obsessed than a Quentin Tarantino screenplay (yuk yuk), Torontoist brings you Now on Screen, a weekly roundup of new releases.
We know, we know, you wanted Green Lantern to be really good, right? Like you wanted it to totally be the best big movie of the summer. Well, so did we. But it’s not. Sorry. Even though we liked it a bit more than most people probably will, we still can’t call it good. But there’s a pretty good Chinese wuxia warrior movie in town. And we missed screenings of Beginners and Mr. Popper’s Penguins, so we can’t comment on those. But we can tell you they’re also opening this week!

Green Lantern Directed by Martin Campbell

True Legend Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping

The Green Lantern is one of those superhero adaptations that leaves you banging your head against the wall. Though not necessarily in a Rise of the Silver Surfer way, where you’re just left slack-jawed and stupefied and wracked with guilt because you don’t read more books. More in the way where it just leaves you feeling severely disappointed. Because Green Lantern had so much going for it: a fine lead in Ryan Reynolds (as test-pilot-turned-intergalactic-cop Hal Jordan), a good director in Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, Edge of Darkness), and one of the richest, most-sprawling character mythologies in the entire comic book canon. It’s with considerably heavy hearts, then, that we report that Green Lantern is a disappointment. A real wall-banger.
Lantern starts off exceptionally strong. In a voice-over by the beaky alien Tomar-Re (Geoffrey Rush) we learn about the history of the Green Lantern Corps, a universe-wide group of patrolmen charged with protecting the 3,600 sectors of the universe using power rings that turn their thoughts into reality. The brightest of these Lanterns is Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), lauded for entrapping the dreadful entity Parallax on a distant planet. Wasting no time, Campbell opens on Parallax’s reawakening, and his revenge on Abin Sur. It’s a swift, well-executed bit of sci-fi FX work. And it suggests a Green Lantern that’s on its way to becoming the summer blockbuster to beat. Sadly, though, as soon as the purple-skinned Abin Sur crash-lands his escape pod in California, the film’s potential for zip-zap space opera flourish plummets. Isn’t it always the way?
On Earth we land on Reynolds’ Hal Jordan, a crackerjack test pilot whose cocksure, man-boy swagger establishes him as little more than a scruffier Tony Stark. After almost killing himself in a dogfighting exercise, Hal is chosen by the dying Abin Sur’s ring and unwillingly enlisted in the Green Lantern Corps. He’s ferried off to Oa, the Lanterns’ secret citadel in the geographical centre of the universe, and run through a gauntlet of training exercises led by the kindly Tomar-Re, the tough-as-shit Kilowog (Michael Clark Duncan), and the Lanterns Corps’ sneering de-facto leader, Sinestro (Mark Strong). Rote as training montages are, these scenes offer the glimpses of brilliance and genuine fun that Campbell begrudgingly metes out. For any fan of the comics, just seeing Hal Jordan swashbuckle with Sinestro, and watching as their power rings fluidly summon one-or-another construct of their imaginations (something that comes off inherently flat on paper) provides those twitches of dorky glee.
The rest of the film is a cluttered mess. Green Lantern compresses about four major events in the characters’ 50 plus–year publication history into less than two hours. Besides the churning intergalactic villain Parallax (again, the SFX here are very well-executed), Hal must also do battle with Earthbound psionic psycho Hector Hammond (a snivelling Peter Sarsgaard), while also quarrelling with his daddy issues and valiantly attempting to win back the heart of main squeeze Carol Ferris (a dead-eyed Blake Lively). All while quelling any traces of capital-f Fear that linger within him (Fear, you see, is the enemy of Will, the power that charges the Lanterns’ cosmic batteries.) Even Reynolds, usually so effortlessly dashing, plays the All-American Hero with lame hangdog poutiness. Hal Jordan isn’t Peter Parker. He’s not supposed to sulk and whinge about his responsibilities. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Reynolds feeling anything but super-stoked at the prospect of possessing an extraterrestrial power ring that allows him to fly around and cook up big green fists using his mind.
There are brief glimmers of hope in the film that set up its sequel, with the forging of Sinestro’s Fear-based power ring, and the promise of a division in the Green Lantern Corps that will beget a spacier, even more indulgently expansive follow-up. But considering the jeers that are bound to result from the fledgling franchise’s first big-screen flight, it seems doubtful we’ll ever get there. Maybe Campbell and the other cooks in the kitchen responsible for Green Lantern’s incoherence and kowtowing to comic-book cliches should have hunkered down, thought real hard about it, summoned a bit more of that emerald green willpower, and conjured up a better movie.
Green Lantern opens Friday, June 17, in wide release. Click here for showtimes.

Chinese martial arts mini-epic True Legend lands on our shores bearing a couple of unique distinctions. When it dropped in Chinese cinemas last year, it was trumped up as the first-ever Chinese 3D film. When it slinked out of the same cinemas, it was lambasted as an incredible flop, coming nowhere close to recouping its budget. Thumbs up to China, then, for ostensibly not giving a rip about 3D. In this hemisphere, though, True Legend may have a tougher time distinguishing itself from the wash of 3D, Real 3D and 3D-mastered would-be super-grossers. That said, we don’t get many wacky high-flying wuxia films in these parts.
Yuen, a halfway-legendary Chinese martial arts flick director who is perhaps best known for choreographing the acrobatics in Hollywood pictures like The Matrix and Kill Bill, returns to the director’s chair after a 15-year absence. The results are uneven, if not consistently entertaining. Here, Yuen blends wuxia wire fights with the Drunken Fist school of martial arts, essentially grafting the latter onto the former.
In its first half, Legend establishes a fairly straightforward revenge narrative, with Su Can (Vincent Zhao) training to avenge himself on his scheming half-brother Yuan (Andy On). After defeating the imaginary God of Wushu (Jay Chou), Su sets out to defeat his brother (whose martial arts prowess has been reinforced with a whole bunch of crippling venom that pumps through him) and rescue his son, Little Feng (Li Zo). Then, the plot turns on its heel, with Su slumming it as a wino chucked into a martial arts contest, pitting him against a bunch of European strongmen led by the scowling Anton (the late David Carradine).
The change is a bit weird, especially given Yuen’s truly epic early scenes of fantastical military combat. But considering that he made his name directing Drunken Fist pictures (like 1979’s Jacki Chan breakout Drunken Master), it’s kind of understandable that he’d want to get back to form. But plotting is kind of incidental anyways. True Legend, despite the haughtiness of its title, pitches itself squarely as a hard-hitting B-movie, right down to the David Carradine cameo. And, in that respect, it delivers all the white-knuckle fight scenes, cheesy dialogue, and ham-handed feel-goodery you could ask for.
True Legend opens Friday, June 17, for a limited engagement at the Scotiabank Theatre (259 Richmond Street West). Click here for showtimes.